Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. As we've explored a wide range of
Speaker 1: aspects of power this season on Deep Background, we have
Speaker 1: not yet had the opportunity to talk about one of
Speaker 1: the areas of power that I'm most interested at a
Speaker 1: personal level, and that is the deployment of power in
Speaker 1: professional sports. Today, we get the chance to take that
Speaker 1: question on directly. We're joined by Michelle Roberts, who is
Speaker 1: the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, that is,
Speaker 1: the NBA players Union. She's the first woman to hold
Speaker 1: that job, and indeed the first woman to head a
Speaker 1: major professional sports union in North America. Michelle came to
Speaker 1: this job through a rather usual pathway. She began her
Speaker 1: career as a lawyer as a public defender in the
Speaker 1: Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where she
Speaker 1: was mentored by the great Charles Ogletree, who himself went
Speaker 1: on to become a famous and influential professor of criminal
Speaker 1: law at Harvard Law School. As a litigator, Michelle was
Speaker 1: known as fearsome and powerful, and she moved ultimately from
Speaker 1: the public Defender's office to working as a litigator at
Speaker 1: major Washington DC law firms, in which role she was
Speaker 1: widely noted as one of the most experienced and successful
Speaker 1: and frightening litigators anywhere in the United States. From there,
Speaker 1: Michelle went straight to the NBA Players Association, and her
Speaker 1: tenure has been marked by some remarkable historical transformations in
Speaker 1: the role and identity of players, not to mention by
Speaker 1: the particularities of COVID, including the bubble experience and more
Speaker 1: recent the efforts of the league to come to terms
Speaker 1: with vaccination. In short, Michelle is ideally placed to bring
Speaker 1: us behind the scenes and explain to us a little
Speaker 1: bit about how power operates in professional sports in general
Speaker 1: and in the NBA in particular. We're thrilled that she
Speaker 1: was able to join us. Michelle, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being here. On deep background, our theme this year
Speaker 1: is power, and what we try to do on the
Speaker 1: show is bring listeners who are pretty good at following
Speaker 1: the news and knowing what's going on on the surface
Speaker 1: of things behind the scenes to try to understand how
Speaker 1: power actually gets deployed in the times in places where
Speaker 1: it does get deployed, and in some sense your job
Speaker 1: is like the archetype of that, because everyone knows what
Speaker 1: the NBA Players Association is on one level or another,
Speaker 1: and they know that as executive director, you're both speaking
Speaker 1: on behalf of the players and also trying to get
Speaker 1: them all on the same page. And they all understand
Speaker 1: that you're both collaborative with the league and also occasionally
Speaker 1: oppositional to it, where your interests and their interests diverge.
Speaker 1: And I think that's basically all that anybody understands about
Speaker 1: how their relationship actually works. So I wonder if you
Speaker 1: would just start for readers who know that much but
Speaker 1: probably not much more, by describing how you think about
Speaker 1: the power of the players and their association and how
Speaker 1: it operates in relation to the power of the owners
Speaker 1: in the league. It's a bit of a dance because historically,
Speaker 1: not just in basketball but across all sports, players were
Speaker 1: never expected to be in any position to exercise power.
Speaker 1: The relationship between professional athletes and team owners has always
Speaker 1: been one of aren't you lucky that I'm willing to
Speaker 1: fund this team and pay you to play? And there
Speaker 1: was this perception that the players were owned thing, but
Speaker 1: the opportunity, and beyond that, the ownership had the right
Speaker 1: to generate as much revenue as it could and dole
Speaker 1: out whatever money it thought was appropriate to the players.
