I didn’t know anything about broadcasting, but I knew basketball. I didn’t give the network an answer, but said I was willing to listen.
On August 28, 1974, The New York Times reported my retirement after fourteen years of professional basketball. I retired as a twelve-time all-pro, the all-time leader in assists, second only to Wilt Chamberlain in points scored. On the same page, a smaller story detailed the signing of recent high school graduate Moses Malone to a contract with the Utah Stars of the American Basketball Association. The eighteen-year-old was the first player to enter professional basketball immediately after finishing high school. Within a year, Bill Willoughby and Darryl Dawkins would follow.
Six days later, CBS sports director Bob Wussler announced I had signed a multiyear deal and would be joining the network as a color commentator. Ex-football star Johnny Unitas also would be joining CBS, as a football analyst. Afterwards, at a cocktail reception, NBA commissioner Walter Kennedy approached me and shook my hand.
But not everyone was excited about my hiring.
Going back to the summer before my final season with the Bucks, Paul Snyder, the owner of the expansion franchise Buffalo Braves, had been concerned about the direction of television coverage. Snyder had been writing the commissioner letters that would be uncovered later, during the discovery and deposition process of our union’s suit against the league. He wrote: “It was my understanding that we are most interested in trying to change the image of our league, and certainly we all must realize the importance of attracting more white association and identification with the NBA game.”
The day after CBS hired me, Snyder kept at it, sending this telex off to the commissioner and each of the other owners:
Sept. 5, 1974
In view of the Oscar Robertson lawsuit against the NBA, I feel that all NBA owners should have been advised before the NBA mutually agreed with CBS that Oscar Robertson will be doing the NBA games during this coming season.
It is my opinion that Robertson is presently an adversary of the NBA and should be treated accordingly.
I would like to know if our NBA Television Committee agreed with the selection of Robertson and, in fact, if they have been involved at all in Robertson’s selection.
Paul L. Snyder
Buffalo Braves
That same day, Walter Kennedy replied, disavowing any and all participation in my hiring as a broadcaster: “I had no involvement nor participation nor knowledge of CBS intent to engage the services of Oscar Robertson until 5:00 P.M. Tuesday, September 3, when CBS telephoned me to advise me that they were announcing at 6:30 P.M. that they were engaging Robertson as a narrator.”
Thank goodness I did not know about any of this. With less than a month before the regular season, I was too busy undergoing a crash course in Sports Broadcasting 101. CBS hired a voice coach named Lillian Wilder to work with me. I’m from Tennessee, and I had a speech pattern they didn’t like. In short, I didn’t talk white enough. “I am Oscar Robertson,” I told them. “This is the way I talk.” We worked on other things. How you hold still for the camera and smile; making sure you were sure of yourself when you hit the camera; waiting to get your comments in, then striking quickly, getting in and getting out—“This is Oscar Robertson here in the locker room talking to Rick Barry. Rick, you just won the championship, Tell me how you feel about it and what is going through your mind right now.” Most aspects weren’t hard to pick up; they were just presence and timing. A big part of what Lillian impressed upon me was that I didn’t have to worry about being a commercial-type guy. If I knew what I was talking about, it would come through. That was important, because I did know what I was talking about.
My partner was another network rookie, Brent Musburger. He had been announcing triple-A baseball when Bob Wussler had discovered him. Impressed by Brent’s never-ending well of enthusiasm and what viewers would come to recognize as his constant machine-gun patter, Wussler brought Musburger to CBS.
I was, without a doubt, a rookie announcer. We were all rookies. Musburger and I didn’t meld well in the beginning. His rapid-fire delivery and my careful analysis were sometimes at odds. Moreover, some people didn’t like my natural enthusiasm for the game. So be it.
But these were correctable problems—by the second half of the season, I’d toned down the excitement and learned to make my points more incisive. But other concerns might have been more institutional. Different members of the print media like to complain about something they’ve labeled “the Jockocracy”—former athletes who are hired to announce games on television. One of their constant gripes about the Jockocracy is that former players are too hamstrung by their friendships and aren’t critical of other players. Part of this might be true, simply because as a player you know how hard the game is. You also know how it feels to be criticized. At the same time, honesty is part of being a commentator. When someone messes up, the fans deserve to hear about it. While I’ve always been known to answer questions and talk straight, I never publicly pointed fingers at teammates. Even during my worst days in Cincinnati, I never got involved with mudslinging. There’s a separation point, obviously, between criticizing a player and pointing out a mistake.
One columnist decided that because he’d never heard me speak expansively in a locker room after game, I couldn’t be a competent announcer. Plenty of cheap shots were taken. Having said this, no matter how snide they got, even my worst critics said that I could pull through if someone would give me direction.
