Si Gourdine ... One of the True Good Guys

Simon Peter Gourdine 1940-2012

BOSTON- When I started as an intern at the NBA league office in December of 1980, Lawrence F. O'Brien, the famous political figure, Kennedy campaign manager, former Democratic National Chairman and high-ranking knight of the JFK-RFK Camelot era, was the NBA Commissioner.  His deputy was Simon "Si" Gourdine, then the head of the NBA's legal and basketball-related operations.  Gourdine was a legend to anyone with a bit of knowledge of the sports management industry.  I was a first-year intern.

Si Gourdine treated me like I was the most important person in the room.  He treated everyone like that and I will never forget it. Gourdine was the definition of a class act.  First class, all the way.

Gourdine moved on to public service in high-ranking positions in New York City government, then returned to basketball to help the NBA Players Assn. through one of its toughest times.

His place in history is very well documented in today's New York Times by Richard Goldstein.  It is a MUST READ for everyone. 

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Simon P. Gourdine, Pioneer in 

Sports Management, Dies at 72

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Simon P. Gourdine, who became the highest-ranking black executive in professional sports in the 1970s when he was named the N.B.A.’s deputy commissioner and who later served as executive director of the league’s players union, died Thursday in Englewood, N.J. He was 72.

Mr. Gourdine, who lived in the Bronx, died at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center after having back surgery earlier in the day, his family said. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Although he was a groundbreaking basketball executive, Mr. Gourdine (pronounced gore-DEAN) had no athletic background. He was a lawyer, and he went on to hold many posts in New York City government, including commissioner of consumer affairs under Mayor Edward I. Koch, deputy police commissioner and chairman of the city’s Civil Service Commission.

Mr. Gourdine joined the N.B.A. as its legal counsel in 1970 under Commissioner Walter Kennedy. He became a vice president for administration in 1972; was named to the league’s No. 2 post, as deputy commissioner, in 1974; and hoped to become commissioner after Mr. Kennedy stepped down.

When Mr. Kennedy named Mr. Gourdine his deputy, he cited Mr. Gourdine’s legal work for the N.B.A. and his running of the college draft. “And he’s not a yes man,” Mr. Kennedy told The New York Times. “He’s never hesitated to tell me he didn’t totally agree with me.”

But when Mr. Kennedy retired in 1975, Larry O’Brien, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, succeeded him. Mr. O’Brien’s political background was potentially valuable in confronting antitrust suits against the league filed by its competitor, the American Basketball Association, and the players union.

Mr. Gourdine stayed on as deputy commissioner and worked out the framework for settlements of the litigation. He also helped forge collective bargaining agreements with the players union in 1976 and 1979.

He resigned from the N.B.A. at the end of 1981, when his contract was expiring. “There were never any barriers against me,” he said. “It’s just, How long do you want to stay after being passed over?”

Mr. Gourdine returned to pro basketball as the N.B.A. players union counsel in 1990. He then became its executive director in April 1995, replacing Charles Grantham, who resigned in the midst of stalled contract talks.

“I can be accommodating, but if that means I’m easy or overly flexible, I reject that,” Mr. Gourdine told Sports Illustrated at the time in dismissing any suggestion that he would soften player demands in view of his background in N.B.A. management. “I grew up in the middle of the civil rights struggle. A moderate was someone who maybe was too accommodating, who wasn’t pushing hard enough.”

Mr. Gourdine negotiated a tentative long-term collective bargaining agreement in the summer of 1995, and he was awarded a two-year contract as executive director by the union’s executive board late that year. But player representatives rejected the deal, and he was ousted early in 1996. An arbitration panel later awarded him nearly $900,000 in unpaid salary.

Simon Peter Gourdine was born in Jersey City on July 30, 1940, one of seven children. His father was a laborer in a chemical plant. He grew up on the Upper West Side in Manhattan and in the Bronx, graduated from City College in 1962 and received a law degree from Fordham in 1965.

He served as an Army captain in Vietnam, doing investigative work; was an assistant United States attorney in New York; and worked as a lawyer for the Celanese Corporation before going to the N.B.A.

