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TagsBY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
LeBron James is now a free agent and is free to shop his services around the NBA and choose what is best for him. But where would LeBron James be today without Jumping Joe Caldwell and Derek Sanderson?
The odds are that NBA free agents really don't know much about Jumpin' Joe Caldwell, Derek Sanderson and Curt Flood. That's fine but without those athletes along with Dick Barnett (who left the NBA's Syracuse Nationals for George Steinbrenner's Cleveland Pipers in the American Basketball League in 1961) and others; all of the players would still have a reserve clause binding them to their employer.
NBA teams will bid on LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and a host of others. NBA teams like the New York Knicks have traded off bad contracts and let other contracts expire to clear room for the free agents. There is always the question of whether the salary dumps are in conjunction with a bona fide competition which sports leagues attempt to run and there are real legitimate questions as to the business practices of teams in terms of whether a team is putting out a fraudulent product but it is only sports, teams are good and bad. Since teams are good and bad, no one has ever asked whether a game is truly a competitive endeavor as advertised. There should be some real questions asked about the legitimacy of games with teams who have thrown away two years in anticipation of the July 1, 2010 NBA free agency date.
But salary dumps are nothing new, in baseball Connie Mack sold off his best players on the Philadelphia A's because he could not afford them. The Washington Senators sent really good players to Boston because Senators owner Clark Griffith could not afford to pay good salaries and it so happened that Griffith's niece was married to Cronin. The New York Yankees virtually used the Kansas City A's as a farm team in the late 1950s.James seemingly holds all the cards in his next contract but it wasn't always that way. Joe Caldwell was a star in the NBA but he pursued free agency and that was a problem for owners used to having one way contracts with everything in the owners favor.
After the 1970 season, Caldwell "jumped" to ABA's Carolina Cougars and left the NBA's Atlanta Hawks. He went to court challenging the NBA's option clause and won as the a court ruled that he did not have to sit out because the Hawks' offer was less than 75 percent of the value of his previous deal with the team. In 1968, after Rick Barry signed with the ABA's Oakland Oaks and left the San Francisco Warriors, a court ordered him to sit out one season because every player had an option clause that was then a standard part of every NBA contract. Caldwell is persona non grata around the world of pro basketball today although there are just vague reasons as to why Jumpin' Joe Caldwell is an outsider who may or may not have been blackballed from the NBA after the 1976 NBA absorption of four ABA teams.
Caldwell was with St. Louis and was suspended by the team for allegedly being a bad influence on the Spirits of St. Louis' best talent, Marvin Barnes. But Caldwell might have been bounced from basketball circles because his Cougars contract had a provision whereby Caldwell was going to receive a significant pension. The Carolina Cougars franchise was on the verge of insolvency and was sold to investors who moved the team to St. Louis. Because of the suspension, Caldwell never got the pension nor did he get a chance to play after the NBA allowed the New York Nets, Denver, San Antonio and Indiana to buy a place in the league for $3.2 million each (in the Nets case, another $4.8 million was thrown at the ownership of Madison Square Garden). Caldwell was still a productive player but challenged the system.
Like Curt Flood in baseball, Caldwell may have won the battle but personally lost the war. Marvin Barnes didn't need Caldwell's help to mess up his life. He did a great job of that with drug use and multiple arrests after his ABA-NBA career. Derek Sanderson took the NHL to court over the reserve clause in 1972 and won. Sanderson signed a big contract with the World Hockey Association's Philadelphia Blazers and faced the same problem as Rick Barry. The WHA was started by the same people who conceived the American Basketball Association and needed players and decided to go after some big names like the ABA did with Barry.
Bobby Hull became the first player to make a million dollars a season in hockey. In 1972, the 33-year-old Chicago Blackhawk all-star jumped from the National Hockey League to the upstart World Hockey Association and in the process began a salary escalation in a sport that was notorious for keeping salaries suppressed.
Hull left Chicago for Winnipeg, Manitoba after owner Ben Hatskin agreed to give Hull the money.
"1972, yes you are right, it seems like yesterday," said Hull. "That was just by accident. They kept badgering me and badgering me, the WHA, and I told them that I didn't want to go to Winnipeg and I wanted to stay in Chicago and that was the only place I was going to play. Finally, I told them I wanted a million bucks to get rid of me because they wanted to know what it would take to get me to Winnipeg. I told them a million bucks just to get rid of them. Had I known that they were even going to try and raise money, I would have told them ten million bucks or something like that."