No one did. I don’t think the NBA wanted black announcers. Period. I loved being around the game, and I could see what was going to happen out there before half of the players—let alone a production truck guy or sports columnist—could. And because of who I was, I could get post-game interviews from players who barely nodded to other announcers. But as the season progressed, the producers tried to muzzle my honesty. Whenever I criticized officials, I was told to be quiet. It got ridiculous: everyone in the stadium would be booing a call; we’d show it on instant replay, and the call would be obviously wrong. Then they’d tell me not to say anything. I started to feel that the people in the production truck just wanted a rubber stamp of approval for anything the officials did. No way. When I was out there on the court, I told a ref if he missed a call. If I’m supposed to be announcing a game for people, the last thing I was going to do was keep quiet and let a blown call go unremarked.
I remember one time, near the end of the regular season, we were covering a game between Los Angeles and Portland. Tradition held that after the game, you interviewed the star from the winning team. Well, they wanted me to interview Bill Walton. Walton hadn’t played well that night, and Kareem, who was now with L.A., had killed him. Los Angeles won easily. But the producers told me to interview Bill Walton because he was white.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Doesn’t the star come from the winning team? If you want me to do Walton, I can do Walton also.”
They told me no. Interview Walton.
I told them I wouldn’t do it.
I knew then I was going to be leaving. My instincts were confirmed during a game when Brent literally kept his face right on the television monitor we had set up in front of us. He had his hands blocking the sides and his face in front of the screen the whole game. Nobody from the truck said a thing to him. My fate had been decided, and Brent was well aware of it. The season wound down, and I could live with what was happening. The last thing I was going to do was let any of those critics or whoever know they got to me.
At the same time, ratings that season were up in comparison to previous years. And by the time the playoffs arrived, my commentary improved dramatically. None of it mattered.
On June 4, CBS president Bob Wussler was asked for a comment on my future. He answered: “I haven’t thought about it yet. But I recognize that it is something that . . .” His voice trailed off.
It wasn’t any secret. Meanwhile, when I was fired, different reporters each gave different reasons for my rel
ease.
Look. I had a long way to go before I was slick. I knew that. And it wouldn’t have bothered me too much if the league and CBS had just simply told me I was inadequate and given me the gate. That’s life. But I also know that giving someone a chance means giving someone a chance. It doesn’t mean putting someone on the air, then saying he’s no good and hanging him out to dry. But blacks in broadcasting didn’t get much of a real chance. I’m still not sure why they offered me the job in the first place. That said, I am still happy about my ratings.
The real reason I was released, I think, can be discerned in the unpleasant opinions of Paul Snyder and the lingering enmity from the Oscar Robertson suit. And racism. Pure and simple.
If you want to play devil’s advocate, or be charitable, you might say that Paul Snyder was a lone wolf among the owners. I’ve been through too much to be so naïve. Paul Snyder was on the competition committee and had clout with the television committees. When I was hired as a commentator, the players union was still embroiled in our lawsuit with the NBA. I’m sure that the last thing Paul Snyder and other owners wanted was to have an enemy of the league in a position to spout opinions and influence the general public on basketball matters.
To add insult to injury, here came a black man—a popular, proud, and successful black man—announcing the games for a predominantly white audience. Commercial sponsors were jittery already because of how many black men were running up and down the court. Putting a black face and a black voice in front of the action only made things worse.
If I hadn’t had secret negotiations with and through the network, I wouldn’t have been hired in the first place. But once I was on board, the powers that be were upset. While they couldn’t fire me or directly pull me off the air during the season, after the season was over was a different matter.
When it came time for the network to either let me grow into the job or cut me loose, I believe that ownerships’ opinions, influenced by the NBA, helped CBS make their decision.
By now I’ve accepted all of this. I realize that at that time, given the way things were, there simply was no way a black man was going to stay on the air as the voice of the sport. But the indiscretion of the whole thing has always irritated me. It’s irritated me that over the years, so many great black players have been hired, given one or two years as a commentator, and then either moved over into the ineffectual position as studio host or fired. (Off the top of my head: Elgin, Jim Brown, Magic, Isiah, Julius Erving. Most recently, during the 2003 NCAA basketball tournament, you could see the process happening to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). So many people on the air today are nothing more than front men who don’t know anything about the sport. I can’t tell you how often I watch a game and just turn it off.
Whether it was a coincidence or not, without me the Milwaukee Bucks fell apart. In 1974, after being poked in the eye by Don Nelson during an exhibition game, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar punched the basketball standard in frustration, broke his hand, and missed the first sixteen games of the 1974–1975 season. The Bucks ran through those games at 3–13. When Kareem came back, he was constantly double-teamed. Save for my departure, the Bucks had retained essentially the same roster, but they only won thirty-eight games and finished last in the Midwest Division. Near the end of the season, Kareem tired of being double-teamed and worked a trade to the Los Angeles Lakers. He would not return to the NBA finals or have another chance at a championship until the start of the next decade, when the Lakers drafted a young, oversized guard named Earvin “Magic” Johnson.
After the 1975 basketball season ended, Yvonne and I packed up the kids and moved back to Cincinnati. Yvonne’s family was there and so were my mother and brothers Henry and Bailey. We had lots of friends nearby—Austin and Gladys Tillotson, Art Hull, J. W. Brown, Adrian and Paula Smith . . .