After leaving his post as deputy commissioner, he was named commissioner of consumer affairs by Mayor Koch and remained in the post for two years. He spent another two years as secretary of the Rockefeller Foundation and then became labor relations director for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority before being hired as the N.B.A. union’s lawyer.

Mr. Gourdine became general counsel for the New York City Board of Education after he was ousted by the players union. He was the Police Department’s deputy commissioner for trials from 2002 to 2006, overseeing internal disciplinary hearings, and then served as chairman of the New York City Civil Service Commission until 2008.

He is survived by his wife, Patricia; his sons, David and Peter; his daughter, Laura Gourdine; one grandchild; his sisters Dorothy, Sarah and Grace; and a brother, Henry.

When Mr. Gourdine became the N.B.A.’s deputy commissioner, he noted that he came from a working-class family. And although he lived in the affluent Riverdale section of the Bronx, he told The Times, “Most people in Riverdale don’t call it the Bronx, they call it Riverdale, but I call it the Bronx.”

He said that although the majority of the N.B.A. players were black, they were mainly concerned with his approach to their problems, not his race.

“I remember the first time I dealt with a players association committee,” he said. “Oscar Robertson was on it. He was glad to see me, but then it was time to get on with it. Players, black or white, just want you to be fair.”

Open Letter to NBA/NBA Players from a longtime NBA business associate

A longtime NBA friend, Michael Goldberg of the Coaches Association, gave me a call and asked if I would assist him in getting this 'guest column' or open letter out to the key media who cover the NBA and its current labor situation.

No editing or preamble from yours truly, here is the commentary from Michael H. Goldberg:

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An Urgent Call to the NBA, the NBPA and its Players for a Truce and Return to Talks, from a Veteran of the Business of Professional Basketball

By Michael H. Goldberg, Executive Director NBA Coaches Association

“Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got ‘til it's gone…” Joni Mitchell (Big Yellow Taxi)

I have been involved in the sport of professional basketball for over 35 years.  In 1973, I was appointed General Counsel to the American Basketball Association, a great league but a financial disaster.  In 1978, shortly after four of the ABA’s teams staggered into the safe harbor of the NBA (then itself a league with financial issues), I began my assignment as Executive Director of the NBA Coaches Association (all Head and Assistant Coaches plus alumni) and have served in this capacity ever since.

I’m urging this call for an immediate return to discussions by the parties solely as a veteran of the business of the sport and not as a representative or spokesman of the NBA Coaches or any other constituency.  As someone who has “seen it all” in the NBA (and other professional sports), I urge the principals involved in the current labor dispute to immediately back away from the precipice, get back to the bargaining table, and redouble their efforts to resolve the current conflict and get a deal done without delay. 

The upcoming NBA season must be saved.  To do otherwise will cause a self-inflicted economic blow to an enterprise that over the years through the hard work of players, team owners and the League Office has become a great global brand, but, like every business operating in today’s fragile economic landscape, one that is more susceptible to “decline and fall.” 

We are currently in a global economic crisis such as has not been seen in any of our lifetimes.  Only individuals wearing three-inch thick rose-colored glasses can believe that sports, and NBA basketball in particular, are and will in the future be immune from these forces.  Great companies with names that our parents looked upon as having the safety and sustainability of Fort Knox have only survived thanks to bankruptcy or government bailout, while many others have disappeared altogether.  Tens of thousands of employees working for these “untouchable” companies for years thought they were set for life, only to find themselves out of work and scrambling to figure out Plan B.

In this new and dangerous economic environment there are no guarantees that what worked in the past can work now.  We all need to concede that the NBA does not operate in a financial bulletproof bubble.  After months of discussion, it has become apparent that a solution to the current situation means sacrifice and change.  The parties have moved in that direction.  Now is not the time to step back and harden positions.  Litigation and the “courts” are not the answer – “been there and done that.”  Let the parties have the courage to make a deal, even if it requires taking some risks and accepting the unpalatable for the short term, so as to ensure that going forward there will be a viable and robust NBA business, one that is able to withstand the current financial environment and further prosper.