Speaker 1: That there was no sort of sense that we're in
Speaker 1: this together. You can't do this without me from the
Speaker 1: player's perspective, and that has changed dramatically. Obviously, in my view,
Speaker 1: the advent of the union made a real difference. It
Speaker 1: was not until they organized and demanded the very beginning
Speaker 1: a pension planet's just just a pension plan, not the
Speaker 1: compensation that we're talking about now. There was only when
Speaker 1: they threatened not to perform, not to play, that they
Speaker 1: began to exercise for the first time. Power. Fast forward
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy five years and you've got players who are
Speaker 1: obviously have done well in terms of increasing their compensation,
Speaker 1: but the work hasn't ended. There's much more to be done. Frankly,
Speaker 1: even now there are occasionally when I gently have to
Speaker 1: remind the league and the owners that you don't tell
Speaker 1: us what to do. We negotiate how we're going to
Speaker 1: behave knock on wood. Things have been pretty good in
Speaker 1: the past seven eight years. We've enjoyed labor piece, but
Speaker 1: it's a constant push and pull because I think your
Speaker 1: historical DNA if you're an owner, is well, why don't
Speaker 1: I have to get permission from them I'm the owner. Well,
Speaker 1: players don't see it that way any longer. So we manage.
Speaker 1: But sometimes it's a little bit more stressful than other times.
Speaker 1: We're in a good place. Now, I'm going to ask
Speaker 1: you about that word owner and it's complexity. In a
Speaker 1: moment before I do you use the word that really
Speaker 1: fascinated me, you said you gently remind them, And I
Speaker 1: guess what I wanted to ask you is obviously, when
Speaker 1: relations are good, you can be gentle. But it seems
Speaker 1: like the relationship between in this industry, at least between
Speaker 1: management and labor is basically on something not very gentle
Speaker 1: at all. Namely, you have one really really big leverage point,
Speaker 1: which is that without your players, there would be no NBA.
Speaker 1: But the only way you can really exercise that leverage
Speaker 1: ultimately would be to walk, and that would cause everybody
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of money. Meanwhile, from the owner's perspective
Speaker 1: or from the league's perspective, they really really don't want
Speaker 1: that to happen, and they want to make exactly zero
Speaker 1: concessions except for the ones that would lead to that happening.
Speaker 1: So I guess what I'm wondering is, how do you
Speaker 1: do gentle in a world where both sides understand that
Speaker 1: the biggest, the only threat really is the enormous threat.
Speaker 1: How do you lower the temperature in that way? You
Speaker 1: know it's it's by reminding, if necessary, that we're talking
Speaker 1: the potential from mutual destruction. Right, this is a multi
Speaker 1: billion dollar industry, and as wealthy as the owners are,
Speaker 1: and frankly as wealthy as the players are, no one
Speaker 1: wants to walk away from this huge part of gold.
Speaker 1: No one does. We are grown ups, they're adults. We
Speaker 1: can scream and yell and threaten and eventually not get anywhere.
Speaker 1: Or we can and again we'll gently agree we don't
Speaker 1: want to go there. It's a no one's interests not
Speaker 1: to mention our fans. For us to stop playing, they
Speaker 1: will do damage to our business. But I'm happy to
Speaker 1: report is that most people are pretty smart and sufficiently
Speaker 1: self interesting that they won't go there. And so you know,
Speaker 1: in our last CBA negotiation, we had some difficult negotiating sessions,
Speaker 1: but as long as we kept in mind that it
Speaker 1: was in the best interest of everyone in that room
Speaker 1: that we keep this business operating. We were able to
Speaker 1: tone things down when they got a little bit too
Speaker 1: volatile and figure out that we had to figure something out.
Speaker 1: If people say it all the time, it's someone cliche
Speaker 1: that the best negotiations are one where everybody goes away
Speaker 1: thinking that they wanted a little bit more, but at
Speaker 1: the same time goes away believing I can live with
Speaker 1: That's why you have to be When I was preparing
Speaker 1: to talk to you, I went back and read the
Speaker 1: interviews that you gave early after you took over as
Speaker 1: executive director in twenty fourteen, and then I read some
Speaker 1: conversations and listened to some conversations that you had more recently,
Speaker 1: and I noticed, at least I think I noticed what
Speaker 1: I imagine might have been a subtle strategy. And since
Speaker 1: your successor has recently been announced, maybe you're willing to
Speaker 1: share a few tricks of the trade. Was it conscious
Speaker 1: on your part to open by saying, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of cards in my hand, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: call things out when they need to be called out.