On July 29, 1975, Tim Sullivan of The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote about the occasion as follows:
Pro basketball returned to Cincinnati Monday. It was not in the form of a franchise granted by one of the two pay-for-play leagues, but in the six-foot-five frame of Oscar Robertson, who left town on April 21, 1970, shortly before the Cincinnati Royals did.
The loss of one may have signaled the loss of the other. Local fans harbor no bitterness for Big O, who is settling back in the Queen City, after a four-year “exile” in Milwaukee. Monday, the city honored him, still possessed with impressive energy, as “O” was carted from one site to another.
That day I visited the Hirsch Community Center for retarded children and paraplegics. I was honored at a Fountain Square luncheon, where, just as Seton Hall’s coach had done so many years ago during my inaugural game at Madison Square Garden, a city councilman referred to me as Oscar Robinson. That night I returned to the University of Cincinnati and walked the campus. I passed through the same fieldhouse I’d played in so many years ago; now a huge painting of me hung in the corridor and a bronze tablet listed my various accomplishments.
It was nice to be back.
On Valentine’s Day, 1975, federal judge Robert Carter of the Southern District of New York denied a motion by the National and American Basketball Associations to dismiss charges that they conspired to restrain competition for players’ services. The judge’s seventy-one-page ruling expressed sympathy for the players’ position and denied a bid by the league to dissolve the preliminary injunction issued as part of Robertson v. NBA. It was a stunning setback for the powers of professional basketball. Both leagues were at a point where they needed each other. Two ABA teams went so far as to independently apply for entry into the NBA. Because of dismal ratings, the NBA and CBS began plans to replace a national game of the week with regional coverage.
If professional basketball was going to survive, its house needed to be unified. The judge’s ruling meant that even if the leagues reached a deal on a merger, our union could have prevented the merger through legal action. Our aim had always been to get fair treatment for the players and create a competitive marketplace for their services. We didn’t want to see professional basketball die. This was our moment to obtain everything that we had been fighting for while still ensuring the future of basketball.
Finally, on February 3, 1976, after six years of litigation, and millions of dollars in legal fees, the National Basketball Association settled the Oscar Robertson lawsuit. Jim McMillan of Buffalo, John Havlicek and Paul Silas of Boston, and Jeff Mullins of Golden State served as player representatives during the negotiations. I represented the retired players. The settlement profoundly changed the business of basketball and produced a fair and just working environment for its practitioners. We eliminated the option clause, which bound a player to his original team for a year after his contract expired. A player selected in the college draft would only be bound for one year to the team that drafted him. If he had not signed by the end of that year, he was free to reenter the draft. Underclassmen and high school graduates were permitted to enter the draft. We negotiated that NBA teams would pay a total of $4.3 million in restitution to the players. Four hundred seventy-nine players ended up receiving money; the amounts were based on how long they had played professional basketball prior to the agreement. (The most any player received was upwards of $32,000.) In short, we had brought free agency to basketball.
Years of struggle were justified, generations of players vindicated. Not only had we sent a message that we had been treated wrongly, but we’d also put an end to the unfair treatment. I can’t put into words how it felt afterwards—the sense of relief and accomplishment and jubilation. After eleven years, pro basketball players were, like any other members of the workforce, allowed to go and play anywhere they chose, so long as they obeyed the rules and clauses of their contract.
Though modified many times, this settlement remains the backbone of the relationship between the NBA and its players. And the guideline removing compensation for teams who lost free agents has become known as the Oscar Robertson rule.
Whenever I look back, I am so proud of wha
t we accomplished. In 1965, when I took over as the association’s president, the average player salary was about $18,000. In 1975, when I stepped down, it was around $110,000. The union won the fight for a pension plan—where all players, upon reaching age fifty, receive a yearly salary for the rest of their lifetime; we fought for and established a severance plan independent of the pension; we’d also won the right to a disability program in which any player whose career is ended due to injury gets paid for five years after the end of his career. Of all our victories, free agency was the topper.
Larry Fleisher was an instrumental part of this. He was there every step of the way. During the quarter century that Larry served as our general counsel, he did so without a salary. Larry was instrumental in establishing an antidrug program whose model other leagues came to emulate; he helped cut the draft to two rounds, and later, negotiated the agreement that established the NBA salary-cap system. He managed to do all these things without calling for a players’ strike. With the help of John Havlicek, Dave DeBusschere, and Wes Unseld, Larry ushered in appropriate per diems, decent travel, and reasonable accommodations. It’s always bothered me that Larry was not admitted into the Basketball Hall of Fame until 1991, two years after his passing. Without him, I don’t know how our struggles would have turned out.
As it was, once the Robertson suit was out of the picture, the road was clear for a merger. On June 17, 1976, after nine years and some fifty million dollars in losses, the American Basketball Association officially came to an end, with the Indiana Pacers, New York Nets, San Antonio Spurs, and Denver Nuggets being accepted as the newest members of the National Basketball Association.
The Oscar Robertson suit was officially resolved on August 2, 1976, when Judge Carter officially approved the settlement. When the merger was complete, the NBA had twenty-two teams. By this time, I was approaching my thirty-eighth birthday and had been out of the game for almost two years.
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