Agents have cameo roles in `As the Lockout Turns'

Sporting News, The, Nov 16, 1998 by Dave D'Alessandro

As the shutdown of all basketball operations enters its fourth month, causing a massive traumatic nationwide disruption for maybe five ordinary citizens, the two sides still are trying to convince us that they have the collective intelligence of beef jerky. There's lots of posturing now, lots of innuendo and parenthetical remarks about how this or that might affect the negotiation, and wouldn't that be a shame considering they haven't even started negotiating yet.

Union boss Billy Hunter struck first last week with the suggestion that a panicky NBC soon will make its presence felt in the stalemate. The conversation would sound something like this:

Dick Ebersol: "C'mon, David. You're killing us. Get this thing settled, or we tear up our deal."

David Stern: "You TV guys are really getting on my nerves. Especially that nasty Rupert Murdoch, who keeps calling to offer us a $ 5 billion deal if ours is blown up."

Dick Ebersol: "Good luck in your negotiation, David."

From where we stand, the last negotiation clearly came down in favor of management because of a series of strategic yawns by Stern, who is just rounding into mid-bargaining form. The formidable commish decided to take aim at another faction that he firmly believes has disrupted these sacred proceedings.

Agents, of course.

You knew it would come to this because Stern has pulled this trick before. It's an automatic winner in the rhetorical parrying, because everybody knows agents are-with some exceptions-sleazy, repulsive, pompous, unprincipled, supercilious slimeballs. But, of course, that is their job.

We didn't really want to talk about them this week because it is a subject almost as pleasant as a walk through downtown Tehran during its annual Death to America rally. But since Stern brought it up, we feel it necessary to bring you up to speed as to what's happening behind the scenes.

Agents aren't all had. Their primary task is to protect the interests of their clients, those poor souls who over the last month have been selling their Porsches while awaiting emergency Red Cross shipments of Rolexes. Some agents, the ones with high-priced clients, are richer than Yoko Ono; others are able to sign up enough CBA refugees to scrape together an honest living. And it is Stern's solemn obligation to drive a wedge between the two.

And it just might work. One of the agents Stern identified last week as an impingement to the negotiation is David Falk, who is hated even by most of his peers, or at least those who are still breathing. It was Falk who was a key component to the aborted agreement of '96, which was tangled by union dissension and decertification movements until the two sides ripped it up and reached another agreement that has led to all this disagreement.

Once again, Falk has been designated as the Evil Fomenter of Progress, and it's not hard to make the charge stick. He represents young folks like Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury, who would love to hand four percent of a $100 million contract over to Falk, if only the league weren't so cheeky about trying to remove such salaries from the fragile economic equation they're all bickering about.

Falk, for his part, is laying low. He only called the New York Times a week ago to announce to the world that he personally has "the power to combat whatever starvation tactics the league employs," which we assume is his way of saying that he's hoarding hot dogs and beer in his Virginia estate. Hunter, who is supposed to be in charge of the rhetoric, claimed he was unaware of Falk's remarks, which was laughable. But rest assured Hunter would be most appreciative if Falk would stay out of union business for a half hour or so, or as long as he can manage to suppress his massive ego.

Don't sweat all this, though. Like we've said before, it's all part of the process, a predictable part, meaningless in and of itself. The sides still have to negotiate because we know of no better way at arriving at an amicable solution, with the possible exception of flipping a coin.

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