Partial or lost seasons are a huge mistake and a blow to any sport that requires years of painful business rebuilding to get back on track.  We all know this and know that damage has already taken place.  The recent lost NHL season is an example whereby the end result was a damaged sport and fallout that fractured its union and cost hundreds of millions of dollars lost by the league, its players and its teams, to say nothing of the financial pain suffered by non-player (league and team) employees, suppliers and allied businesses.   Similar results have affected every sport that has shut down due to labor/management issues.

There is no time to waste.  History has proven that all sports labor conflicts are ultimately solved.  No doubt all sides are concerned about their financial well-being and rightly so.  But everyone involved must now think beyond their own interests, check out the daily financial headlines, and work towards a negotiated solution now. Short of this all parties will risk killing the goose that lays so many golden eggs for so many connected with it.  Let’s not commit a “Flagrant 2” to a business that can ill afford it.

NBA Season in jeopardy, but the Circus is in town

It's mid-November and the NBA is supposed to be in town, complete with its superstar players traveling on chartered jets while they stay at luxury hotel suites and cruise on fancy tour buses to the state-of-the-art-arenas, complete with ritzy locker rooms, weight rooms and practice facilities. The home team rolls into private players-only parking lots in their Escalades, Bentleys or Maybachs, secured like the Marine Corps bunks at Quantico. They report to work, just like the rest of us, they claim. They are members of a union, portrayed as the rank and file who "just want to play basketball."

Derek Fisher announces disqualification of NBA union

As of today, the union, formerly known as the National Basketball Players Association, has been disbanded, disqualified, blown-up, kaboom.  They have not decertified, mind you, as that legal tactic would require each member of the union to trudge into a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional office for a full and formal vote. The union, formerly known as The NBPA, took a short cut to save the time and money of decertification, mainly because its members prefer listening to N.W.A. over schlepping to the NLRB any day of the week.

The charade of decertification, err, disqualification is a thinly veiled attempt to re-gain lost leverage which weighed heavily in the favor of the NBA team owners and their representatives in the league office. The threat of disbanding the union to file lawsuits and challenge the NBA under anti-trust laws was taught in sports law class years and years ago. Labor lawyers like to hear themselves talk in courtrooms as their firms cash seven figure checks all along the way as the laborers fork over as much as $25 million a year (as Kobe Bryant of the LA Lakers might do). The litigators like to litigate and they do it in the name of the rank and file and for future players of generations to come.

Lost in the shuffle are the many arena workers, the vendors, parking lot attendants and restaurant owners and servers in the close proximity of the arenas occupied by the NBA team some 41 nights a year.  The lost wages of those workers is simply the high cost of low living, but the owners and players apologize, just the same to the workers and fans.  The are sorry that they've left the fans with extra leisure time and some serious discretionary income to re-allocate between December 15, 2011 and June 15, 2012.  

The arenas will do their best to fill the dates.  In fact, they've been chomping at the bit to gather up uncertain dates of the future and turn them into cash flow with a concert, Disney event or an extended run of the "greatest show on earth," the circus.

To this observer, the circus has long been in town.  It didn't have a big top tent nor did the elephants walk to town through the Lincoln or Sumner tunnels.  I've been watching the NBA version of a circus and it started this past summer and continued to make appearances on a monthly, then weekly, and lately, a daily basis.  The usual acts were replaced by new high wire acrobatics that might make the original creators of the Cirque du Soleil blush from embarrassment. The NBA circus scores high on un-intentional comedy but registers pretty low on public opinion polls.  It rolls into all corners of the earth, mainly from media reports which now carry the news globally.

The Ring Master of Ceremonies for this year's NBA Lockout Circus is none other than Metta World Peace, the artist formerly known as Ron Artest.  Peace made his legal name change in order to "inspire the youth of the world," many who might've been led astray when Peace's predecessor, Mr. Artest, started one of the worst brawls in sports history when he was a member of the Indiana Pacers and decided to charge the stands at the Palace of Auburn Hills, near Detroit, to discuss foreign policy with a Pistons fan who had tossed a beer cup in his direction as he lay prone on the scorer's table, patiently awaiting the referees' decisions from a scuffle that he began with Detroit center Ben Wallace after a meaningless, hard foul.  After nearly taking the NBA down with the aftermath of his ill-timed Auburn Hills meltdown, Artest sought refuge and began to remake his image to the point where the pro basketball writers later awarded him with a citizenship award.

