In N.B.A., Games Begin, but....-. The New York Times

The reality of the new N.B.A. season is a testament to a simple but profound truth learned the hard way by 435 players during a contentious lockout: progress depends on risk and sacrifice. 

The players sacrificed games and some were willing to risk the entire season by staring down the N.B.A. owners. They played hastily organized exhibition games around the country and were in the process of putting the league’s major sponsors in a quandary by organizing barnstorming tours around the world.

In the end, the owners and the players lowered their weapons, for the time being, and agreed to enjoy the fruits of a $4 billion enterprise. As a result, the N.B.A. began on Christmas to run and jump, and fans — who may have missed the game more than they realized — were given the gift of a truncated four-month season.

Over dinner recently at his favorite Harlem restaurant, Billy Hunter, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, tried to put the lockout in perspective, acknowledging that it was far too early to assess winners and losers.

”David Stern is not particularly happy, his owners are not happy with the deal, and we’re not,” Hunter said. “They say that when you’re negotiating and neither side is really happy about the deal, then it’s a fair deal.

“Time will confirm whether or not things worked out and what kind of deal you got,” he said, adding that coming out of the 1998-99 lockout, he had the same uncertain feeling he had now. “That turned out to be a much better deal than I thought it would be.”

Each side can opt out of this deal in six years. Trust me, one side will, although Stern, in a telephone interview Friday, cited compromises made by both sides and maintained that the owners and union “are going to be pleased with the deal over the next 10 years.”

But Stern may be too optimistic about an agreement that really is just a truce. Young athletes in particular realized, perhaps for the first time, that they are unusual among workers in that they are the labor and the product; they are replaceable but indispensable.

Although it’s unclear how severely this lockout may have riven the relationship between the players and the owners, the relationship has changed.

During a heated meeting between the two sides at the height of negotiations, Dwyane Wade, the Miami Heat star, railed at Stern, who had raised his voice and pointed his finger at Wade while making a point. Wade, according to those in the room, stood up and confronted the commissioner, telling him not to point his finger at him, that he wasn’t a child to be scolded, that he was a man with children of his own.

“I wasn’t even aware of what happened, it lasted all of five seconds, and we were on to something else,” Stern said on Friday. “This is all in the life of a negotiation,” added Stern, who did apologize to Wade.

That confrontation and the lockout were about power, money, respect and nuanced references to the ever-present hum of racism that pervades every nook and cranny of American life.

“I don’t think players will be naïve as they’ve been in the past,” Hunter said. “I think that they realize that it’s a business and loyalty only goes so far.”

Prodded by their agents’ self-interest, goaded by the owners’ arrogance and held together by Hunter, the players dug in with a determination that surprised the union chief. Only a handful of the current players were around during the previous lockout. This group did not know firsthand what to expect or the commitment required to go up against wealthy owners and a powerful, savvy commissioner.

Stern joined the N.B.A. in 1966 — the year he graduated from law school — as outside counsel; that year, Hunter was in his last season of professional football, with the Miami Dolphins, but was beginning law school. Hunter attended Howard law school and then California-Berkeley for an advanced law degree and even spent a year in divinity school.

While Stern was learning the N.B.A. from top to bottom — he joined the league full time in 1978 as general counsel — Hunter was embarking on a fascinating and varied legal career. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter made him one of the youngest United States attorneys. Hunter prosecuted members of the Hells Angels, Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple and the Black Panthers.

He negotiated Patricia Hearst’s release from prison. He even ran for Congress as a Republican against Ron Dellums.

The year Stern was named N.B.A. commissioner, Hunter opened a law practice in Oakland. In 1996, he was elected executive director of the players association.