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Hard Labor: The Battle That Birthed the Billion-Dollar NBA
Oscar Robertson is known as one of the best players in NBA history, a triple-double machine who set the stage for the versatility of today's NBA superstars like LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, and Draymond Green. But The Big O's larger legacy may lie in spearheading the fight for his fellow players' financial equity and free agency, joined by fellow stars John Havlicek, Bill Bradley, Wes Unseld, and more. In Hard Labor , Sam Smith, best-selling basketball scribe emeritus and author of The Jordan Rules , unearths this incredible and untold fight for players' rights and examines the massive repercussions for the NBA and sports in the United States in the 40 years since. Diving into how "The 14" paved the way for the record-setting paydays for today's NBA players - stars and role players alike - as well as the harsh consequences faced by those involved in the lawsuit against the NBA, Hard Labor is an essential read for both NBA and sports fans alike.
- GenresSportsBasketball
368 pages, Hardcover
Published November 1, 2017
20 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
About the author
Sam Smith
12 books20 followersSam^^Smith is an NBA writer for the Chicago Bulls website bulls.com. He is the author of multiple articles and books, including The New York Times bestseller, The Jordan Rules.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 7, 2020
Sam Smith is my favorite sportswriter, period. He also answers my fan mail, and he considerately inscribed this copy to me and included a thoughtful, handwritten note. So, while I can’t claim him as a friend, I also can’t pretend to be unbiased here.
Still, I’m impressed with Smith’s ambition and narrative solution here. If you know your baseball, you know that the notorious reserve clause – the system that prevented players from exercising their free agent rights – was broken when Curt Flood refused to sign the contract he was offered and took his case to court. Flood eventually won, but it came at the price of his career. Fingers crossed, Flood will get into the baseball Hall of Fame in the current old-timers reconsideration; he was a hero, and subsequent players have come to recognize that.
The story in basketball is more complicated and, as a result, I’m not aware of anyone who’s managed to tell it before. There, Oscar Robertson – who was one of the two best players in the world (alongside Wilt Chamberlain) – agreed to become the lead plaintiff in a case that would do away with the basketball analogue of the reserve clause.
Robertson is at the heart of this book, then, but there’s more to it than that. Unlike Flood, Robertson didn’t suffer professionally for his leadership – or, at least, he didn’t suffer any more than he already did given that, despite averaging a triple double for a season (and doing so cumulatively over the first five years of his career), he could not negotiate even a $10,000 raise for himself.
So, as it unfolds, this book is a collective biography of the players who challenged the league and eventually opened up the system of free agency that’s produced arguably the most successful sports league in the world.
We get capsule biographies of Robertson, Chamberlain, Bill Bradley, Wes Unseld, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Archie Clark, Tom Meschery, Chet Walker, and others whose names I’d heard (or sometimes not) but whose careers I didn’t know all that well. As Smith sees it, that generation of players was as naturally talented as the one we see playing now, but limited television – and sometimes a tacit racism that kept Black players from being marketable – kept them from becoming either the household names they might have been or as present in the history of the game as they should be. There are some great stories about how they learned the game and about how they came to put their careers at risk to win the economic and personal freedom to become free agents.
As all of that suggests, Smith has long pushed against a collective sense that the NBA essentially “began” with the 1979 arrival of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. (This narrative has been tweaked in recent weeks as various tributes to long-time commissioner David Stern have underscored the role that he played in the same era.) Instead, Smith has long argued that we ought to be aware of what the various non-Celtic greats of an earlier era represented.
No one is bigger in that version than Robertson – a staggeringly talented player who labored under bad management and alongside sub-par teammates – but Chamberlain, Baylor, West, and many others matter who are largely forgotten when we consider the history of the league. It was, Smith tells us in his easygoing and anecdotal way, their “hard labor” on the court and off that created the platform that Bird, Magic, and Michael Jordan used to build the league we know today. And notice what is perhaps not a coincidence: the league exploded in the early 1980s, just a few years after the courts decided in favor of Robertson and the players association.