In my circus, Metta World Peace is ably assisted by the NBA's David Stern and his deputy commissioner, Adam Silver while the players serve up executive director Billy Hunter in a way the Republican party served up Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate in 2008.  Hunter has deputized his longtime legal counsel, Jeffrey Kessler, and they have run the equivalent of a legal three-ring circus, dating back to February 2010.  Derek Fisher, a respected member of the former union and well-liked and well-spoken representative for the union, has tried to tame the legal lions that run his union and that of other major sports. 

The non-union, formerly known as the NBA Players Association, is the comedy act of this circus. This summer, they carefully managed to avoid scoring high on the Richter Scale of stupid labor comments, marks previously set by the likes of former union members Patrick Ewing ("We make a lot, but we spend a lot.") or Latrell Sprewell (I've got a family to feed.").  Instead, they scattered like stock brokers heading to the phones when the lockout was announced on July 1, 2011. The members sought millions from the NBA's global popularity, globetrotting to the very lands that the NBA farmed for decades with hopes of growing the pie called "basketball related income."

Deron Williams, an all-star guard, headed to play in Istanbul, Turkey while Kenyon Martin, a one-time #1 pick of the NBA Draft, flew off to China.  Amar'e Stoudemire of the New York Knicks wondered out loud if the players might form their own league one-day, as he spoke of having a long-term plan and strategy that was -- obviously -- not very strategic and hadn't been baked very long.  Other MVP players, like Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade and Lebron James talked-up a world tour with an Atlanta-based organizer who set jets on a course for San Juan (Puerto Rico), London (England), Macau (China) and Melbourne/Sydney (Australia).  When it came time, the circus-like tour never made it to San Juan as the organizers realized just what it takes to stage games on a global basis and on four continents in a matter of weeks. Hysterically, there were media reports, albeit on Fox, that had the dozen-plus player participants making between $500,000 and $1 million for their efforts with 'profits' going to charity.  The un-intentional comedy meter hit "laughable" when you added up the potential dollars from ticket sales and subtracted expenses like first class flights and hotels, never mind paying out somewhere between $6 and $12 million in salary from gate receipts of five meaningless and poorly promoted exhibition games.  It was amateur hour at the circus and we all laughed a few laughs at the players expense as their act of the circus was funnier than any clown prince could imagine. It was so pitiful, it might've made Emmett Kelly smile, God Bless his soul.

If that weren't enough, we had another (former) union member, the one and only Allen Iverson, entering the big-top as an event organizer in Las Vegas. Iverson planned a two-night event in Vegas to coincide with a championship Pacquiao-Marquez fight at the MGM Grand.  It sounded great until the only players to show up for the pre-event publicity announcement were Iverson and Al Harrington, not exactly a roomful of support for Iverson on the high wire, and more like a "Roomful of Blues" at the posh HoB, near Mandalay.

Sprinkled in and out of the keen public eye, the NBA circus of the summer of 2011 brought added attention the Drew and Goodman summer leagues where name players like Kevin Durant registered mega-point performances to grab headlines and streaming video time, previously held for great performances in the Las Vegas summer league or the various player charity games.  Other news bits saw the retirement of Yao Ming, the arrest of Jarvis Crittenton, a handful of drug, weapons violations and a DUI or two -- one by a prominent team GM, RC Buford of San Antonio.  Yes, the players and lawyers were not the only acts in the circus.  Hell, Kevin Love played volleyball at the this circus while Kobe Bryant unsuccessfully tried to negotiate a payday in his former stomping grounds of Italy.   Maybe, the financial advisers conventions in Greece and Italy scared off a few of the circus actors from taking the plunge from "death defying" heights.

In the second ring of the summertime circus, the featured actors were team owners.  Usually a button-downed group, the owners of NBA teams let their hard-line stance be known in ways unimaginable to those who follow the NBA closely.  Inexperienced owners in Cleveland and Phoenix piped up as they undermined the league's hierarchy.  Even respected team owners, like San Antonio's Peter Holt, were quoted as saying to players "that they haven't felt enough pain."  One owner, the esteemed Micky Arison of the Miami Heat and Carnival Cruise fame, was fined for 'tweeting" his viewpoint of the failed labor negotiations with his tweet ill-timed, according to the NBA leaders who've used their twitter accounts, NBA TV, NBA.com and several media blitzes to try to reach the rank and file directly while swaying public opinion.

