How Black basketball players changed the sport in the 1970s

The Sunday Magazine20:02Putting the NBA's 'dark era' in a new light

Some basketball fans may think of the 1970s as the so-called dark ages of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

TV ratings were down. Attendance at games was low. And the league was seen as "in decline," according to historian Theresa Runstedtler.

But she says the decade is pivotal, and too often overlooked. 

Runstedtler is a historian of race and sport who teaches at American University in Washington, D.C. Her new book, Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA, is an exploration of how Black basketball players changed the sport in the 1970s. 

From lawsuits to labour activism to speaking out against police brutality, the struggles of the '70s set the template for the league today, she says. 

Runstedtler spoke with The Sunday Magazine's Piya Chattopadhyay about re-framing the era and the legacy those players left on today's NBA.

Here is part of their conversation.

Why focus on that era, and you say it's such a pivotal time for professional basketball?

So the period that I'm looking at is often referred to as the dark ages of the NBA, particularly in the late 1970s. And in our kind of popular memory of that time period, much as we look at the '70s, as almost this moment of decline in U.S. history, we also look at the NBA as in decline during this period. 

A period when basketball became kind of free flowing, and the players were selfish, and they were getting in trouble all the time, both on and off the court, whether it was fighting on the court, or taking cocaine off the court, they seem to always be in the headlines for the wrong reason. 

But one of the things that I was curious about was whether or not this was a racialized narrative, about the time period, whether or not it was actually true, where this narrative came into being. 

Because I knew that at the same time that professional basketball was looked at as being in a period of decline, that the league was also getting a lot Blacker.

So I couldn't help but think, was this a way for fans, team owners, and journalists alike to kind of make sense of what it meant for basketball to be transforming from a white college men's game of set plays, and quote, unquote, hard working players to becoming more kind of free flowing game with Black players? 

And by the time you get to the mid '70s, actually, the league is 75 per cent Black. So I really was interested in uncovering behind the scenes things that were going on, and how that speaks to larger racial politics beyond the court as well.

This is a league that has an image of being progressive, arguably it is progressive, and particularly when it comes to speaking out against anti-Black racism. How do you square where we are in the NBA with the struggles of the 1970s?

Well, I mean, there were players who were doing similar things back in the 1970s. I think of Wally Jones as being a template for a lot of the activism and especially the community organizing that's being done by players. 

We're in a situation where the athletes now have access to social media, so they don't have to be mediated through conventional media to get their message out there. That's a main difference. The athletes now have amazing wealth that folks in the '70s who are playing in the NBA could probably not even imagine. 

So, you know, for them to lose a contract or have some loss of favour with the team is not as dire as it was in the '70s. And they also now have guaranteed contracts, they have proper healthcare, they have a pension, they have all of these things that Black players in the '60s and '70s really had to struggle and fight for. 

And so as I've said many times, if the NBA is a progressive league that treats its employees correctly, that supports its employees' right to speak their political minds, it's because the players forced it to be. Not because they are naturally or inherently humanitarian.

Where does the power lie nowadays?

I think in the NBA, there has been, since the 1980s, more balancing out of the power between the team owners, and also the league administration, and the players. But it's still asymmetrical. 

So I think that the players realize that they still have to be vigilant about protecting their rights and making sure that there isn't a grab back of their rights. 

For me, though, I feel like the next terrain of labour activism and sport has to look actually to other spaces beyond the NBA. So for example, supporting really the moves by [Division 1] revenue-producing athletes in the NCAA to try and be paid and compensated for the work that they're doing and, and to be classified as labourers. 

And to really expose the way that the NCAA works as a kind of monopoly in the way that the NBA did back in the 1970s. 

I think the energy and activism around sport should be around issues of gender equity. We have women who are extremely talented top class athletes in the WNBA, who are not getting paid and not getting the exposure at the same level as the male players. 

I think the other issue beyond that, and having been a Raptors dancer, I can attest to this, making sure that all of those who actually make the game run — everyone from the concession stand workers, to the dancers, to game operations, to the ticket takers — making sure that they're all making a living wage as well. 

That's to me the next terrain of sports labour activism. And I think that the players, if they want to find other aspects to lend their voice to, that those are a couple of them.

Written by Sarah-Joyce Battersby and Amil Niazi. Produced by Sarah-Joyce Battersby.