In any case, I am always glad to read Smith whether he is writing a game report or answering his mailbag inquiries. He’s funny and, without losing the perspective that he’s writing about a game, thoughtful and insightful. I went into this with him as my favorite sportswriter, and I walk out of it the same way.
Still, I’m impressed with Smith’s ambition and narrative solution here. If you know your baseball, you know that the notorious reserve clause – the system that prevented players from exercising their free agent rights – was broken when Curt Flood refused to sign the contract he was offered and took his case to court. Flood eventually won, but it came at the price of his career. Fingers crossed, Flood will get into the baseball Hall of Fame in the current old-timers reconsideration; he was a hero, and subsequent players have come to recognize that.
The story in basketball is more complicated and, as a result, I’m not aware of anyone who’s managed to tell it before. There, Oscar Robertson – who was one of the two best players in the world (alongside Wilt Chamberlain) – agreed to become the lead plaintiff in a case that would do away with the basketball analogue of the reserve clause.
Robertson is at the heart of this book, then, but there’s more to it than that. Unlike Flood, Robertson didn’t suffer professionally for his leadership – or, at least, he didn’t suffer any more than he already did given that, despite averaging a triple double for a season (and doing so cumulatively over the first five years of his career), he could not negotiate even a $10,000 raise for himself.
So, as it unfolds, this book is a collective biography of the players who challenged the league and eventually opened up the system of free agency that’s produced arguably the most successful sports league in the world.
We get capsule biographies of Robertson, Chamberlain, Bill Bradley, Wes Unseld, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Archie Clark, Tom Meschery, Chet Walker, and others whose names I’d heard (or sometimes not) but whose careers I didn’t know all that well. As Smith sees it, that generation of players was as naturally talented as the one we see playing now, but limited television – and sometimes a tacit racism that kept Black players from being marketable – kept them from becoming either the household names they might have been or as present in the history of the game as they should be. There are some great stories about how they learned the game and about how they came to put their careers at risk to win the economic and personal freedom to become free agents.
As all of that suggests, Smith has long pushed against a collective sense that the NBA essentially “began” with the 1979 arrival of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. (This narrative has been tweaked in recent weeks as various tributes to long-time commissioner David Stern have underscored the role that he played in the same era.) Instead, Smith has long argued that we ought to be aware of what the various non-Celtic greats of an earlier era represented.
No one is bigger in that version than Robertson – a staggeringly talented player who labored under bad management and alongside sub-par teammates – but Chamberlain, Baylor, West, and many others matter who are largely forgotten when we consider the history of the league. It was, Smith tells us in his easygoing and anecdotal way, their “hard labor” on the court and off that created the platform that Bird, Magic, and Michael Jordan used to build the league we know today. And notice what is perhaps not a coincidence: the league exploded in the early 1980s, just a few years after the courts decided in favor of Robertson and the players association.
In any case, I am always glad to read Smith whether he is writing a game report or answering his mailbag inquiries. He’s funny and, without losing the perspective that he’s writing about a game, thoughtful and insightful. I went into this with him as my favorite sportswriter, and I walk out of it the same way.
March 2, 2018
In the Oscar Robertson suit, this book tackles a genuinely interesting subject matter - not least given the historical social and cultural context which formed the background of that labor battle. It should, theoretically, appeal to a broad audience as well as NBA historians and aficionados.
Unfortunately, the book itself is a major disappointment. It is unnecessarily hard to follow, due to its vague structure and Smith's incredibly incoherent writing style. Chapters include personal accounts of the individuals involved but lurch from seemingly unrelated anecdotes in one moment, to the endless listing of financial or sporting statistics in the next. There is no logical argument that holds this book together - whilst it is clear a great deal of research was undertaken, that research is not used effectively to back up any kind of overall point. Information is simply presented to the reader, often out of context, as if to say "hey, look - facts, figures, and a story."
It is hard to understand how this book was published in it's current form. There is definitely a story here; one that is intriguing and also timely given the current financial boom in the NBA. Yet that story is obscured by abrupt sentences, an almost stream-of-consciousness writing style, and frequent moments of inexcusable (and jarring) repetition. It lacks a narrative, and the author does not do his vision or his research justice.