The third ring of the NBA circus is reserved for nasty creatures, also known as the scum of the earth, the wicked, the dangerous men and women who are worse than snakes in the grass or the piranhas of the Amazon.  They are the "agents" and they are to be positioned as the scapegoats of this summer of BRI impasse.  The agents lurk in the shadows of the circus and attempt to manipulate the union lawyers with their own selfish desires.  They band together in groups of six or seven but when the likes of the tamers such as the late Clyde Beatty or Gunther Gebel-Williams come along, they refuse to sit idly as the circus acts swirl around them.  Instead, they plunge at the jugulars of the player reps, or lesser-known, fellow agents and union leaders who might someday be allies. The third ring of this circus is not where you want to be.

And that leaves the concession stand.  The circus might come to a close after a run of more than 137 consecutive days and the NBA might strike a new deal if some of the circus animals slither over to the concession stand.  But, they will have to hit "dictionary (dot) com" on their way over, because the concession that I write of is not the type that sells cotton candy or beer and hot dogs.  It is another definition of the word, a variation from the Latin verb "concedere." It calls for things to be granted in response to a demand from another and it hasn't been uttered or practiced in the two and a half years of NBA labor talks.  The news of today makes me think this circus act is growing old on the once faithful fan base.

Can you pass the popcorn, please.  I'm going to the movies instead of watching the game.

Be sure to check out: DigitalSportsDesk.com

Digital Sports Desk

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It's October 4th: Do you know where your NBA is?

NBA Commissioner David Stern

OCTOBER 4 - Visit DigitalSportsDesk.com - There is something deep inside the psyche of the human mind that likes, or more exactly, wants to tie things up into nice packages.  That attribute is more often affiliated with "Type A" personalities than with the masses, but maybe most reporters and their tv editors or headline writers are, indeed, "Type A's" themselves.  Such is the case when media reports flow from the on-going NBA labor negotiations, now in the 96th day of lockout mode but years into the process of dividing billions of dollars between NBA players and team owners in a system long out of whack and even longer Gerry-rigged for the deal of the day.

Quite simply, it is always overlooked that the problem still remains that the deal of the day in 2005 or 1998 became the deal for the decade and the delivery system itself has become the real problem.

All day long media reports will flame the fires of a negotiating session to take place today at high Noon, not long after the NBA Commissioner, David Stern, his outside counsel and legal staff meet with a group of team owners who are trying to negotiate their way to a 50-50 split of the revenue generated by the sport of pro basketball.  The NBA Players Association, headed by executive director Billy Hunter, his outside counsel and legal staff, along with dozens of professional basketball players will get together around 10:30am to prepare for that Noon meeting at the O.K. Corral luxury hotel that has been reserved, along with coffee, tea and cases of Diet Coke to allow the commissioner and his fellow negotiators enough caffeine to ingest until night falls and they disembark from the meetings, without real progress, sour-faced again and again.

The media feed the frenzy.  They try to transcribe the confusing legalese and new-fangled labor relations descriptions for maximum salary levels clamped on teams, superstar players, veteran free agent players, in-coming rookie players and everyone in between. Terms like "hard" cap or "soft" cap or "Flex" cap, "Base year compensation" (and even once, the translation of "Basure") get volleyed around as though they have some significant meaning in the world of sports finance.  But, at the end of the day, there is a very large number that is actually the only number that matters.  It is the number of dollars to be paid by NBA team owners to the entire group of players.  The owners only wish they could write one check and dump it on Hunter's doorstep to leave him with the problem of how to divide the purse.

Somehow, that fact -- the very root of the issue -- is not often surfaced because the smaller pieces of the puzzle and the delivery mechanism have long become the sticking point for the negotiation.  Just how will the money be divided? How can the 30 NBA clubs remain competitive within the system? How will the agents react to the finer points of the negotiations? Everyone manipulates the discussion to try to gain an advantage, and not always for their cause or in the best interest of their clients, but rather, for themselves.

