NBA Players Are Not Slaves

The Luka Doncic/Anthony Davis trade created an eruption of reporting and opinionating – – including here.  I believe the Lakers got the better of the deal in the long-term simply because Davis is 5 years older than Doncic, but time and events will make clear if I am correct or not.  There was one report here on CBSSports.com that brought up an old stalking horse of an argument; and as usual, it is so hyperbolic that it misses the point.

Dennis Schroder is a guard in the NBA; he has been in the league for 12 years and has been with 8 teams in his career.  Schroder is from Germany, and he owns a professional basketball team that plays in Germany; he has been traded 5 times in his NBA career.  Much of what he says according to this report is understandable; he thinks there needs to be less trading/dealing of players after those players and their teams have been together for a while.  He suggests that issue should be addressed in the CBA that codifies things like trades and players’ rights which is also logical and potentially constructive.  However, this is where he went out of orbit:

“It’s like modern slavery.  It’s modern slavery at the end of the day. Everybody can decide where you’re going, even if you have a contract. Yeah, of course, we make a lot of money, and we can feed our families, but at the end of the day if they say, ‘You’re not coming to work tomorrow, you’re going over there,’ they can decide that. They got to change that a little bit.”

Let me make my objection here very clear:

• This is NOT slavery – – modern or ancient.  Trying to invoke slavery as a mental construct for thinking about this situation completely ignores the reality of slavery as an institution.

Slaves were bought and sold – – similar to NBA players who are subject to being traded.  However, slaves were not under contracts that they or their agents negotiated with slave owners.  Slaves had no say at all where they might have chosen to work; most NBA players enjoy that privilege at least several times in their careers.

Slaves did not have a “union” who could negotiate working conditions on their behalf; a slaveholder could be cruel, or he could be benevolent but there was no counterbalance to his behavior and his treatment of his slaves.  NBA players have a union, and they have a mechanism to try to get the union to focus its attention on specific issues related to the work environment.

Slaves could not “withhold services” and just walk out of things like practice sessions – – or whatever might have been the analog to practice sessions in the time of slavery.  NBA players can do that – – and at least one is doing that as we speak.

Slaves could not demand a trade or oppose a trade from one owner to another.  NBA players demand to be traded and then make themselves into pains in the ass to motivate teams to trade them.  I don’t believe that such a strategy would have been benevolently tolerated back in real slavery situations.

Slaves were not paid for their labors; at best they were provided adequate food and shelter.  Schroder acknowledges that NBA players make “a lot of money and we can feed our families”, but he glosses over just how much they do make.  According to Spotrac.com:

• He will make $13M this year.
• He has made $103M over the course of his NBA career.
• He will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the 2025 season.

Slaves got no salary let alone ones that might generate total earnings of nine figures but even more importantly, slaves had no such thing as “free agency”.  The closest thing to free agency for people held as slaves was to run away – – creating a situation where they could be hunted down and brought back to the place they ran away from.  If that is the “closest thing” to free agency for slaves, it remains quite distant from the free agency that Schroder will enjoy later this year.

I am not suggesting here that the NBA is a perfect working environment for players; certainly, there is room for improvement.  Nevertheless, when players invoke “slavery” or a “plantation mindset” on the part of owners and GMs, they do not raise the level of support that they seek by using such imagery.  It is not realistic, and it detracts from the reality that players may be trying to bring attention to by means of their rhetoric.

Moreover, I am not “picking on” Dennis Schroder; he is merely the most recent athlete to use the slavery imagery to describe how things work in a professional sport.  NBA and NFL players have gone here before Schroder, and I have called them out in those instances too.  And so, let me offer up one idea that might address a bit of Schroder’s concerns.

• If a player has been with a team for a designated period of time – – say 3 seasons just for a start – – he can veto a trade by his team to another team if he will accept a percentage reduction in his salary for the duration of his contract – – say 10% just for a start.
• This is sort of like the mirror image of the NFL’s franchise tag that is put on players by teams.  Here the player is “putting a tag” on the team.

That is not a perfect idea.  It came from about 15 minutes of thinking, but it is a start.  And it does not involve hyperbolic rhetoric about the institution of slavery.

Finally, these words from Fredrick Douglass:

“A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………