Speaker 1: Before I've engaged in any negotiation, I'm going to use
Speaker 1: words like monopoly, because it is a monopoly. I'm going
Speaker 1: to say it's preposterous that they would blocks total salaries.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, good luck if the owners play
Speaker 1: the games, which I thought was a very good line.
Speaker 1: They used it, let's have the owners play out the games.
Speaker 1: And then I watched over the course of the next
Speaker 1: six seven years as you came to be praised alongside
Speaker 1: the the league for having this incredibly positive relationship, especially
Speaker 1: compared to other professional sports leagues, and it's like your
Speaker 1: rhetoric just mellowed out a little bit because presumably you
Speaker 1: were winning. So am I Am I getting any of
Speaker 1: that right? You know? I can't claim that there was
Speaker 1: a grand strategy or design. I will say this, I
Speaker 1: knew that nobody knew what in the heck I was
Speaker 1: going to do when I got when I got right,
Speaker 1: I had no prior history in sports, let alone in basketball, right,
Speaker 1: So I, frankly, rather than view that as being a
Speaker 1: bit of a negative or disadvantage, view that as a
Speaker 1: positive because no one had a book on me. And
Speaker 1: what I didn't want people to think was that I
Speaker 1: was shy. Not I wish I'd been accused of that.
Speaker 1: Once maybe in my life, but that having been me either,
Speaker 1: so it's all right, And I didn't want to be dishonest,
Speaker 1: and so I thought the questions that were being posed
Speaker 1: to me were fair. You know, what do you think
Speaker 1: about the salary cap? I still think it's preposterous. I
Speaker 1: think it's absolutely outrageous that only in professional sports and
Speaker 1: basketball and football do you have a talented person not
Speaker 1: being able to get as much money as he or
Speaker 1: she can be paid. Right, it's insane that it's not illegal.
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe that it's not illegal. Not illegal
Speaker 1: because it's been collectively bargained. That's the point. You can
Speaker 1: get all this stuff as long as it's been collectively bargained,
Speaker 1: and that's the point. So I was just telling the truth.
Speaker 1: I was answering questions. Honestly, I think it was making
Speaker 1: the owners then the league nervous, and frankly they should
Speaker 1: have been. And I didn't do it to scare anyone.
Speaker 1: I just wanted everyone to understand that this is my
Speaker 1: view of how this business is structured. But I'm not
Speaker 1: an idiot. I understand collective bargaining, and all the things
Speaker 1: I purported to be preposterous were collectively bargained. Am I
Speaker 1: being dismissive of the efforts that went into those negotiations? No,
Speaker 1: because I wasn't there, and that was a time when
Speaker 1: leverage was not were leverages today for players. But I
Speaker 1: still think that having a cap system is Frankly, if
Speaker 1: I had my way, there would be no cat, there
Speaker 1: would be no salary. So but you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm not God, and I don't think I'm going to
Speaker 1: be God tomorrow, so I understand that these things have
Speaker 1: to be negotiated. You had an unusual background, as you
Speaker 1: were just alluding to. You came to this job, which
Speaker 1: is a job about negotiation, from a background in litigation,
Speaker 1: where you had started as a federal public defender in Washington,
Speaker 1: DC and worked with a great Charles Ogletree and my wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful colleague, and you know, one of the more inspiring
Speaker 1: people I've ever had a chance to work alongside. And
Speaker 1: then you became a private side litigator, and you know,
Speaker 1: everyone feared you, because that's how you succeed as a
Speaker 1: good litigator. Right If you're not feared, you're not a
Speaker 1: successful litigator. And it worked, were you in some sense
Speaker 1: able to play on that. You know, people thought, oh
Speaker 1: my goodness, you know, if she goes to war, we
Speaker 1: really do not want to be on the other side
Speaker 1: of that. And then sure enough you didn't have to
Speaker 1: go to war. Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that I like being a lawyer was not because I
Speaker 1: liked having a law degree. I like litigation, and I
Speaker 1: even make a distinction between litigation and trial work. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I used to drive me really crazy,
Speaker 1: just especially in my old life, just before I got
Speaker 1: this job, is that I had these cases I was
Speaker 1: litigating was so big, and frankly you won by settling, right,
Speaker 1: And but I'd get hired on these big cases and
Speaker 1: I'd say, look, you all have a settlement negotiation team.
