The No. The Lakers needed all of their wins to hold off hard-charging Phoenix, which went to threaten them from the fifth spot. In the East, the top seeds all advanced in the first round with Indiana over Milwaukee , Miami over Charlotte , New York over Philadelphia and Orlando over Detroit moving on.
Indiana also went seven to top Orlando. The Heat then got past the Pacers in seven games to win the Eastern Conference Finals and move onto the NBA Finals for what would have been the first time in franchise history. Out West, two upsets shook up the bracket after the first round. The seventh-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves took out No. The other two top seeds all advanced in No. Los Angeles beat the Heat four games to two to take their first title since and, potentially, change NBA history for the new millennium.
If Shaq and Kobe had actually won the title that season, with midseason replacement Kurt Rambis as coach, would they have resorted to bringing in Phil Jackson the following season? The coronavirus pandemic is forcing the cancellation of games in all major sports that are in season and threatening to cancel games for the foreseeable future. The ultimate joy. Keefe: I was there. I was someone who definitely wanted to get back to work. I understood the dynamics.
Hunter: David Robinson then got up and gave a blistering speech about having gone with his mother to the [National] Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and how she explained to him things he never knew. He said that what he saw there was overpowering, how he saw what they had to overcome and where we were at a time when we should be taking a stand.
They were the three. They came together. Somebody said they had been sent there by the owners, representing the owners.
That was the first time they ever showed up. They kind of got shouted out of the room. McIlvaine: We once kicked Jack Haley out of a meeting because he had recently retired.
He was there as a mole. Years later he told me that ownership had somebody listening on every call and knew exactly what we were strategizing.
I got my eyes and ears. McIlvaine: For Billy to have some paranoia was probably a good thing. I think there was good reason to be paranoid. No player was more vocal about ending the lockout than New Jersey Nets big man Jayson Williams, and he loved the attention that came along with it. He reportedly conducted 70 radio interviews and 30 newspaper and magazine interviews over that time.
Williams had personal financial motives for pursuing an end to the lockout. He wanted to get paid. As an impending free agent coming off an All-Star season during which he averaged Hunter: We found out he was talking to the league after his name began to appear in articles.
He had gotten so blatant about it. Williams: I remember speaking with both Billy and David and asking them when the hell this lockout was going to end. Call David. My problem was with the stalemate—that was what was pissing me off more than anything. Brothers can disagree. I called both of them. He never was talking specifically about any deal that was proposed at the time. Yeah, he never did that. That was disturbing.
That was very disturbing. Wasserman: He got a maximum salary deal a week after the lockout ended. Williams: I was selfish in a lot of ways. I had a contract coming up. I also need structure in my life. I needed a job to go to. As soon as I lost that structure, you see all the shit I went through. The union had more issues than just leaks and moles. Soon, more players were echoing Jayson Williams, and urging the union to cut a deal.
Wasserman: One of the issues during the lockout was that there was disparity in the salary between the high-end guys and the minimum. One of the mantras was to restore the middle class. There were a lot of players in the league who were not superstars and were not scrubs. I thought we should have gotten paid accordingly. Schayes: Patrick and I had a discussion about this.
He, of course, was on the David-Falk-no-max-salary side. Falk: I think the star players understood the importance of protecting the rank-and-file. Davis: As we went deeper into the lockout, guys were losing money. McKie: We would get on those conference calls and oh my God, guys would complain about this, that, and the other.
It was crazy. I got a wife. I got kids. I got family members that I have to help. Kauffman: A lot of players were scared. Ratliff: You had a lot of guys who had their own agenda and that agenda was getting that check. Glass: I had some of those guys [making the minimum]. They could not afford to miss checks. It might not affect you, but it will affect the guys in five years.
It was money. It was all about money. During the lockout David Stern recycled his attack line from the lockout, accusing agents of sabotaging negotiations. Yeah, I did. If David Stern would call that sabotage, I would call that advising. If you want to call it sabotage, OK, guilty.
David Stern NBA commissioner : We believe with good reason that the agents of players who would be most affected by the high-end limitation have begun a campaign to defeat any fair deal.
That was part of his thing of protecting the players. Thomas: I think the agents were behind it all. I think most of the players followed the lead of their agents. Maybe someone like Michael Jordan, but I think the overwhelming majority of the players were doing just whatever their agents were telling them.
Kessler: The agents had some advisory role in the negotiations as they should because they are very knowledgeable, but the idea that they were controlling or influencing Billy or the players on the executive committee was a false narrative created by David Stern and others. Of course they should have been involved. Falk: There was a schism between the agents and the union. That was fomented by Isiah [Thomas] when he was the president of the union. Isiah was an anti-agent person.
I guess he had bad relationships with his own agents. And so he was extremely negative toward the agents. It almost developed like instead of being a two-front war between the league and the players, it was a three-front war between the league, the union, and the agents. And the league knew it.
