A Broken Union: New Book by CAS Professor Examines Intersection of Race and Labor in 1970s NBA
Bill Sharman, from left, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jack Kent Cooke in 1975 after the Los Angeles Lakers traded for Abdul-Jabbar. (/UCLA Library Special Collections' Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection)
By Jonathan Heeter
The National Basketball Association generally receives plaudits for being the most socially progressive American professional sports league. Still, the NBA has hardly stood out as a shining example of a pro-worker environment, CAS associate professor Theresa Runstedtler argues in her new book.
The past 50 years of the NBA is riddled with conflict between the majority Black labor force and the White ownership, and the strife came to a head during the 1970s, Runstedtler writes in Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA.
Black Ball, which has received recent positive reviews in the and examines the players’ fight for compensation that reflected the value they added to the sport.
Restricted free agency in sports began to create opportunities for athletes in the 1970s, allowing them to change employers and seek better compensation. But as players exercised this freedom, team owners and the media tended to label them as greedy and selfish for pursuing more lucrative contracts, Runstedtler said. The NBA didn’t have a vast television audience in the 1970s, so the conduit to the public was often the local newspaper columnist, who could operate as a mouthpiece for ownership.
“I tried to take the collective discourse of the media and unpack it for what was being said in terms of race,” Runstedtler said. “There were racialized stereotypes and narratives—the game was too flashy and resembled inner-city playground ball. Some of these themes are still used today by team officials and the media.”
The 1970s are often considered a lost decade of basketball, sandwiched between the dynastic Boston Celtics, who won nine championships in the 1960s, and the “rebirth” of the NBA in the 1980s with the rise of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and later, Michael Jordan.
“Basketball was the ugly stepsister of professional leagues in the 1970s,” said Runstedtler, who worked as a Toronto Raptors’ dance team member before pursuing her doctorate at Yale. “The NBA Finals weren’t shown live on television. They were on tape delay. In 1975, the NBA Finals were bumped from the Golden State Warriors’ arena because they didn’t want to move the [.”
Here, Runstedtler chats about Black Ball and misconceptions about players’ activism.
TWAU: How did owners fight the labor movement?
Runstedtler: Every time there was a labor fight, team owners would have this weird racial triangulation where they would try to get fans on their side. They would find familiar terrain on race and anti-Blackness to delegitimize players’ demands. This still happens today. During the NBA lockout in 1999, owners spun the narrative of the greedy player. But the owners had just made record profits. Are the players making a lot of money? Of course. But there is no game without the players. Players are rich, but there’s a difference between a millionaire player and a billionaire owner who generates vast profits directly from labor.
TWAU: The NBA and the American Basketball Association merged in 1976. What was the impact?
Runstedtler: The ABA lasted nine seasons, so there was quite a bit of time when the two leagues were competitors, which worked in the players’ favor. They could jump between leagues and get paid more. Before that, players were bound to teams through a draft—which still exists today—and a reserve clause that eliminated choice in an employer. Players had leverage, and [star player] Oscar Robertson and other NBPA representatives sued to end the reserve clause. The settlement of the lawsuit in favor of the players paved the way for an antitrust waiver from Congress and a subsequent merger.
TWAU: Why is this story important today?
Runstedtler: Unless you’re really into basketball history, you may not know guys like and . Yet they played a pivotal role in reshaping the unequal power relationship between owners and players. As a historian, it’s vital to shine a light on these guys who led and contributed to a revolt within the NBA to change the terms of their contracts.
It also helps to contextualize athlete activism that we’re seeing today, particularly from NBA players in concert with Black Lives Matter and what Colin Kaepernick faced in the NFL. You can see that these sports leagues have continuously operated as a monopoly. They will exclude you if they want to or if it works for business. The NBA has done an excellent job of smoothing out its history and making it seem like it welcomed Black players with open arms. They did not. The history includes racial strife and labor strife. I wanted to complicate the popular history of the league. The story also matters for our understanding of the role athletes play and should play in determining the trajectory of their careers and reaping the profits as those who do the physical labor we all enjoy watching so much.