They’re Just Like All the Others

The NBA, it’s not so special any more.

Optimism evaporated and peacemakers fled as if from a burning village last week as David Stern and Billy Hunter hunkered down for a long campaign, final proof that the little flame that gave this league its glow in the ‘80s has burned out.

Now the NBA looks like the others, with labor wars, millionaire owners supposedly living hand to mouth, exploited millionaire players, kamikaze agents and hostage fans.

In the ‘80s, everyone was fighting for survival. Now they’re rich and full of themselves. Disputes are wars, resolving little, pointing toward the next conflict. Sounds like baseball in the ‘80s, doesn’t it?

Commissioner David Stern once cherished his perfect labor record, noting proudly that NBA players were the most gracious in sports. By the ‘90s, the partnership seemed to be dwindling to Stern, his corporate sponsors and NBC Sports head Dick Ebersol.

Stern became increasingly peeved at the press for harping on players’ behavioral excesses (before tacitly acknowledging they were out of control by taking over responsibility personally). In the wake of the Michael Jordan gambling revelations of the 1993 playoffs, he even complained about tough questions posed by NBC’s Bob Costas. Ebersol backed Stern.

Of course, this was nothing compared to the rise of the modern super-agent, as symbolized by David Falk, the resident terrorist in this Garden of Eden.

Falk’s association with Jordan seems to have convinced him he’s as transcendent among agents as Jordan is among players. Falk skims the cream off the top (and often off other agents’ client lists) and terrorizes teams, giving marching orders in the guise of advice (protect your asset before he walks out on you), getting the asset to growl, winding up with a trade and $100 million, a la Alonzo Mourning.

Then Falk uses the premium that billionaire Micky Arison pays to dig his franchise out from historic mediocrity as a peg to make Dikembe Mutombo an $11-million-a-year player, or so it says in Deke’s contract.

Falk’s clients make out. Falk makes out. In a game driven by talent and an age in which celebrity multiplies the impact, representing stars means never having to say you’re sorry.

“David Falk is an extremist in every phase of business,” says Stephen Woods, a gadfly agent who knows him from their brief time together at ProServ.

“He’s extremely bright, he’s extremely aggressive and he’s extremely shortsighted. And in this case, there’s an extreme ego at work.”

As if out to show Stern who was in charge, Falk led the 1995 decertification drive that was crushed in the election, because elite players got one vote apiece, the same as nobodies.

Falk then packed the union leadership with clients, betokening either a new interest in the fate of the working man or trouble for Stern.

Stern, no shrinking violet himself, prepared for war, clearing it with his owners and networks, locking the players out, the equivalent of massing troops on the border.

Now both sides could claim the other started it, giving each that reassuring paranoia and skepticism of the other’s most basic motives that enables them to fight on, after the reason they’re fighting is forgotten.

There was a thaw two weeks ago, as Falk receded into the background and the parties agreed on what Stern called “a skeleton of a deal,” leading Hunter to say he was “optimistic.”

Then Falk emerged from his cave in Eden to dynamite another peace initiative. Amazingly or not, his fellow agents rallied behind him. After one contentious meeting with Falk last week, Keith Glass, who has a low-end clientele whose interests he protects as “a badge of honor,” emerged saying they were on the same page.

This, of course, makes you wonder what book Falk gave Glass to read, or why Glass believed him.

It’s easy to understand players’ alienation. Most were born poor, fought their way up against great odds and are still predisposed to distrust the establishment.

Of course, most agents were born middle class and all have more reason than anyone to distrust Falk. However, several have clients expecting to break the bank, so league proposals limiting Scottie Pippen to $12 million this season represent an obvious miscarriage of justice.

Agents’ careers have led them to distrust management too, especially now that it’s out to marginalize them. Once they got 10%, now it’s 4%, and Stern, who won a wage scale for rookies, wants one for high-end players (a ceiling of 35% of the cap for 10-year veterans, 30% for 5-10 players, etc.) that would further diminish their importance.

How long before players start hiring lawyers and paying by the hour?

So the agents let Falk gavotte onstage. This convinces Stern he was right, Hunter is a puppet, Falk will have to be starved out and there’s no reason to make a lot of concessions now. (With the union asking for 60% of revenues and the league offering 50%, NBA sources suggest the proper compromise isn’t 55 but 53.)

Labor sources, doves and hawks alike, insist Hunter is in charge, although he has had to fight several skirmishes with Falk and may have to fight more.

Says one dovish agent, dismayed at the recent turn of events: “Billy is running things but he’s surrounded by Falk’s people.”

That would be union President Patrick Ewing, vice presidents Mourning, Mutombo and Juwan Howard plus Jordan, now considered the driving force behind the players.

Falk is known for getting clients to think what he tells them. He got so puffed up after Jordan told the Wizards’ Abe Pollin, the dean of NBA owners, to sell his team if he couldn’t afford to run it, Falk crowed to the New York Times that he had personally gone over that argument with Jordan the night before. Let’s just hope the greatest player the game has ever known doesn’t mind being portrayed as Howdy Doody.

Management still has superior organization, deeper pockets and a longer time frame than players, who have precious few earning seasons. For all its stars’ defiance, the union’s majority is still composed of little people.

Of course, that realization and the ensuing settlement will now take months, rather than weeks, assuming they finally arrive at one.

It’s so bad the peacemakers were throwing up their arms in disgust. As one said recently:

“The owners are right and the players are right. There is no happy medium. They should just cancel the whole season and let everybody get a real job. Then you’ll see how they really feel.”

That was Dennis Rodman, a former janitor. Imagine how messed up things are when he’s the one making sense.