Speaker 1: That's not me. I want to fight, all right, So
Speaker 1: you let me know if you don't. If you settled it,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be distracted, and I don't want
Speaker 1: my team to be distracted. We've got to be ready
Speaker 1: for war. But when they settled, I'd be a little disappointed.
Speaker 1: Becaust I had a great opening statement I was about
Speaker 1: to deliver, but I knew it wasn't the best interest
Speaker 1: of the client. That the client and decided to settle
Speaker 1: and CBA negotiations here. You know, I'm not, like I said,
Speaker 1: I am completely appreciative of the fact that that's why
Speaker 1: they call it collective bargaining, because you're bargaining. At the
Speaker 1: same time, there are some people who have had this role,
Speaker 1: or who have had this role in other sports that
Speaker 1: just risk averse that are known to the league and
Speaker 1: teams and not wanting to fight. I don't want to fight.
Speaker 1: I don't mind a good fight that I will. There
Speaker 1: were times when we had to say, now, this is
Speaker 1: something we'll go to war on because this is just
Speaker 1: fundamentally unfair what you're trying to do. It's all about
Speaker 1: knowing what your leverage is, knowing what your players will
Speaker 1: not stand for, and then making the argument on their behalf.
Speaker 1: That's what lawyers do. I want to zoom back out
Speaker 1: to the deeper dynamics of power between the players and
Speaker 1: the owners, and I just want to double click on
Speaker 1: that word owner. Technically, the owner owns a franchise and
Speaker 1: then is the employer of players. The word, though, has
Speaker 1: a kind of cultural capital, and you were suggesting earlier
Speaker 1: that that word somehow actually does say something about at
Speaker 1: least a mindset of management. Do you think it's actively
Speaker 1: different in professional sports as a consequence than it is
Speaker 1: in other professions that, let's say, are connected to entertainment,
Speaker 1: you know, the film business, where you have high paid
Speaker 1: talent and then you have studios and so forth. To
Speaker 1: the league's credit, they have tried to substitute the word
Speaker 1: governor for the word owner, and it's made some of
Speaker 1: my players pleased because they are offended by the word
Speaker 1: owner on some levels. I am too. I think I'm
Speaker 1: just the world that I'm used to hearing it, so
Speaker 1: I remember I use governor as well. But the addition
Speaker 1: of the fact that most of the players in the
Speaker 1: NBA are African American and most of the governors are white,
Speaker 1: it's especially disturbing. A case in point, Donald Sterling, who
Speaker 1: used to own the and again own the LA Clippers
Speaker 1: Stories and Merge that he would literally go into the
Speaker 1: locker rooms of the LA Clipper players, and Chris Paul
Speaker 1: tells this one of the films he did about this.
