State of His Union

If Billy Hunter hadn’t guessed what representing the affluent and alienated would entail, he found out last fall at a news conference in Oakland on behalf of hard-core misfit Latrell Sprewell. Also attending was Spree’s entourage, including celebrity legal advisor Johnnie Cochran, who turned out to have little connection to the case but did set off alarms in the NBA offices.

It was a wild and woolly affair, which suggested that if the NBA had anything to do with it, America was in trouble, and it would have been worse if not for Hunter. The new director of an overwhelmingly black union, he nevertheless refused to let the incident take on racial overtones, shouting down raucous questioners such as the one who demanded to know why it was OK for white NHL players to beat each other up but not OK for a black NBA player to engage a white coach.

“I’ll tell you why!” roared Hunter, taking charge and interjecting a note of coherence into the proceedings.

The National Basketball Players Assn. went on to stage an effective defense, arguing David Stern’s one-year suspension was without precedent. It cited a similar case in which the NBA took no action, the Detroit Pistons’ Alvin Robertson choking General Manager Billy McKinney. Stern had a cow when arbitrator John Feerick shortened Sprewell’s suspension, and the rookie executive director was on the scoreboard.

Of course, compared to the current challenge, negotiating with Stern, who has docked Hunter’s players 15% of their pay while the owners bank $5 million from TV, Oakland was like a picnic with Julie Andrews in an Alpine meadow.

Not that Hunter hasn’t let Stern know he’s around. The commissioner who once nicknamed himself “Easy Dave” has the first work stoppage on what was an unblemished record, thanks to “Hard Billy.”

Hunter is famous now, or notorious. He says people come up on the street and ask, “ ‘When are you going to end the strike? End the strike, we want basketball.’

“I say, ‘We’re not striking. We’re locked out.’ ”

Strike, lockout, who cares? Fans hate labor disputes in sports and tend to be harder on fat-cat players than fat-cat owners.

Union directors? Forget the number. Let’s just say that in baseball, George Steinbrenner, Scott Boras and Albert Belle might be more popular than Don Fehr.

Someone recently told Hunter he could become basketball’s Fehr. He leaned his head back and laughed.

Hang on to that sense of humor, you might need it.

Who Is This Guy, Anyway?

That’s what everyone wants to know, because Hunter has been on the job for only two years and players, many of whom just discovered they were in a union, barely know him.

The NBA hierarchy knows little more but suspects, fears or clings to a belief he’s only a figurehead for the agents who tried to decertify the union in 1995 and then seized control of it. Notable among them is David Falk, whose clients include the union president (Patrick Ewing) and three vice presidents (Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, Juwan Howard) and who just got Michael Jordan to attend his first NBPA function.

But at a union meeting last week in Las Vegas, another perception dawned--Hunter is his own man and the firebrands of ‘95--Falk, Arn Tellem, et al.--are solidly behind him.

Sources say that behind the scenes, there has been enough fencing to establish that Hunter’s in charge.

At an early meeting, Hunter told the agents it wouldn’t be appropriate to disclose his tactics to them, because he was new and didn’t know whom he could trust.

There was even a little standoff with Falk, who said he couldn’t attend a meeting unless it was moved. Hunter stuck to his schedule.

Hunter, spunky, jaunty, no one to run from a confrontation, has taken over, according to union sources, and it was happening a long time before Las Vegas.

“It has been true for a long time,” an agent says. “It’s pretty obvious, they [Hunter and his staff] are the negotiating team, we’re advisors. For better or worse, what comes out of it will be the work of Billy and [union counsel] Jeff Kessler. Someone has to be in charge.”

Before arriving in Las Vegas, three agents--Mark Bartelstein, Mark Fleischer and Don Fagan--argued for the extreme tactic of decertification. In Las Vegas, Hunter effectively tabled it, dismissing it as an option they could use if things fell apart, quickly rallying the group behind his position.

While NBA officials winced at the thought of Falk leading another decertification fight, Falk was in Las Vegas, announcing he was with Hunter.

