The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 527 - 30 Responsibilities

Everyone, situated in different positions, holds different responsibilities.

Welts’s responsibility was to ensure that no one froze to death in Chicago’s wind and snow during the All-Star Weekend.

He had to organize the work to allow the All-Star Game to proceed normally despite the severe weather and old facilities.

This was a daunting and difficult task, keeping Welts incredibly busy as he constantly monitored the weather conditions in the Chicago area and maintained contact with suppliers to ensure an adequate supply of food and heating materials.

Welts’s job was tough enough, but when compared to David Stern, it didn’t amount to much.

David Stern had to consider the very survival of the NBA, pondering whether the League could live through the blizzard of labor negotiations.

Before the Suns drug scandal broke out, Stern’s top priority was the negotiation of the new collective bargaining agreement.

The labor agreement signed in 1984 was set to expire in June 1988, which was a result of tough negotiations between employers and employees, and the establishment of the salary cap was Stern’s proud achievement.

Through years of bargaining with Larry Fleisher, he facilitated the birth of the salary cap rule, successfully reining in the increasingly inflated team expenses, improving the League’s financial situation, allowing many teams on the brink of bankruptcy to catch their breath and come back to life.

Now that the agreement was expiring, both employers and employees had severe disagreements again.

Represented by Stern, the employers believed that the salary cap system had proven to be a very good design.

It not only maintained the financial balance of the teams but also ensured that the strength of the teams tended to be equal, and super teams would become increasingly difficult to form.

Represented by Larry Fleisher, the employees agreed that the salary cap system was a good design, but they arrived at the opposite conclusion.

They believed that precisely because the salary cap was so effective, it had fulfilled its historical mission of rescuing the League’s finances and could be swept into the dustbin of history, put to rest.

Therefore, representing the Players Union, Fleisher put forward three major demands during the contact negotiations in September 1987:

1. Completely abolish the salary cap; no upper limit on contracts.

2. Cancel the NBA draft system; let the teams freely discover and cultivate newcomers.

3. Abolish transfer restrictions; players could freely join the teams of their choice without being tied to their original teams.

These three demands were tantamount to pulling the rug out from under the NBA League, aiming to destroy the very foundation of its existence.

If these three suggestions were indeed implemented, the NBA would become like a boxing organization, such as the WBA, IBF, WBO, and so on.

These boxing organizations have no employment, affiliation, or obligation relationships with the boxers, only cooperation.

I organize the match, you fight in it, and we share the earnings.

This was precisely the result that NBA players, especially star players, wanted to see.

They wanted to be as free as boxers, to have their own brands, to attract fans with their basketball skills, and to make money.

In the NBA, the salaries were high but playing for the League, with its 82 regular season games and a dozen or so playoff games, was like a rigid work schedule, forcing players to complete the task.

Without the salary cap, stars could earn more; with the salary cap in place, stars were at a disadvantage.

For superstars like Jordan, Gan Guoyang, and Bird, the fans bought tickets to see them play; their salaries dwarfing all the other team members were not excessive.

But the salary cap didn’t allow for such a situation, essentially making the star players use their fame to earn money and pay salaries for the mid and lower-tier players.

Of course, basketball is different from boxing; basketball is a team sport. Without a team, without mid and lower-tier players, the top-tier stars are like trees without roots.

The salary cap was a relatively minor dispute; after all, the NBA had survived before without a salary cap.

Stern and Fleisher were somewhat mild in their disputes over the salary cap, having already argued about it for several years.

But abolishing the draft and transfer restrictions was like digging at the roots of the NBA employers.

Stern and the employers were resolutely opposed and unwilling to make any concessions.

The NBA draft was one of its distinctive features and an important system that differentiated American professional sports from other national and regional sports leagues around the world.

In fact, from the perspective of employment, the draft system was very rogue.

When an employee reached working age and met the job criteria, they could be selected by a company, which then tells them to come work there.

If an employee doesn’t want to go, then he will lose the opportunity to directly participate in work within this industry; he cannot go to other companies in the same industry, nor can he participate in next year’s recruitment.

And the reason why the NBA and other North American professional leagues can implement such an irrational system, and why the draft is packaged as a grand event each year, ultimately lies in the NBA’s monopoly position and the high salaries characteristic of the professional sports industry, which masks its thuggish nature.