Speaker 1: Sterling would go in and he'd be rubbing the players,
Speaker 1: and Chris reports that he felt like he was being petted, right,
Speaker 1: and then the governors of the teams that we have
Speaker 1: now are frankly much younger, much more entrepreneurial, and have
Speaker 1: I think a better met mindset than some of the
Speaker 1: governors some of the owners of these teams back in
Speaker 1: the day. So there's a little less concern about the title,
Speaker 1: though we appreciate the change. On occasion, though the league
Speaker 1: will communicate repeat to us comments made by some of
Speaker 1: the team governors that suggest that the mentality is not
Speaker 1: quite gone. I'd prefer to and the league reports too
Speaker 1: as well us as partners, and that that's a much
Speaker 1: more palatable word than owner, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: play games. You own the team, you own the franchise, whatever,
Speaker 1: but you be very careful when you begin to use
Speaker 1: that concept and can refer to the employees. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. One of the most significant historical changes over
Speaker 1: your time in your job has been the rise of
Speaker 1: NBA players, especially African American players, as major voices on
Speaker 1: crucial national questions of importance, most significantly on race, an
Speaker 1: association with Black Lives Matter, but not only on racially
Speaker 1: related issues. Of course, we have that legacy in the
Speaker 1: United States going back to nineteen sixties in the form
Speaker 1: of Muhammad Ali, but you know, he was in a
Speaker 1: different kind of a sport with its own very complicated dynamics,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't a league that he was actively a
Speaker 1: part of. And of course there have been individually individual
Speaker 1: NBA players Premu Bards another great example, who had strong
Speaker 1: identities and took strong stands, not an accident. In both
Speaker 1: of those cases, the Nation of Islam were part of
Speaker 1: the way that they made statements. But there's really been
Speaker 1: a main streaming of the expectation that NBA players are
Speaker 1: de facto leaders of public consciousness, both for white and
Speaker 1: for black people. And I'm wondering as you watch that happen,
Speaker 1: how much of it do you think was driven by
Speaker 1: the aspirations of the players, how much of it by
Speaker 1: the expectations of the public, how much by the fact
Speaker 1: that it's also a period of time historically where NBA
Speaker 1: players came to be extremely well paid, so that now
Speaker 1: black NBA players were among the best paid prominent African
Speaker 1: Americans in the country, and which confers a certain obligation
Speaker 1: of leadership. Arguably, Yeah, I think a little bit of
Speaker 1: all that may be there, but I think the principal
Speaker 1: component is the players themselves, right, I mean, there are
Speaker 1: any fans who are pushing them into the streets and
Speaker 1: into protests. In back. Quite the contrary, we get a
Speaker 1: lot of fans who used you've heard a million times,
Speaker 1: just shut up and dribble. So it's not as if
Speaker 1: I think that our fans are pushing us there. And
Speaker 1: now the community that's a different piece. None of these
Speaker 1: men that I'm working with go out on the streets
Speaker 1: or write those checks, or do those those community forums
Speaker 1: build schools because they feel, well, I got to do
Speaker 1: it for my public. I absolutely believe this with every
Speaker 1: ouncew of my being. But they do it because they
Speaker 1: feel it so strongly. I'm in the middle of reading
Speaker 1: Mellow's book right now, and it's just the way. It's
Speaker 1: a great read. If yeah, I have it too, it's
Speaker 1: on myself. I'm excited to read it. It's a great read.
Speaker 1: It goes very quickly. And Mellow is one of the
Speaker 1: one of the players who before became popular, was in
Speaker 1: Baltimore in the streets marching with the community. That he
Speaker 1: was a player, but he was in the streets marching
Speaker 1: the community because he passionately felt that what was happening
Speaker 1: in that community was wrong. Well, that's the same thing
Speaker 1: our players are doing now. I think they passionately feel
Speaker 1: these things the day friends, though, and I'm still marveling
Speaker 1: at this is their appreciation that, oh, I feel this way.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can do something about it because I've got
Speaker 1: a platform, and it's a platform that Muhammad Ali didn't have.
Speaker 1: It's a platform that Kareem didn't have, that Bill Russell
Speaker 1: didn't have. Despite the passion of all those men. It's frankly, Noah,
Speaker 1: it's social media. We just got a new rookie class
Speaker 1: come in and as I try to get to know
Speaker 1: who they are, and I check out their Twitter and
Speaker 1: all this Graham and they've got hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: people that purport to want to hear what they have
Speaker 1: to say. On a good day, I might have five
Speaker 1: people that call me and ask me what's up, Michelle.
Speaker 1: I can even imagine being able to have that audience
Speaker 1: and know that if I say black lives matter, whether
Speaker 1: you leave it or not, two millions of my followers
Speaker 1: are going to hear me say it, and some of
Speaker 1: them are gonna say, yeah, that's right. Something I say,
Speaker 1: what is he talking about it? And And maybe learn something
Speaker 1: about these issues in the community. Involving the police misconduct.