Unfortunately, the book itself is a major disappointment. It is unnecessarily hard to follow, due to its vague structure and Smith's incredibly incoherent writing style. Chapters include personal accounts of the individuals involved but lurch from seemingly unrelated anecdotes in one moment, to the endless listing of financial or sporting statistics in the next. There is no logical argument that holds this book together - whilst it is clear a great deal of research was undertaken, that research is not used effectively to back up any kind of overall point. Information is simply presented to the reader, often out of context, as if to say "hey, look - facts, figures, and a story."
It is hard to understand how this book was published in it's current form. There is definitely a story here; one that is intriguing and also timely given the current financial boom in the NBA. Yet that story is obscured by abrupt sentences, an almost stream-of-consciousness writing style, and frequent moments of inexcusable (and jarring) repetition. It lacks a narrative, and the author does not do his vision or his research justice.
December 7, 2021
Ok so at first I thought there was no way I was going to make it through this book, because it seems like no one actually edited it, but I hate not finishing books so I stuck it out. Ultimately, I’m glad I did because there were some truly moving chapters and I learned a ton about pre-modern era NBA history. I was expecting this to be more of a narrative rather than a series of individual profiles, and again, the horrendous fragmented sentence structure made me want to rip my hair out at various points, but if you can stomach those disappointments, it’s a good enough read in the end. 2.5 stars because of the aforementioned issues, but an extra 0.5 stars for, if nothing else, the Maurice Stokes profile, which legitimately almost moved me to tears.
May 28, 2018
Sam Smith wrote an excellent economic history of the NBA, and clarifies the challenges both past and present.
December 11, 2017
Well that sure was disappointing.
This is a book about a labor battle led by Oscar Robertson that changed the NBA forever. What was this labor battle? Well ....... I thought Smith did a remarkably piss-poor job explaining it, actually.
In the early going, it felt like he was just talking around it. alluding to it, referring to it -- it's like he assumed the reader already knew what he was talking about. I didn't, and it didn't take long for it to really bug.
It involves the merger of the ABA with the NBA. It began with a proposed sit-down strike at an All-Star game. It led to a lawsuit where 14 players - including stars like Oscar Robertson took on the league. There were Congressional hearings chaired by Sam Ervin (just as Watergate was about to divert all his attention). It was eventually settled out of court in 1976. The gains made in that settlement began the process that eventually led to full-blown free agency a generation or so later.
But Smith's book is mostly trying to give biographical information about the key players involved. Look, I get it. That's a standard & often effective tactic for writing a book like this. Get people hooked on the characters so they'll be more invested in the narrative. But can do this poorly. You can get so focused on the characters that the narrative goes away entirely. That's what happens here. Even chapters on a particular individual have sojourns and extended sections on other people or things. So any larger point gets completely lost.
To be honest, after the first few chapters, I found myself skimming more than reading. Normally I don't do that - but the problem was I was hardly getting anything out of the parts I read. So why not skim? I hardly got anything out of that either.
It sounds like there is a really good book that can be written about this labor dispute. Maybe someday someone will write it. Sam Smith sure hasn't.
Random side note: why does the cover feature a big photo of LeBron James? That's like writing a book about the Vince Lombardi Packers and putting a photo of Aaron Rogers on the cover.
This is a book about a labor battle led by Oscar Robertson that changed the NBA forever. What was this labor battle? Well ....... I thought Smith did a remarkably piss-poor job explaining it, actually.
In the early going, it felt like he was just talking around it. alluding to it, referring to it -- it's like he assumed the reader already knew what he was talking about. I didn't, and it didn't take long for it to really bug.
It involves the merger of the ABA with the NBA. It began with a proposed sit-down strike at an All-Star game. It led to a lawsuit where 14 players - including stars like Oscar Robertson took on the league. There were Congressional hearings chaired by Sam Ervin (just as Watergate was about to divert all his attention). It was eventually settled out of court in 1976. The gains made in that settlement began the process that eventually led to full-blown free agency a generation or so later.