The thuggishness of the NBA draft system is also reflected in another aspect, which is its global, indiscriminate selection of players; in recent years the NBA has increasingly picked overseas players.

They don’t care whether the selected players are under contract or playing for other teams; they just directly draft them.

If you’re willing to come, they’ll offer you a contract. If you’re not, they’ll still find ways to lure you over.

NBA teams are willing to pay breach-of-contract fees, which seems fair, but from the original teams’ perspective, even if they receive compensation, they still suffer a loss from a basketball standpoint.

This is like America when it comes to attracting tech talent, using its own economic and cultural appeal to gather talents from all over the world for its use without incurring the cost of their training.

This vampiric draft system is an important reason why the NBA has been able to grow and flourish.

Because the league and the teams don’t have to spend a penny on discovering and training young talents, they can reap the benefits and incidentally make the NBA the most entertaining, most legendary, and most lucrative professional league, further increasing its appeal to talents across America and the globe and creating a virtuous cycle.

Abolishing the draft system and removing restrictions on player transfers would break this cycle.

NBA teams would need to negotiate contracts with various players and go out to discover and train young players themselves, or even, like European football and basketball leagues, set up youth academies.

The reason Larry Flesher is proposing such an "aggressive" preposition is partly to seek better welfare and more relaxed labor agreements for the players, but on the other hand, Flesher has even greater ambitions.

He hopes to establish a global basketball league that allows the world’s top basketball players to move freely, the strongest teams to compete against each other, making the NBA champion truly deserving of the title "world champion."

Such a global, highly mobile basketball league is obviously not a role that the NBA, grounded in American-centric laws and a corporate structure, can assume.

It should be, like the NCAA, an organizer and referee of the event, not an organizer and referee who is also a contestant (as the NBA office is actually controlled by the teams’ boards of directors).

With such ambitions, how could the NBA owners agree? It would be akin to digging their own graves, a self-inflicted revolution.

If you, Flesher, want to play like this, start your own new division, if you have the capability, create another ABA.

The NBA will definitely not compromise on these matters.

The tug-of-war between the two sides had begun since last year’s All-Star Game.

During this time, due to the Suns drug scandal, Stern and Flesher briefly shared a common enemy.

During this period, Stern realized that Larry Flesher probably didn’t want to see the NBA disappear, otherwise, he wouldn’t make such an effort.

So, the three demands Flesher put forward are merely tactics to threaten the owners into making greater concessions to the labor side.

As a result, the owners, represented by Stern, not only disagreed with these three demands but were also utterly unyielding in terms of salary cap limits and revenue sharing, seeking to maintain the status quo and go head-to-head.

In such a situation, Larry Flesher pulled out his trump card:

He wanted to dissolve the Players Union, allowing NBA teams to negotiate individually with each player, and sign tailor-made contracts, rather than being constrained by a universal labor agreement.

All 276 active NBA players received this notice before the All-Star Game, and all members of the union would vote to decide the union’s future. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Before the union members could vote, they had to go through the first step, voting by player representatives to agree to initiate the dissolution process, and then start the vote among all members to decide the outcome.

Most player representatives are NBA stars, and Gan Guoyang is one of them.

So this All-Star Game was the moment when player representatives gathered to discuss important matters.

Throughout NBA history, the labor side’s "uprisings" have always taken the opportunity of the All-Star Game, which makes the owners both love and fear the event.

Upon receiving the notice and arriving at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, Gan Guoyang immediately sought out Flesher to understand the details of the situation.

Flesher, who has always trusted Gan Guoyang, told him everything from start to finish.

"You’re a player representative, and I need your support," Flesher said to Gan Guoyang, "If possible, persuade the fence-sitters. They might be afraid to fight the owners because they’re content with the status quo."

Gazing out the window at the whirling snow, Gan Guoyang said, "Securing the welfare of the players is the union’s responsibility; I’ll definitely support you. If it comes to it, we’ll just form a new NBA and stop playing with these owners!"

Flesher laughed heartily. With Gan Guoyang’s support, he felt much more assured.

He knew that Ah Gan commanded great prestige among the players, and when the time came, anyone who objected would likely find it difficult with Ah Gan around.