Speaker 1: Bottom line is, these players completely appreciate the power of
Speaker 1: their platform. And when we went to the bubble, a
Speaker 1: condition of going to the bubble was that we'd be
Speaker 1: permitted to talk about these issues. There would have been
Speaker 1: no season had the league made the stupid bone hit
Speaker 1: of the mistake of saying, no, you just play, We
Speaker 1: don't want to use any of your iMedia time or
Speaker 1: any of the quarts to the uniform. None of that
Speaker 1: that had happened that have been those seasons. So they
Speaker 1: appreciate that they've got platforms. Michelle, I want to just
Speaker 1: ask one more question about the kind of responsibility power question,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of with great power comes great responsibility,
Speaker 1: And that had to do with how the Players Association negotiated,
Speaker 1: not the bubble part, which is itself totally fascinating and
Speaker 1: I think part of your incredible legacy, but also the
Speaker 1: post bubble, the vaccination period, where you guys sort of
Speaker 1: came out from the beginning and said mandatory vaccinations are
Speaker 1: a non starter. But going to voluntarily vaccinate up to
Speaker 1: a very very high percentage, I forget it somewhere between.
Speaker 1: How did you hit on that particular combination of factor,
Speaker 1: because it must have been very delicate internal thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, what was the right thing to do for
Speaker 1: your players, for their health and safety, for those smaller
Speaker 1: number of players who might have not wanted to get vaccinated,
Speaker 1: and ultimately for the industry as a whole. You know,
Speaker 1: I frequently say, especially in the last few days or weeks,
Speaker 1: that it was a lot easier when there was no
Speaker 1: vaccine in many ways, because I could just concentrate on
Speaker 1: understanding what what we needed to do to keep the
Speaker 1: players as safe as possible, to keep COVID out of
Speaker 1: the house, so to speak. You know, the vaccine was
Speaker 1: going to be something that frankly none of us thought
Speaker 1: was going to be available as quickly as it became
Speaker 1: a bill. Sure, or it would work as well as
Speaker 1: it works, right. So the bubble, as horrific ideas that sounded,
Speaker 1: was actually, in any ways an easy decision to make
Speaker 1: because it was a way to have the players play
Speaker 1: but protect them. I mean, there was no way we
Speaker 1: were going to be traveling all over the country and
Speaker 1: being on planes and buses all that, and we had
Speaker 1: zero Once once we got to the bubble and people tested,
Speaker 1: I was there. I was there with the guys. We
Speaker 1: didn't have any cases, and so it was a completely
Speaker 1: artificial environment, but I knew that they would be safe
Speaker 1: and it turned out well. We could be finished the season,
Speaker 1: nobody got infected, let alone sick. That was a success.
Speaker 1: Then the vaccine started to happen, and unfortunately, and again,
Speaker 1: you can't separate the politics that were going on in
Speaker 1: the country from the vaccine and this notion of whether
Speaker 1: we'll take it or not, and the messages that were
Speaker 1: coming from the White House were so mixed that on
Speaker 1: the one hand, AD's not a big deal, and the
Speaker 1: other hand, I got this just super special vaccine. Is
Speaker 1: he really saying that? Because it's true all the scientists
Speaker 1: political There was so many questions that were not merely
Speaker 1: being asked in the country at large, but among our players, Michelle,
Speaker 1: is this typical for a vaccine to be ready this quickly?
Speaker 1: I've flunk seventh great biologies. I'm the last person to
Speaker 1: ask because we ended up getting our own experts. Everybody
Speaker 1: was sort of learning as it went. And to be
Speaker 1: candidate with you know, you would ask me months into
Speaker 1: the vaccine's production, I'd have said, I will be lucky
Speaker 1: if we get fifty percent of our players to take it.
Speaker 1: And you know, and I'll admit to this as well,
Speaker 1: I was suspicious. I mean I used to. In my
Speaker 1: whole life, I've represented pharmaceutical companies that were being sued
Speaker 1: in class action matters because of allegations that their drugs
Speaker 1: were not safe. How did I defend those lawsuits by
Speaker 1: pointing out the years and years of study and writings
Speaker 1: about the efficacy and the safety of these drugs that
Speaker 1: we're going for. That was our defense. It was very effective.