Bobby Hull grew up in an age where loyalty meant more than a paycheck, when the National Hockey League had six teams, Boston, Chicago, Detroit and New York in the United States, Montreal and Toronto in Canada. The
National Hockey League didn't even pay its players as well as those in the "minor pro" Western Hockey League. But it was the top league in the world and players literally fought to stay in it.
"I told him about loyalty," he said of his son Brett who is now a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame with his dad. "I played 15 years for the Chicago Blackhawks and they didn't even offer me a contract after 15 years. That loyalty is kind of overrated a little bit."
Hull would eventually sign after the 11 other WHA owners chipped into and gave Ben Hatskin the money to sign the Golden Jet.
"Had I known they that were even going to think about raising a million dollars," Hull continued. "Who did I think was worth a million dollars back then? I was the first one. I thought if I threw a million bucks at them, they would say who is this renegade cowboy wanting a million dollars and they would leave me alone.
"In all sports, that was it, that's why I thought it was so astronomical, I thought they'd say get lost. Who was this guy? They gave me a million dollars and then I got $250,000 a year to play. That was a bonus. That was the first million dollars, I don't know anybody else who made it. I know none of the boxers made it at that time, the riders, the jockeys; I know none of the golfers had ever made that.
"Right now, knowing what I know now, I would have said 10 and I am sure they would have balked at that."
Bobby Hull had to win a court battle to go to Winnipeg. So did Boston Bruin winger John McKenzie in order to jump to Philadelphia. His contract, as was Hull's contract was done and the NHL was under the impression it had perpetual rights to players. They didn't, at least according to Judge Leon Higginbotham upheld the WHA's legal claim to NHL players who had signed their contractual obligations.
"The NHL is merely sustaining the fate which monopolists must face when they can no longer continue their prior total dominance of the market," Higginbotham wrote on an action filed by McKenzie. Higginbotham's decision came on November 8, 1972 and would pave the way for other players to challenge leagues.
Fellow Boston Bruin Derek Sanderson went to Philadelphia, another Bruin Gerry Cheevers signed with Cleveland. Other players, many of them career minor leaguers suddenly got big money offers from the WHA and the NHL was forced to match the contract offers if they wanted to keep players.
Sanderson did play with the Philadelphia Blazers from the first day of training camp without any problems unlike Hull who sat out a month.
"I started the league (the WHA), I took free agency without compensation to court, I was the site case. They moved the venue from Philadelphia where Judge Higginbotham had stopped it and they moved it to Suffolk County in Boston," he said.
Sanderson didn't like the WHA and missed Boston although he was paid a huge sum of money to skate for the Blazers. He was injured in a game against Cleveland and decided to get out of his WHA contract. He did and returned to Boston without animosity from the Bruins General Manager Harry Sinden, a rare occurrence after court cases in sports.
"I phoned Harry Sinden, I said, you need a centerman?" said Sanderson. "He said be here tomorrow morning at 10:30 for practice."
Sanderson was quickly welcomed back although his NHL career was never the same.
Spencer Haywood challenged basketball's entry rules and eventually NBA owners allowed "hardship cases" to leave college teams and join the pros before they "graduated" from school. Haywood signed with the ABA's Denver Rockets in 1969 after one college season and then "jumped" to the NBA's Seattle SuperSonics and played with the team even though the NBA had a rule against having players on a roster if they had not "graduated" college. Haywood had his case, and it really wasn't Haywood's case rather Seattle owner Sam Schulman who sued, heard before the Supreme Court and reached a settlement with the NBA. Haywood was reviled by some fans around the NBA who booed him because he was an "illegal".
Ken Linseman challenged hockey's way of drafting players. Linseman filed a lawsuit in Canada which contended that the NHL's ban on drafting underaged junior players was unlawful. Linseman signed with the WHA's Birmingham Bulls and dropped the lawsuit. The WHA tried to keep Linseman from playing in the league but Linseman sued and won in court after a judge ruled that an 18-yearold could not be stopped from making a living as a pro hockey player.
Haywood and Linseman went onto play long careers.
The free agency frenzy led by LeBron James with players like Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, Joe Johnson and a host of others is here. These guys owe a lot of debt to Flood, Barry, Caldwell, Hull, Sanderson, Haywood and Linseman who were trailblazers.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on the "Politics of Sports Business" and he can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