Reports leak from within the negotiating room, most regularly from someone backstabbing Stern through Yahoo Sports.  Apparently a few of the NBA's newest team owners are pushing for better returns of their $400-million plus investments. They feel more of a sense of urgency than their more established peers who got in with ground-floor franchise investments to see their values soar to unimaginable heights. They paid Muggsy Bogues money and, years later, it was Yao Ming money.  They celebrated with the commissioner and they all rejoiced. But, that was once upon a time.

Along came Mark Cuban and he dared question the authority.

Before Cuban struck internet gold with broadcast.com being gobbled-up by some Yahoo who paid billions for something that had the shelf-life of a Poloroid camera, there were whacky team owners, for sure.  Donald Sterling of the San Diego/LA Clippers, Cleveland's Ted Stepien, and Charlotte/New Orleans' George Shinn to name a few.  They were mocked and chastised by media, team executives and their co-owners if they dared to question the system or speak a word of negativity.  But as the older generation of NBA team owners passed the torch (Cleveland's Gund brothers, Phoenix's Jerry Colangelo) or passed away (Washington's Abe Pollin, Detroit's Bill Davidson, Utah's Larry Miller), the vibe began to change within the ranks of ownership and scrutiny fell upon the Commissioner and NBA league office like never before.

The sweetheart deal of 2005 that media once reported as a Stern TKO on Hunter had become a one-sided 57-percent of revenue debacle for the NBA owners of the year 2011.  Six years and a worldwide financial meltdown will do that, you know?

The new investors within the NBA ownership ranks, mostly all of them listed on the Forbes 400, want a system that provides their basketball LLCs with a profit or at least the chance of making one if they don't screw up and guarantee 10 or, God forbid, 17-millions of dollars to a Stephon Marbury, Gilbert Arenas, Rashard Lewis, Eddy Curry, Michael Redd or Andrei Kirilenko, all guaranteed, of course, under the collective bargaining agreement they attempt to alter.  But, to date, there have not been reports or proclamations to blow-up the entire system and start over.  Maybe the maximum team salary system, and all of the thousands of Bird-brained exceptions needs to fly to coop.  Once they seemed like a good idea, a suggestion that was made in a meeting held in 1980-something. Maybe the free agent spending by Stepien that provoked such a system can some way be regulated to allow for free agent movement without dire consequences for small market teams or clubs whose players suffer major injuries?

What would that new system look like?  Maybe Mark Cuban or Robert Sarver have the answer and they haven't spoken up.  They have the answers to everything else, so let's hear it, eh?  Or maybe, the ultra-silent Michael Jordan, owner of the Charlotte Bobcats can share some insight from labor negotiations of the past where Jordan's agent, David Falk, had the union by its coat tails.

Maybe they can create 12 salary slots per team, 11 at different pay scales and one that covers the 12th-to-14th/15th man?  On the LA Lakers, Kobe would get the top slot, Pau would get #2, and so on.  If you change teams, you accept a slot - either higher, equal or lower than the slot you have?  Trades would have to be for even money and even slots.  Plain and simple.  And, yes, that would go down as a "hard cap" and a "blood issue" in the negotiating room, so it wouldn't fly for Hunter, his players or their agents.

Maybe "max" contracts can only be provided to players who have at least two championship rings?  Maybe a player contract is guaranteed for a year or two, but it is converted to a front office/player development job if the player is injured and can no longer perform?  How about starting all over with a 60-game season, and everyone's contract cut by a third?  Every suggestion would get laughed out of the room, yet every suggestion addresses the major issues that face the league today; Ticket prices too high, too many games for ticket buyers to attend/too long a season and so on.

So, the big meeting of October 4th, a day after training camps were scheduled to begin, becomes the new focal point.  The "smaller" meeting yesterday was to "set the table" for the meeting du jour. The commissioner noted the exact times, 10:30am and Noon "sharp," he said. If they break early, "it will be bad."  If it breaks later in the day "not as bad."  Why?

"It can't end tomorrow.  There is a long negotiation ahead of us because there are, literally, hundreds of other issues that haven't been addressed yet, the so-called B-level issues," said Adam Silver, Stern's deputy commissioner.