Speaker 1: People said, you know, one, I know, I think that
Speaker 1: they didn't. They didn't just throw something out there. They
Speaker 1: study this at first in animals got to give them,
Speaker 1: then in humans, and then none of that had happened
Speaker 1: with this vaccine, and so I was hard pressed to
Speaker 1: even personally believe that this was safe. At my age,
Speaker 1: I determined I don't have any choice because of people
Speaker 1: that were dying were in my cohort. And so to me,
Speaker 1: the decision was, oh, I know what COVID's gonna do
Speaker 1: to me, I'll take my chances, exactly. But I thoroughly
Speaker 1: understood and I still understand, that people have to get there,
Speaker 1: and people are making to find my players, But they're
Speaker 1: right those are saying it. Do the research, satisfy yourself
Speaker 1: that this is something that is in the best interests
Speaker 1: of yourself. And now what I would I have had
Speaker 1: a mandatory vaccination, Michelle, You damn right I would. I
Speaker 1: would have. And I told the players, I strongly believe
Speaker 1: that we should, every one of you should have a vaccination.
Speaker 1: But I also understand that I got here how I
Speaker 1: got here, and you get you need to get there
Speaker 1: as well. And I believe that they would, And so
Speaker 1: we voted at the time we voted, we voted a
Speaker 1: couple of times on this. By the way the players
Speaker 1: voted on this. The first time it was a non starter.
Speaker 1: There will be no mandatory vaccinations. And I can remember
Speaker 1: players who I know are vaccinated right now who said,
Speaker 1: I don't care if the Good Lord himself tells me
Speaker 1: to roll up my sleeves, I'm never taking that. So
Speaker 1: I knew it was going to be a process. And
Speaker 1: both times we voted that the players understood that there
Speaker 1: was a risk that was being taken, but not only individually,
Speaker 1: but for themselves and their families and their players families.
Speaker 1: Now we're at ninety six percent. I think we're going
Speaker 1: to get even better than that. What I have a
Speaker 1: mandatory vaccine, I would, but it's not my call. And
Speaker 1: the only thing I felt responsible for doing was making
Speaker 1: sure that they had as much information as they needed.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm still working on some things which I
Speaker 1: think might be helpful for those guys that was still
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm still worried. My wife says, no,
Speaker 1: these are unprecedented times and all of us have had
Speaker 1: to figure out how we want to manage this. It's
Speaker 1: kind of thought saying what you're saying, because I mean
Speaker 1: it sort of fits one of the themes that we've
Speaker 1: been talking about. The way that you guys in the
Speaker 1: Players Association were successful was not by laying down a law,
Speaker 1: but by a process of convincing people slowly and for
Speaker 1: them doing the research and convincing themselves. In other words,
Speaker 1: it turned out to be not that aspect of the
Speaker 1: way we think as lawyers, that's, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: right and a wrong, there's justice and there's injustice, and
Speaker 1: they're going to fight it out, but rather about collaborative
Speaker 1: conversation in a more open ended environment. And that actually
Speaker 1: leads me to my last question, which is as you
Speaker 1: transition to whatever you're planning to do next. Do you
Speaker 1: think that the old Michelle, you know, the warrior who
Speaker 1: loves to be in the courtroom, will predominate or will
Speaker 1: the Michelle who's enjoyed building tremendously successful collaborative relationships even
Speaker 1: across different sets of interests be the one who predominates.
Speaker 1: Do you think not to imply they're not the same person,
Speaker 1: but they seem like two aspects of the same fascinating life.
Speaker 1: I shell that's going to be our hope in control
Speaker 1: within the first year of my retirement, because that's what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. I'm not I'm not taking another job. I
Speaker 1: hope that she actually dust sought that list and she's
Speaker 1: been keeping for the last forty years and being able
Speaker 1: to check some things off. There are some things that
Speaker 1: I want to do that I'd like to do before
Speaker 1: I meet my maker. Having said that they're to share
Speaker 1: one or two of those. I gotta tell you, I've
Speaker 1: been blessed with incredible travel professionally. I mean, I've been
Speaker 1: on some of the greatest cities on planet, in the
Speaker 1: country and around the world, and I've never with the
Speaker 1: exception of Barcelona, and I just stole four days and said,
Speaker 1: I don't care, I'm going to Barcelona. I've never had
Speaker 1: a chance to enjoy those cities beyond you know, maybe
Speaker 1: taking the walk and the first place. I want to
Speaker 1: go to Senegal. I fell in love with that country.