Only Bartelstein argued with Hunter in the meeting. Another man who was there says Bartelstein was “almost shouted down” by the other agents.

A Stand-Up Guy

They don’t do listed heights and weights on union leaders, but at 54, Hunter is about 5 feet 10, 210 pounds, a little heavier than he was as an NFL defensive back who played two seasons with the Redskins and Dolphins.

He was raised by his maternal grandparents in leafy Cherry Hill, N.J., across the river from Philadelphia. He was the first black youngster to play in the local Little League. As a football player at Syracuse, he organized teammates in a boycott of Southern schools with segregated stadiums.

If his NFL career was brief, his legal career was successful, although he never quite seemed to fulfill an ambition friends describe as healthy, indeed.

He earned law degrees at Howard and California, was named U.S. attorney for Northern California by President Jimmy Carter, participated in trials involving Jim Jones’ People’s Temple and the Hells Angels, and advised Carter to pardon Patty Hearst. As an entertainment lawyer, he represented the rapper Hammer, and once almost came to blows with another rapper, Bobby Brown. He switched party affiliations, became a Republican, ran for the U.S. House of Representatives against longtime Oakland incumbent Ron Dellums and lost.

He represented an athlete or two but generally stayed out of the sports biz, realizing it required a lot of stroking, not to mention recruiting clients . . . until Dave Bing, the former Piston great and an old friend from Syracuse, asked if he was interested in applying for the union’s top job.

He was, he did and here he is.

Reeling from its 1995 debacle, the NBPA, confused as ever, spent more than a year looking for someone tough and smart enough to oppose Stern. NBA officials say they’ve even heard Hunter had to take an oath he wouldn’t back down.

Hunter says that isn’t true, but. . . .

“They [players] wanted someone to stand up,” he says, “and someone that they felt would be committed to them. I think that was the issue. There was the perception among the membership that Simon Gourdine [Hunter’s predecessor, who had also been NBA deputy commissioner] was in the back pocket of the ownership. . . .

“They wanted to know, did I have any other agenda. . . . I just said, ‘I’ve always prided myself on being fair, being a hard worker, objective and professional. And if I accept you as a client, it’s always been my position to give you 110%.’ And I also assured them that I could hang in there if I had to, that I could be tough.”

Tough, he was. Unlike in the summer of ‘95, the players made a stand.

Young Dream Teamers, most first-timers such as Chris Webber and Terrell Brandon who wanted to go to Athens for the World Cup this year, agreed to boycott, irritating Stern, who had dared them to “trash their country.”

The NBPA launched a drive to organize the WNBA, Stern’s pet project. The union filed an arbitration case, asking that players with guaranteed contracts be paid, ultimately losing but shaking the NBA hierarchy.

OK, now what?

Both sides, at last, seem to be moving toward a deal, and Hunter is at a crossroads.

Thirty-eight of his players make at least $5 million a year; more than 38% make $1 million or less. The rank-and-file dominate, in fact, but the stars dominate psychologically (one player recently told his agent he gets tongue-tied in a room with Ewing and Jordan.)

The surest way to get higher minimums is to sacrifice the unlimited Larry Bird exception, which enabled Jordan to get a $33-million contract.

But can Hunter stand up to . . . drumroll . . . Jordan?

Can he arrive at a deal with Stern before this mutual embarrassment becomes disfiguring?

“It’s a lonely job,” Hunter said last week. “There are so many different constituency groups that you’re trying to placate or satisfy and it’s extremely difficult. But, you know, I accepted the job with the understanding that the time would come when I’d have to make some hard choices. . . .

“I’ve also told them [players] that I’m not ever going to be able to strike a deal where everybody’s going to be happy. There are some people who are going to be greater beneficiaries than others. And some people are going to benefit, maybe to someone else’s detriment. But that’s the reality.”

He might even turn out to be another Larry Fleischer, a union director who was trusted by players, who helped promote a spirit of partnership with the league, so this deal won’t be like the last one, a grudging compromise forged in ill will that only allows them to limp forward.

OK, will the real Billy Hunter please stand up?