The league knew there was a complete divide with the agents. I was in a very strong position at that time. We represented the cream of the crop, so there was a tremendous level of jealousy. Kauffman: David, who I greatly respect for his intelligence and what he accomplished, was like a bull in a china shop at times. I think a big problem was at some point a breakdown between him and Hunter occurred.
Falk: Billy was a solo pilot in a political job that required consensus. Kessler: Billy and I would get phone calls at 2 in the morning from David with his latest views on what to do and what not to do.
He was very engaged. Hunter: Falk had greater access to David Stern than I did. And so you have to be suspicious of all that.
I had one agenda and one agenda only: I was committed to ballplayers. I had to be concerned about the little guys, big guys, superstars, guys who were not yet in the league. He frustrated me. I think Billy is an intelligent guy. I just think his approach was percent wrong. Though he was an accomplished lawyer from a fancy New York firm, Stern brawled like a street fighter during negotiations.
Stern was shrewd and knew when to get his hands dirty. The agent Norman Blass and Kevin Willis both then pushed for a secret ballot on the offer. There would be no secret vote on the proposal, but the letter had its intended effect. The man is competent, extremely competent.
I always respected David. In any other situation we could have been real good friends. Jim Quinn former NBPA general counsel : Stern was in many ways, you could argue, the most successful commissioner in all of sports.
I fought with Stern for 40 years, but I still respect the guy. Kessler: David is bombastic and volatile and could blow up in the meeting at any time against anybody including his own owners, own lawyers, players, the other side, me, Billy, Patrick Ewing, anybody. He had a very tempestuous negotiating style. Kessler: Players got to see that side of David that was digging and belittling and shouting and boisterous.
Grantham: Nobody is easy in negotiations, in particular when you are talking about billions of dollars and putting together complicated agreements. There is no such thing as Easy Dave. Klempner: The lockout beard.
Yes, that was crazy. Nobody could figure that out. Armato: It was better than his mustache. As the lockout continued deep into December with no end in sight, both sides prepared for the unthinkable: a lost season. Rumors of the owners using replacement players were countered with threats of the players and agents forming a new league.
The exhibition proved two things: 1 Patrick Ewing and Shawn Kemp were not in game shape and 2 fan apathy was settling in. Dunleavy: If that happened that would have been a really ugly situation. Grunwald: We may have sent some scouts to the CBA to see what was going on. Now I think we sit and watch and wait as the season slips away.
Armato: It was actually a really dangerous period for the NBA. Stern thought that the whole thing had the potential of completely collapsing. Schayes: Someone was putting up a billion dollars to start a new NBA, or at least that was the rumor.
Where are we going to play these games? Obviously, there was talk of everything. All kinds of ideas are thrown across the table and all kinds of things are explored. The reality of that happening, probably not so great.
That, obviously, would have been more power. Falk: The purpose of the game was not because we wanted to start a new league, it was to show that the players could survive for a long period of time. McIlvaine: There were talks about putting together one-on-one matchups in Las Vegas.
Schayes: Some press members who I really respect told me people were starting not to care. The risk was that you sign a deal and nobody cares. Klempner: Once you leave the preseason, then you lose opening day, then you lose Christmas, All-Star—we were up against the wall. The season was going to be canceled. Schayes: We were getting to the point where face-to-face negotiation was not working.
It almost got to the point where anything Billy agreed to would be viewed as a weakness and vice versa. I think you and David have to get a room and talk about some of these major issues. How the meeting ensued is up for debate—Hunter says that Stern called him and suggested the meeting; Armato says he was the intermediary—but it opened a new phase of the negotiations.
Armato: [Hunter] flies in. Stern takes off from Aspen and apparently some reporter tracked that his plane took off, and some reporter on the ground made it known that Stern was on his way to L. Everybody was on high alert. Stern lands in L. Then word gets out that Hunter is in my office as well.
All of a sudden my office is surrounded by press. Whoever it was had also called the media and they were lining the streets, man. It was like a carnival. Armato: No, no, no. My employee? No way did my employee tip anyone off. Hunter: I then got a call from Patrick, who had been informed that I was meeting David Stern without him. He was exercising about the fact that I was meeting without him. Did Billy give up any salary during the lockout? Hunter: John Thompson had actually gotten on the phone to mediate between me and Patrick.
I was on the phone with them for minutes trying to convince Patrick that nothing untoward had occurred. I had to report back. So anything we talked about I had to bring back. The reality is that I never got to meet with Stern. When I got through talking with them, I just said the hell with it. We got to reconvene in New York City.
Armato: When the meeting was finished, I agreed to drop off David Stern at his hotel. Can I get a ride to my car? Put me in the trunk. He got in the trunk. I drove a few blocks until I was sure no one was following me, and then I let him out of the trunk. Table of Contents Has any basketball team come back from 3 0?
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