Speaker 1: I want to go to Senea. I want to go
Speaker 1: back to Brazil. I mean I want to go. I
Speaker 1: love South Africa, I've been there a couple of times.
Speaker 1: I want to do Nigeria. I love love, love, love,
Speaker 1: love room. So I want to do some traveling just
Speaker 1: to just to get fat, but then I also want
Speaker 1: to pursue some things to keep my brain a little bit.
Speaker 1: I want to return to my biggest passion, but just
Speaker 1: criminal justice. I have recently joined a board of a
Speaker 1: nonprofit that I think is doing great work in this space,
Speaker 1: and I'm really excited about the work. I think I'll
Speaker 1: be able to be here and then you'll see me
Speaker 1: in a couple of next games. Well, those all sound
Speaker 1: like they're pretty amazing things. Something for you, something for
Speaker 1: the rest of the world, something for fun. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: really want to thank you for sharing your insights and
Speaker 1: your experiences, and also just for your fascinating work, which
Speaker 1: I think has contributed to justice in a lot of
Speaker 1: really interesting ways, from different angles and in different perspectives.
Speaker 1: So thank you, Michelle, No, thank you, No, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Listening to Michelle, I was please
Speaker 1: struck by her directness in explaining how she deploys power
Speaker 1: in her position and how the players in the NBA
Speaker 1: have overtime been able to gain greater power visavi, the
Speaker 1: league and the governors as team owners are now increasingly known.
Speaker 1: In essence, as Michelle made crystal clear, the power of
Speaker 1: the players derives from their ability to walk off the job,
Speaker 1: the most fundamental power of any group of employees represented
Speaker 1: by a union. Given that circumstance, she has been able
Speaker 1: to craft the interests of the players into a far
Speaker 1: more collegial relationship with management than exists in other professional
Speaker 1: sports leagues or than existed at previous times in the
Speaker 1: history of the NBA. From strength, she generated collaboration and collegiality,
Speaker 1: always remembering that being willing to go to the mats
Speaker 1: and fight as needed is conferral of power. At the
Speaker 1: same time, Michelle also made it very clear that she
Speaker 1: learned to be collegial and she's benefited from that collegiality
Speaker 1: by bringing people to recognize im mutuality of interest. All
Speaker 1: of this has given her an inside perspective to watch
Speaker 1: the transformation of the power of NBA players through their
Speaker 1: leadership on major issues of national social importance, particularly Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter, and also by their ability to wield social
Speaker 1: media presence as an important new tool that was not
Speaker 1: available to earlier generations of professional athletes. Ultimately, I would
Speaker 1: say that Michelle's tenure is a kind of object lesson
Speaker 1: in how it looks when things actually work between labor
Speaker 1: and management. And it's also an object lesson in how
Speaker 1: power subtly and gradually can be transformed at the hands
Speaker 1: of sophisticated actors who think things through, strategize and get results.
Speaker 1: You can't avoid the possibility of conflict, but sometimes, if
Speaker 1: you're as good as Michelle is, you can deploy the
Speaker 1: threat of conflict to achieve its exact opposite, namely collegiality
Speaker 1: and collaboration. There's a lesson there, I think for all
Speaker 1: of us, no matter what we do for a living,
Speaker 1: and even if like me, we're never going to play
Speaker 1: in the NBA until the next time I speak to
Speaker 1: you breathe deep, think deep thoughts, play some ball, and
Speaker 1: have a little fun. If you're a regular listener, you
Speaker 1: know I love communicating with you here on Deep Background.
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Speaker 1: I want to know what you think are the most
Speaker 1: important stories of the moment and what kinds of guests
Speaker 1: you think you would be useful to hear from. More So,
Speaker 1: I'm opening a new channel of communication. To access it,
Speaker 1: just go to my website Noa Dashfelman dot com. You
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Speaker 1: me exactly what's on your mind, something that would be
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