Hard Labor

September 15, 2017
Smith, the best-selling author of the The Jordan Rules (1991), explains how professional basketball players came to earn such astronomical salaries (Steph Curry recently signed a five-year, $200 milliondollar deal). Those salaries didn't drop from the sky like a Curry three-pointer; rather, they were earned by the players who formed a union in the 1960s and by subsequent generations of players who carried the torch. The struggle for pay and benefits had been ongoing through the years but, as Smith reports, was kick-started during the 1964 NBA All-Star game. The game was to be televised nationally (a rarity then), but the players voted to boycott unless the owners agreed to negotiate with the nascent union. They agreed. Still, it's a long way from 1964 to Steph Curry's contract, and Smith capably guides readers through what becomes a kind of history of the NBA as seen through the league's labor movement, with emphasis on the key players who made it happen, both on the court and around the negotiating table, including Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, and Bill Russell. Smith has another winner: a fascinating story well told.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)