But Smith's book is mostly trying to give biographical information about the key players involved. Look, I get it. That's a standard & often effective tactic for writing a book like this. Get people hooked on the characters so they'll be more invested in the narrative. But can do this poorly. You can get so focused on the characters that the narrative goes away entirely. That's what happens here. Even chapters on a particular individual have sojourns and extended sections on other people or things. So any larger point gets completely lost.
To be honest, after the first few chapters, I found myself skimming more than reading. Normally I don't do that - but the problem was I was hardly getting anything out of the parts I read. So why not skim? I hardly got anything out of that either.
It sounds like there is a really good book that can be written about this labor dispute. Maybe someday someone will write it. Sam Smith sure hasn't.
Random side note: why does the cover feature a big photo of LeBron James? That's like writing a book about the Vince Lombardi Packers and putting a photo of Aaron Rogers on the cover.
December 21, 2020
Imagine a basketball world where dunking was banned? It's wild how something so basically accepted in today's game can take us down a rabbit hole of racism, politics, and simple lack of skill, as white men really couldn't dunk.
"Those 1958 Hawks were the last all-white NBA team to win an NBA title." (129)
I'm sure there are owners and broadcasters and journalists who are salivating at the thought of "making basketball great again", and while that seems impossible now, let's take the lessons of 2020 in stride-anything is possible.
I like this book for the historical and political context that does not primarily come from any (one) player or coach, but from the perspective of the establishment of the unions, and the contrasts (and mirrors) to the contemporary capitalistic system.
"'Slavery is slavery no matter what a slave is paid,' Flood said during his court case." (163)
And yes, it seems so very overdue that the names "owners" still stands, but in some ways, at least it's a reflection of the true nature of those relationships.
Also, the fact that a "whisper fine" was a thing, ever, is unbelievable. They got fined for techs, but additional "offenses" were noted as fines that they would only be aware of when an official whispered in their ear that a lesser monetary fine would be deducted from their paycheque. I'd love to see that go down, especially in an environment without fans or crowd noise.
Much has been made of welcoming Nazis into American popular life (and government) as of late, but it's always been part of their cultural fabric. I feel like we were just steps away from having spectators wearing Nazi uniforms to basketball games (or, more likely, NFL games) in present day.
This book is well-written and well-researched.
"Those 1958 Hawks were the last all-white NBA team to win an NBA title." (129)
I'm sure there are owners and broadcasters and journalists who are salivating at the thought of "making basketball great again", and while that seems impossible now, let's take the lessons of 2020 in stride-anything is possible.
I like this book for the historical and political context that does not primarily come from any (one) player or coach, but from the perspective of the establishment of the unions, and the contrasts (and mirrors) to the contemporary capitalistic system.
"'Slavery is slavery no matter what a slave is paid,' Flood said during his court case." (163)
And yes, it seems so very overdue that the names "owners" still stands, but in some ways, at least it's a reflection of the true nature of those relationships.
Also, the fact that a "whisper fine" was a thing, ever, is unbelievable. They got fined for techs, but additional "offenses" were noted as fines that they would only be aware of when an official whispered in their ear that a lesser monetary fine would be deducted from their paycheque. I'd love to see that go down, especially in an environment without fans or crowd noise.
Much has been made of welcoming Nazis into American popular life (and government) as of late, but it's always been part of their cultural fabric. I feel like we were just steps away from having spectators wearing Nazi uniforms to basketball games (or, more likely, NFL games) in present day.
This book is well-written and well-researched.
March 10, 2018
This was an excellent read on NBA basketball players during the 1960's and 1970's. I remembered all of them.
May 13, 2020
Very informative but could have flowed a bit better
July 2, 2019
Sam Smith loves Satanic Liberals (redundant)
What could have been a wonderful story, turned into Smith’s personal vendetta against Conservatives, Christians, or anything that opposes his worldview of abortion, homosexuality, Islam, socialism, and black power racism...10% of the book was about the labor dispute, 90% about Sam’s Satanic beliefs
What could have been a wonderful story, turned into Smith’s personal vendetta against Conservatives, Christians, or anything that opposes his worldview of abortion, homosexuality, Islam, socialism, and black power racism...10% of the book was about the labor dispute, 90% about Sam’s Satanic beliefs
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews