October 27, 2021 • 33 mins
Michele Roberts, executive director of the NBA Players Association, discusses how power is negotiated between NBA players and the league. She also comments on the rise of player activism and gives an inside perspective on recent NBA negotiations including the conditions of “the bubble” and the decision not to mandate COVID vaccinations.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
I'm Noah Feldman. As we've explored a wide range of
aspects of power this season on Deep Background, we have
not yet had the opportunity to talk about one of
(00:37):
the areas of power that I'm most interested at a
personal level, and that is the deployment of power in
professional sports. Today, we get the chance to take that
question on directly. We're joined by Michelle Roberts, who is
the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, that is,
the NBA players Union. She's the first woman to hold
(01:00):
that job, and indeed the first woman to head a
major professional sports union in North America. Michelle came to
this job through a rather usual pathway. She began her
career as a lawyer as a public defender in the
Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where she
was mentored by the great Charles Ogletree, who himself went
(01:21):
on to become a famous and influential professor of criminal
law at Harvard Law School. As a litigator, Michelle was
known as fearsome and powerful, and she moved ultimately from
the public Defender's office to working as a litigator at
major Washington DC law firms, in which role she was
(01:42):
widely noted as one of the most experienced and successful
and frightening litigators anywhere in the United States. From there,
Michelle went straight to the NBA Players Association, and her
tenure has been marked by some remarkable historical transformations in
the role and identity of players, not to mention by
(02:04):
the particularities of COVID, including the bubble experience and more
recent the efforts of the league to come to terms
with vaccination. In short, Michelle is ideally placed to bring
us behind the scenes and explain to us a little
bit about how power operates in professional sports in general
and in the NBA in particular. We're thrilled that she
(02:27):
was able to join us. Michelle, thank you so much
for being here. On deep background, our theme this year
is power, and what we try to do on the
show is bring listeners who are pretty good at following
the news and knowing what's going on on the surface
of things behind the scenes to try to understand how
(02:50):
power actually gets deployed in the times in places where
it does get deployed, and in some sense your job
is like the archetype of that, because everyone knows what
the NBA Players Association is on one level or another,
and they know that as executive director, you're both speaking
on behalf of the players and also trying to get
them all on the same page. And they all understand
(03:11):
that you're both collaborative with the league and also occasionally
oppositional to it, where your interests and their interests diverge.
And I think that's basically all that anybody understands about
how their relationship actually works. So I wonder if you
would just start for readers who know that much but
probably not much more, by describing how you think about
(03:34):
the power of the players and their association and how
it operates in relation to the power of the owners
in the league. It's a bit of a dance because historically,
not just in basketball but across all sports, players were
never expected to be in any position to exercise power.
The relationship between professional athletes and team owners has always
(03:57):
been one of aren't you lucky that I'm willing to
fund this team and pay you to play? And there
was this perception that the players were owned thing, but
the opportunity, and beyond that, the ownership had the right
to generate as much revenue as it could and dole
(04:18):
out whatever money it thought was appropriate to the players.
That there was no sort of sense that we're in
this together. You can't do this without me from the
player's perspective, and that has changed dramatically. Obviously, in my view,
the advent of the union made a real difference. It
was not until they organized and demanded the very beginning
(04:40):
a pension planet's just just a pension plan, not the
compensation that we're talking about now. There was only when
they threatened not to perform, not to play, that they
began to exercise for the first time. Power. Fast forward
sixteen seventy five years and you've got players who are
obviously have done well in terms of increasing their compensation,
(05:03):
but the work hasn't ended. There's much more to be done. Frankly,
even now there are occasionally when I gently have to
remind the league and the owners that you don't tell
us what to do. We negotiate how we're going to
behave knock on wood. Things have been pretty good in
the past seven eight years. We've enjoyed labor piece, but
(05:24):
it's a constant push and pull because I think your
historical DNA if you're an owner, is well, why don't
I have to get permission from them I'm the owner. Well,
players don't see it that way any longer. So we manage.
But sometimes it's a little bit more stressful than other times.
(05:45):
We're in a good place. Now, I'm going to ask
you about that word owner and it's complexity. In a
moment before I do you use the word that really
fascinated me, you said you gently remind them, And I
guess what I wanted to ask you is obviously, when
relations are good, you can be gentle. But it seems
like the relationship between in this industry, at least between
(06:05):
management and labor is basically on something not very gentle
at all. Namely, you have one really really big leverage point,
which is that without your players, there would be no NBA.
But the only way you can really exercise that leverage
ultimately would be to walk, and that would cause everybody
an enormous amount of money. Meanwhile, from the owner's perspective
(06:29):
or from the league's perspective, they really really don't want
that to happen, and they want to make exactly zero
concessions except for the ones that would lead to that happening.
So I guess what I'm wondering is, how do you
do gentle in a world where both sides understand that
the biggest, the only threat really is the enormous threat.
(06:50):
How do you lower the temperature in that way? You
know it's it's by reminding, if necessary, that we're talking
the potential from mutual destruction. Right, this is a multi
billion dollar industry, and as wealthy as the owners are,
and frankly as wealthy as the players are, no one
wants to walk away from this huge part of gold.
(07:10):
No one does. We are grown ups, they're adults. We
can scream and yell and threaten and eventually not get anywhere.
Or we can and again we'll gently agree we don't
want to go there. It's a no one's interests not
to mention our fans. For us to stop playing, they
will do damage to our business. But I'm happy to
(07:31):
report is that most people are pretty smart and sufficiently
self interesting that they won't go there. And so you know,
in our last CBA negotiation, we had some difficult negotiating sessions,
but as long as we kept in mind that it
was in the best interest of everyone in that room
that we keep this business operating. We were able to
(07:52):
tone things down when they got a little bit too
volatile and figure out that we had to figure something out.
If people say it all the time, it's someone cliche
that the best negotiations are one where everybody goes away
thinking that they wanted a little bit more, but at
the same time goes away believing I can live with
That's why you have to be When I was preparing
to talk to you, I went back and read the
(08:15):
interviews that you gave early after you took over as
executive director in twenty fourteen, and then I read some
conversations and listened to some conversations that you had more recently,
and I noticed, at least I think I noticed what
I imagine might have been a subtle strategy. And since
your successor has recently been announced, maybe you're willing to
share a few tricks of the trade. Was it conscious
(08:36):
on your part to open by saying, I have a
lot of cards in my hand, and I'm going to
call things out when they need to be called out.
Before I've engaged in any negotiation, I'm going to use
words like monopoly, because it is a monopoly. I'm going
to say it's preposterous that they would blocks total salaries.
I'm going to say, good luck if the owners play
(08:57):
the games, which I thought was a very good line.
They used it, let's have the owners play out the games.
And then I watched over the course of the next
six seven years as you came to be praised alongside
the the league for having this incredibly positive relationship, especially
compared to other professional sports leagues, and it's like your
rhetoric just mellowed out a little bit because presumably you
(09:19):
were winning. So am I Am I getting any of
that right? You know? I can't claim that there was
a grand strategy or design. I will say this, I
knew that nobody knew what in the heck I was
going to do when I got when I got right,
I had no prior history in sports, let alone in basketball, right,
So I, frankly, rather than view that as being a
(09:41):
bit of a negative or disadvantage, view that as a
positive because no one had a book on me. And
what I didn't want people to think was that I
was shy. Not I wish I'd been accused of that.
Once maybe in my life, but that having been me either,
so it's all right, And I didn't want to be dishonest,
and so I thought the questions that were being posed
to me were fair. You know, what do you think
(10:03):
about the salary cap? I still think it's preposterous. I
think it's absolutely outrageous that only in professional sports and
basketball and football do you have a talented person not
being able to get as much money as he or
she can be paid. Right, it's insane that it's not illegal.
It's hard to believe that it's not illegal. Not illegal
(10:23):
because it's been collectively bargained. That's the point. You can
get all this stuff as long as it's been collectively bargained,
and that's the point. So I was just telling the truth.
I was answering questions. Honestly, I think it was making
the owners then the league nervous, and frankly they should
have been. And I didn't do it to scare anyone.
I just wanted everyone to understand that this is my
(10:44):
view of how this business is structured. But I'm not
an idiot. I understand collective bargaining, and all the things
I purported to be preposterous were collectively bargained. Am I
being dismissive of the efforts that went into those negotiations? No,
because I wasn't there, and that was a time when
leverage was not were leverages today for players. But I
(11:06):
still think that having a cap system is Frankly, if
I had my way, there would be no cat, there
would be no salary. So but you know, like I said,
I'm not God, and I don't think I'm going to
be God tomorrow, so I understand that these things have
to be negotiated. You had an unusual background, as you
were just alluding to. You came to this job, which
is a job about negotiation, from a background in litigation,
(11:30):
where you had started as a federal public defender in Washington,
DC and worked with a great Charles Ogletree and my wonderful,
wonderful colleague, and you know, one of the more inspiring
people I've ever had a chance to work alongside. And
then you became a private side litigator, and you know,
everyone feared you, because that's how you succeed as a
good litigator. Right If you're not feared, you're not a
(11:51):
successful litigator. And it worked, were you in some sense
able to play on that. You know, people thought, oh
my goodness, you know, if she goes to war, we
really do not want to be on the other side
of that. And then sure enough you didn't have to
go to war. Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons
that I like being a lawyer was not because I
liked having a law degree. I like litigation, and I
(12:13):
even make a distinction between litigation and trial work. And
one of the things I used to drive me really crazy,
just especially in my old life, just before I got
this job, is that I had these cases I was
litigating was so big, and frankly you won by settling, right,
And but I'd get hired on these big cases and
I'd say, look, you all have a settlement negotiation team.
That's not me. I want to fight, all right, So
(12:36):
you let me know if you don't. If you settled it,
I don't want to be distracted, and I don't want
my team to be distracted. We've got to be ready
for war. But when they settled, I'd be a little disappointed.
Becaust I had a great opening statement I was about
to deliver, but I knew it wasn't the best interest
of the client. That the client and decided to settle
and CBA negotiations here. You know, I'm not, like I said,
I am completely appreciative of the fact that that's why
(12:59):
they call it collective bargaining, because you're bargaining. At the
same time, there are some people who have had this role,
or who have had this role in other sports that
just risk averse that are known to the league and
teams and not wanting to fight. I don't want to fight.
I don't mind a good fight that I will. There
(13:20):
were times when we had to say, now, this is
something we'll go to war on because this is just
fundamentally unfair what you're trying to do. It's all about
knowing what your leverage is, knowing what your players will
not stand for, and then making the argument on their behalf.
That's what lawyers do. I want to zoom back out
to the deeper dynamics of power between the players and
(13:45):
the owners, and I just want to double click on
that word owner. Technically, the owner owns a franchise and
then is the employer of players. The word, though, has
a kind of cultural capital, and you were suggesting earlier
that that word somehow actually does say something about at
least a mindset of management. Do you think it's actively
(14:10):
different in professional sports as a consequence than it is
in other professions that, let's say, are connected to entertainment,
you know, the film business, where you have high paid
talent and then you have studios and so forth. To
the league's credit, they have tried to substitute the word
(14:33):
governor for the word owner, and it's made some of
my players pleased because they are offended by the word
owner on some levels. I am too. I think I'm
just the world that I'm used to hearing it, so
I remember I use governor as well. But the addition
of the fact that most of the players in the
(14:53):
NBA are African American and most of the governors are white,
it's especially disturbing. A case in point, Donald Sterling, who
used to own the and again own the LA Clippers
Stories and Merge that he would literally go into the
(15:15):
locker rooms of the LA Clipper players, and Chris Paul
tells this one of the films he did about this.
Sterling would go in and he'd be rubbing the players,
and Chris reports that he felt like he was being petted, right,
and then the governors of the teams that we have
now are frankly much younger, much more entrepreneurial, and have
(15:36):
I think a better met mindset than some of the
governors some of the owners of these teams back in
the day. So there's a little less concern about the title,
though we appreciate the change. On occasion, though the league
will communicate repeat to us comments made by some of
the team governors that suggest that the mentality is not
(15:58):
quite gone. I'd prefer to and the league reports too
as well us as partners, and that that's a much
more palatable word than owner, and I don't want to
play games. You own the team, you own the franchise, whatever,
but you be very careful when you begin to use
that concept and can refer to the employees. We'll be
(16:21):
right back. One of the most significant historical changes over
your time in your job has been the rise of
NBA players, especially African American players, as major voices on
(16:44):
crucial national questions of importance, most significantly on race, an
association with Black Lives Matter, but not only on racially
related issues. Of course, we have that legacy in the
United States going back to nineteen sixties in the form
of Muhammad Ali, but you know, he was in a
different kind of a sport with its own very complicated dynamics,
and there wasn't a league that he was actively a
(17:04):
part of. And of course there have been individually individual
NBA players Premu Bards another great example, who had strong
identities and took strong stands, not an accident. In both
of those cases, the Nation of Islam were part of
the way that they made statements. But there's really been
a main streaming of the expectation that NBA players are
de facto leaders of public consciousness, both for white and
(17:29):
for black people. And I'm wondering as you watch that happen,
how much of it do you think was driven by
the aspirations of the players, how much of it by
the expectations of the public, how much by the fact
that it's also a period of time historically where NBA
players came to be extremely well paid, so that now
black NBA players were among the best paid prominent African
(17:53):
Americans in the country, and which confers a certain obligation
of leadership. Arguably, Yeah, I think a little bit of
all that may be there, but I think the principal
component is the players themselves, right, I mean, there are
any fans who are pushing them into the streets and
into protests. In back. Quite the contrary, we get a
(18:13):
lot of fans who used you've heard a million times,
just shut up and dribble. So it's not as if
I think that our fans are pushing us there. And
now the community that's a different piece. None of these
men that I'm working with go out on the streets
or write those checks, or do those those community forums
build schools because they feel, well, I got to do
it for my public. I absolutely believe this with every
(18:36):
ouncew of my being. But they do it because they
feel it so strongly. I'm in the middle of reading
Mellow's book right now, and it's just the way. It's
a great read. If yeah, I have it too, it's
on myself. I'm excited to read it. It's a great read.
It goes very quickly. And Mellow is one of the
one of the players who before became popular, was in
Baltimore in the streets marching with the community. That he
(18:57):
was a player, but he was in the streets marching
the community because he passionately felt that what was happening
in that community was wrong. Well, that's the same thing
our players are doing now. I think they passionately feel
these things the day friends, though, and I'm still marveling
at this is their appreciation that, oh, I feel this way.
Maybe I can do something about it because I've got
(19:20):
a platform, and it's a platform that Muhammad Ali didn't have.
It's a platform that Kareem didn't have, that Bill Russell
didn't have. Despite the passion of all those men. It's frankly, Noah,
it's social media. We just got a new rookie class
come in and as I try to get to know
who they are, and I check out their Twitter and
all this Graham and they've got hundreds of thousands of
(19:42):
people that purport to want to hear what they have
to say. On a good day, I might have five
people that call me and ask me what's up, Michelle.
I can even imagine being able to have that audience
and know that if I say black lives matter, whether
you leave it or not, two millions of my followers
are going to hear me say it, and some of
(20:04):
them are gonna say, yeah, that's right. Something I say,
what is he talking about it? And And maybe learn something
about these issues in the community. Involving the police misconduct.
Bottom line is, these players completely appreciate the power of
their platform. And when we went to the bubble, a
condition of going to the bubble was that we'd be
permitted to talk about these issues. There would have been
(20:26):
no season had the league made the stupid bone hit
of the mistake of saying, no, you just play, We
don't want to use any of your iMedia time or
any of the quarts to the uniform. None of that
that had happened that have been those seasons. So they
appreciate that they've got platforms. Michelle, I want to just
ask one more question about the kind of responsibility power question,
(20:47):
you know, the kind of with great power comes great responsibility,
And that had to do with how the Players Association negotiated,
not the bubble part, which is itself totally fascinating and
I think part of your incredible legacy, but also the
post bubble, the vaccination period, where you guys sort of
came out from the beginning and said mandatory vaccinations are
(21:07):
a non starter. But going to voluntarily vaccinate up to
a very very high percentage, I forget it somewhere between.
How did you hit on that particular combination of factor,
because it must have been very delicate internal thinking about,
you know, what was the right thing to do for
your players, for their health and safety, for those smaller
(21:28):
number of players who might have not wanted to get vaccinated,
and ultimately for the industry as a whole. You know,
I frequently say, especially in the last few days or weeks,
that it was a lot easier when there was no
vaccine in many ways, because I could just concentrate on
understanding what what we needed to do to keep the
players as safe as possible, to keep COVID out of
(21:50):
the house, so to speak. You know, the vaccine was
going to be something that frankly none of us thought
was going to be available as quickly as it became
a bill. Sure, or it would work as well as
it works, right. So the bubble, as horrific ideas that sounded,
was actually, in any ways an easy decision to make
because it was a way to have the players play
but protect them. I mean, there was no way we
were going to be traveling all over the country and
(22:12):
being on planes and buses all that, and we had
zero Once once we got to the bubble and people tested,
I was there. I was there with the guys. We
didn't have any cases, and so it was a completely
artificial environment, but I knew that they would be safe
and it turned out well. We could be finished the season,
nobody got infected, let alone sick. That was a success.
(22:33):
Then the vaccine started to happen, and unfortunately, and again,
you can't separate the politics that were going on in
the country from the vaccine and this notion of whether
we'll take it or not, and the messages that were
coming from the White House were so mixed that on
the one hand, AD's not a big deal, and the
other hand, I got this just super special vaccine. Is
(22:55):
he really saying that? Because it's true all the scientists
political There was so many questions that were not merely
being asked in the country at large, but among our players, Michelle,
is this typical for a vaccine to be ready this quickly?
I've flunk seventh great biologies. I'm the last person to
ask because we ended up getting our own experts. Everybody
(23:17):
was sort of learning as it went. And to be
candidate with you know, you would ask me months into
the vaccine's production, I'd have said, I will be lucky
if we get fifty percent of our players to take it.
And you know, and I'll admit to this as well,
I was suspicious. I mean I used to. In my
whole life, I've represented pharmaceutical companies that were being sued
(23:41):
in class action matters because of allegations that their drugs
were not safe. How did I defend those lawsuits by
pointing out the years and years of study and writings
about the efficacy and the safety of these drugs that
we're going for. That was our defense. It was very effective.
People said, you know, one, I know, I think that
they didn't. They didn't just throw something out there. They
(24:02):
study this at first in animals got to give them,
then in humans, and then none of that had happened
with this vaccine, and so I was hard pressed to
even personally believe that this was safe. At my age,
I determined I don't have any choice because of people
that were dying were in my cohort. And so to me,
the decision was, oh, I know what COVID's gonna do
(24:22):
to me, I'll take my chances, exactly. But I thoroughly
understood and I still understand, that people have to get there,
and people are making to find my players, But they're
right those are saying it. Do the research, satisfy yourself
that this is something that is in the best interests
of yourself. And now what I would I have had
(24:43):
a mandatory vaccination, Michelle, You damn right I would. I
would have. And I told the players, I strongly believe
that we should, every one of you should have a vaccination.
But I also understand that I got here how I
got here, and you get you need to get there
as well. And I believe that they would, And so
(25:03):
we voted at the time we voted, we voted a
couple of times on this. By the way the players
voted on this. The first time it was a non starter.
There will be no mandatory vaccinations. And I can remember
players who I know are vaccinated right now who said,
I don't care if the Good Lord himself tells me
to roll up my sleeves, I'm never taking that. So
I knew it was going to be a process. And
(25:23):
both times we voted that the players understood that there
was a risk that was being taken, but not only individually,
but for themselves and their families and their players families.
Now we're at ninety six percent. I think we're going
to get even better than that. What I have a
mandatory vaccine, I would, but it's not my call. And
(25:43):
the only thing I felt responsible for doing was making
sure that they had as much information as they needed.
In fact, I'm still working on some things which I
think might be helpful for those guys that was still
I'm not sure. I'm still worried. My wife says, no,
these are unprecedented times and all of us have had
to figure out how we want to manage this. It's
kind of thought saying what you're saying, because I mean
(26:06):
it sort of fits one of the themes that we've
been talking about. The way that you guys in the
Players Association were successful was not by laying down a law,
but by a process of convincing people slowly and for
them doing the research and convincing themselves. In other words,
it turned out to be not that aspect of the
way we think as lawyers, that's, you know, there's a
(26:27):
right and a wrong, there's justice and there's injustice, and
they're going to fight it out, but rather about collaborative
conversation in a more open ended environment. And that actually
leads me to my last question, which is as you
transition to whatever you're planning to do next. Do you
think that the old Michelle, you know, the warrior who
loves to be in the courtroom, will predominate or will
(26:51):
the Michelle who's enjoyed building tremendously successful collaborative relationships even
across different sets of interests be the one who predominates.
Do you think not to imply they're not the same person,
but they seem like two aspects of the same fascinating life.
I shell that's going to be our hope in control
(27:13):
within the first year of my retirement, because that's what
I'm doing. I'm not I'm not taking another job. I
hope that she actually dust sought that list and she's
been keeping for the last forty years and being able
to check some things off. There are some things that
I want to do that I'd like to do before
I meet my maker. Having said that they're to share
one or two of those. I gotta tell you, I've
(27:35):
been blessed with incredible travel professionally. I mean, I've been
on some of the greatest cities on planet, in the
country and around the world, and I've never with the
exception of Barcelona, and I just stole four days and said,
I don't care, I'm going to Barcelona. I've never had
a chance to enjoy those cities beyond you know, maybe
taking the walk and the first place. I want to
(27:59):
go to Senegal. I fell in love with that country.
I want to go to Senea. I want to go
back to Brazil. I mean I want to go. I
love South Africa, I've been there a couple of times.
I want to do Nigeria. I love love, love, love,
love room. So I want to do some traveling just
to just to get fat, but then I also want
to pursue some things to keep my brain a little bit.
(28:21):
I want to return to my biggest passion, but just
criminal justice. I have recently joined a board of a
nonprofit that I think is doing great work in this space,
and I'm really excited about the work. I think I'll
be able to be here and then you'll see me
in a couple of next games. Well, those all sound
like they're pretty amazing things. Something for you, something for
the rest of the world, something for fun. Yeah. I
(28:41):
really want to thank you for sharing your insights and
your experiences, and also just for your fascinating work, which
I think has contributed to justice in a lot of
really interesting ways, from different angles and in different perspectives.
So thank you, Michelle, No, thank you, No, I appreciate it.
We'll be right back. Listening to Michelle, I was please
(29:09):
struck by her directness in explaining how she deploys power
in her position and how the players in the NBA
have overtime been able to gain greater power visavi, the
league and the governors as team owners are now increasingly known.
In essence, as Michelle made crystal clear, the power of
(29:32):
the players derives from their ability to walk off the job,
the most fundamental power of any group of employees represented
by a union. Given that circumstance, she has been able
to craft the interests of the players into a far
more collegial relationship with management than exists in other professional
(29:54):
sports leagues or than existed at previous times in the
history of the NBA. From strength, she generated collaboration and collegiality,
always remembering that being willing to go to the mats
and fight as needed is conferral of power. At the
same time, Michelle also made it very clear that she
(30:14):
learned to be collegial and she's benefited from that collegiality
by bringing people to recognize im mutuality of interest. All
of this has given her an inside perspective to watch
the transformation of the power of NBA players through their
leadership on major issues of national social importance, particularly Black
(30:35):
Lives Matter, and also by their ability to wield social
media presence as an important new tool that was not
available to earlier generations of professional athletes. Ultimately, I would
say that Michelle's tenure is a kind of object lesson
in how it looks when things actually work between labor
(30:56):
and management. And it's also an object lesson in how
power subtly and gradually can be transformed at the hands
of sophisticated actors who think things through, strategize and get results.
You can't avoid the possibility of conflict, but sometimes, if
you're as good as Michelle is, you can deploy the
(31:17):
threat of conflict to achieve its exact opposite, namely collegiality
and collaboration. There's a lesson there, I think for all
of us, no matter what we do for a living,
and even if like me, we're never going to play
in the NBA until the next time I speak to
you breathe deep, think deep thoughts, play some ball, and
(31:41):
have a little fun. If you're a regular listener, you
know I love communicating with you here on Deep Background.
I also really want that communication to run both ways.
I want to know what you think are the most
important stories of the moment and what kinds of guests
you think you would be useful to hear from. More So,
I'm opening a new channel of communication. To access it,
(32:04):
just go to my website Noa Dashfelman dot com. You
can sign up from my newsletter and you can tell
me exactly what's on your mind, something that would be
really valuable to me and I hope to you too.
Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our
producer is mo La Board, our engineer is Benaliday, and
(32:26):
our showrunner is Sophie Crane mckibbon. Editorial support from noahm Osband.
Theme music by Luis Gera at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell,
Julia Barton, Lydia, Jean Coott, Heather Faine, Carlie mcgliori, Maggie Taylor,
Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on
Twitter at Noah r Feldman. I also write a column
(32:47):
for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at bloomberg dot
com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts,
go to bloomberg dot com slash podcasts, and if you
liked what you heard today, please write a review or
tell a friend. This is deep background
Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
I'm Noah Feldman. As we've explored a wide range of
aspects of power this season on Deep Background, we have
not yet had the opportunity to talk about one of
(00:37):
the areas of power that I'm most interested at a
personal level, and that is the deployment of power in
professional sports. Today, we get the chance to take that
question on directly. We're joined by Michelle Roberts, who is
the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, that is,
the NBA players Union. She's the first woman to hold
(01:00):
that job, and indeed the first woman to head a
major professional sports union in North America. Michelle came to
this job through a rather usual pathway. She began her
career as a lawyer as a public defender in the
Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where she
was mentored by the great Charles Ogletree, who himself went
(01:21):
on to become a famous and influential professor of criminal
law at Harvard Law School. As a litigator, Michelle was
known as fearsome and powerful, and she moved ultimately from
the public Defender's office to working as a litigator at
major Washington DC law firms, in which role she was
(01:42):
widely noted as one of the most experienced and successful
and frightening litigators anywhere in the United States. From there,
Michelle went straight to the NBA Players Association, and her
tenure has been marked by some remarkable historical transformations in
the role and identity of players, not to mention by
(02:04):
the particularities of COVID, including the bubble experience and more
recent the efforts of the league to come to terms
with vaccination. In short, Michelle is ideally placed to bring
us behind the scenes and explain to us a little
bit about how power operates in professional sports in general
and in the NBA in particular. We're thrilled that she
(02:27):
was able to join us. Michelle, thank you so much
for being here. On deep background, our theme this year
is power, and what we try to do on the
show is bring listeners who are pretty good at following
the news and knowing what's going on on the surface
of things behind the scenes to try to understand how
(02:50):
power actually gets deployed in the times in places where
it does get deployed, and in some sense your job
is like the archetype of that, because everyone knows what
the NBA Players Association is on one level or another,
and they know that as executive director, you're both speaking
on behalf of the players and also trying to get
them all on the same page. And they all understand
(03:11):
that you're both collaborative with the league and also occasionally
oppositional to it, where your interests and their interests diverge.
And I think that's basically all that anybody understands about
how their relationship actually works. So I wonder if you
would just start for readers who know that much but
probably not much more, by describing how you think about
(03:34):
the power of the players and their association and how
it operates in relation to the power of the owners
in the league. It's a bit of a dance because historically,
not just in basketball but across all sports, players were
never expected to be in any position to exercise power.
The relationship between professional athletes and team owners has always
(03:57):
been one of aren't you lucky that I'm willing to
fund this team and pay you to play? And there
was this perception that the players were owned thing, but
the opportunity, and beyond that, the ownership had the right
to generate as much revenue as it could and dole
(04:18):
out whatever money it thought was appropriate to the players.
That there was no sort of sense that we're in
this together. You can't do this without me from the
player's perspective, and that has changed dramatically. Obviously, in my view,
the advent of the union made a real difference. It
was not until they organized and demanded the very beginning
(04:40):
a pension planet's just just a pension plan, not the
compensation that we're talking about now. There was only when
they threatened not to perform, not to play, that they
began to exercise for the first time. Power. Fast forward
sixteen seventy five years and you've got players who are
obviously have done well in terms of increasing their compensation,
(05:03):
but the work hasn't ended. There's much more to be done. Frankly,
even now there are occasionally when I gently have to
remind the league and the owners that you don't tell
us what to do. We negotiate how we're going to
behave knock on wood. Things have been pretty good in
the past seven eight years. We've enjoyed labor piece, but
(05:24):
it's a constant push and pull because I think your
historical DNA if you're an owner, is well, why don't
I have to get permission from them I'm the owner. Well,
players don't see it that way any longer. So we manage.
But sometimes it's a little bit more stressful than other times.
(05:45):
We're in a good place. Now, I'm going to ask
you about that word owner and it's complexity. In a
moment before I do you use the word that really
fascinated me, you said you gently remind them, And I
guess what I wanted to ask you is obviously, when
relations are good, you can be gentle. But it seems
like the relationship between in this industry, at least between
(06:05):
management and labor is basically on something not very gentle
at all. Namely, you have one really really big leverage point,
which is that without your players, there would be no NBA.
But the only way you can really exercise that leverage
ultimately would be to walk, and that would cause everybody
an enormous amount of money. Meanwhile, from the owner's perspective
(06:29):
or from the league's perspective, they really really don't want
that to happen, and they want to make exactly zero
concessions except for the ones that would lead to that happening.
So I guess what I'm wondering is, how do you
do gentle in a world where both sides understand that
the biggest, the only threat really is the enormous threat.
(06:50):
How do you lower the temperature in that way? You
know it's it's by reminding, if necessary, that we're talking
the potential from mutual destruction. Right, this is a multi
billion dollar industry, and as wealthy as the owners are,
and frankly as wealthy as the players are, no one
wants to walk away from this huge part of gold.
(07:10):
No one does. We are grown ups, they're adults. We
can scream and yell and threaten and eventually not get anywhere.
Or we can and again we'll gently agree we don't
want to go there. It's a no one's interests not
to mention our fans. For us to stop playing, they
will do damage to our business. But I'm happy to
(07:31):
report is that most people are pretty smart and sufficiently
self interesting that they won't go there. And so you know,
in our last CBA negotiation, we had some difficult negotiating sessions,
but as long as we kept in mind that it
was in the best interest of everyone in that room
that we keep this business operating. We were able to
(07:52):
tone things down when they got a little bit too
volatile and figure out that we had to figure something out.
If people say it all the time, it's someone cliche
that the best negotiations are one where everybody goes away
thinking that they wanted a little bit more, but at
the same time goes away believing I can live with
That's why you have to be When I was preparing
to talk to you, I went back and read the
(08:15):
interviews that you gave early after you took over as
executive director in twenty fourteen, and then I read some
conversations and listened to some conversations that you had more recently,
and I noticed, at least I think I noticed what
I imagine might have been a subtle strategy. And since
your successor has recently been announced, maybe you're willing to
share a few tricks of the trade. Was it conscious
(08:36):
on your part to open by saying, I have a
lot of cards in my hand, and I'm going to
call things out when they need to be called out.
Before I've engaged in any negotiation, I'm going to use
words like monopoly, because it is a monopoly. I'm going
to say it's preposterous that they would blocks total salaries.
I'm going to say, good luck if the owners play
(08:57):
the games, which I thought was a very good line.
They used it, let's have the owners play out the games.
And then I watched over the course of the next
six seven years as you came to be praised alongside
the the league for having this incredibly positive relationship, especially
compared to other professional sports leagues, and it's like your
rhetoric just mellowed out a little bit because presumably you
(09:19):
were winning. So am I Am I getting any of
that right? You know? I can't claim that there was
a grand strategy or design. I will say this, I
knew that nobody knew what in the heck I was
going to do when I got when I got right,
I had no prior history in sports, let alone in basketball, right,
So I, frankly, rather than view that as being a
(09:41):
bit of a negative or disadvantage, view that as a
positive because no one had a book on me. And
what I didn't want people to think was that I
was shy. Not I wish I'd been accused of that.
Once maybe in my life, but that having been me either,
so it's all right, And I didn't want to be dishonest,
and so I thought the questions that were being posed
to me were fair. You know, what do you think
(10:03):
about the salary cap? I still think it's preposterous. I
think it's absolutely outrageous that only in professional sports and
basketball and football do you have a talented person not
being able to get as much money as he or
she can be paid. Right, it's insane that it's not illegal.
It's hard to believe that it's not illegal. Not illegal
(10:23):
because it's been collectively bargained. That's the point. You can
get all this stuff as long as it's been collectively bargained,
and that's the point. So I was just telling the truth.
I was answering questions. Honestly, I think it was making
the owners then the league nervous, and frankly they should
have been. And I didn't do it to scare anyone.
I just wanted everyone to understand that this is my
(10:44):
view of how this business is structured. But I'm not
an idiot. I understand collective bargaining, and all the things
I purported to be preposterous were collectively bargained. Am I
being dismissive of the efforts that went into those negotiations? No,
because I wasn't there, and that was a time when
leverage was not were leverages today for players. But I
(11:06):
still think that having a cap system is Frankly, if
I had my way, there would be no cat, there
would be no salary. So but you know, like I said,
I'm not God, and I don't think I'm going to
be God tomorrow, so I understand that these things have
to be negotiated. You had an unusual background, as you
were just alluding to. You came to this job, which
is a job about negotiation, from a background in litigation,
(11:30):
where you had started as a federal public defender in Washington,
DC and worked with a great Charles Ogletree and my wonderful,
wonderful colleague, and you know, one of the more inspiring
people I've ever had a chance to work alongside. And
then you became a private side litigator, and you know,
everyone feared you, because that's how you succeed as a
good litigator. Right If you're not feared, you're not a
(11:51):
successful litigator. And it worked, were you in some sense
able to play on that. You know, people thought, oh
my goodness, you know, if she goes to war, we
really do not want to be on the other side
of that. And then sure enough you didn't have to
go to war. Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons
that I like being a lawyer was not because I
liked having a law degree. I like litigation, and I
(12:13):
even make a distinction between litigation and trial work. And
one of the things I used to drive me really crazy,
just especially in my old life, just before I got
this job, is that I had these cases I was
litigating was so big, and frankly you won by settling, right,
And but I'd get hired on these big cases and
I'd say, look, you all have a settlement negotiation team.
That's not me. I want to fight, all right, So
(12:36):
you let me know if you don't. If you settled it,
I don't want to be distracted, and I don't want
my team to be distracted. We've got to be ready
for war. But when they settled, I'd be a little disappointed.
Becaust I had a great opening statement I was about
to deliver, but I knew it wasn't the best interest
of the client. That the client and decided to settle
and CBA negotiations here. You know, I'm not, like I said,
I am completely appreciative of the fact that that's why
(12:59):
they call it collective bargaining, because you're bargaining. At the
same time, there are some people who have had this role,
or who have had this role in other sports that
just risk averse that are known to the league and
teams and not wanting to fight. I don't want to fight.
I don't mind a good fight that I will. There
(13:20):
were times when we had to say, now, this is
something we'll go to war on because this is just
fundamentally unfair what you're trying to do. It's all about
knowing what your leverage is, knowing what your players will
not stand for, and then making the argument on their behalf.
That's what lawyers do. I want to zoom back out
to the deeper dynamics of power between the players and
(13:45):
the owners, and I just want to double click on
that word owner. Technically, the owner owns a franchise and
then is the employer of players. The word, though, has
a kind of cultural capital, and you were suggesting earlier
that that word somehow actually does say something about at
least a mindset of management. Do you think it's actively
(14:10):
different in professional sports as a consequence than it is
in other professions that, let's say, are connected to entertainment,
you know, the film business, where you have high paid
talent and then you have studios and so forth. To
the league's credit, they have tried to substitute the word
(14:33):
governor for the word owner, and it's made some of
my players pleased because they are offended by the word
owner on some levels. I am too. I think I'm
just the world that I'm used to hearing it, so
I remember I use governor as well. But the addition
of the fact that most of the players in the
(14:53):
NBA are African American and most of the governors are white,
it's especially disturbing. A case in point, Donald Sterling, who
used to own the and again own the LA Clippers
Stories and Merge that he would literally go into the
(15:15):
locker rooms of the LA Clipper players, and Chris Paul
tells this one of the films he did about this.
Sterling would go in and he'd be rubbing the players,
and Chris reports that he felt like he was being petted, right,
and then the governors of the teams that we have
now are frankly much younger, much more entrepreneurial, and have
(15:36):
I think a better met mindset than some of the
governors some of the owners of these teams back in
the day. So there's a little less concern about the title,
though we appreciate the change. On occasion, though the league
will communicate repeat to us comments made by some of
the team governors that suggest that the mentality is not
(15:58):
quite gone. I'd prefer to and the league reports too
as well us as partners, and that that's a much
more palatable word than owner, and I don't want to
play games. You own the team, you own the franchise, whatever,
but you be very careful when you begin to use
that concept and can refer to the employees. We'll be
(16:21):
right back. One of the most significant historical changes over
your time in your job has been the rise of
NBA players, especially African American players, as major voices on
(16:44):
crucial national questions of importance, most significantly on race, an
association with Black Lives Matter, but not only on racially
related issues. Of course, we have that legacy in the
United States going back to nineteen sixties in the form
of Muhammad Ali, but you know, he was in a
different kind of a sport with its own very complicated dynamics,
and there wasn't a league that he was actively a
(17:04):
part of. And of course there have been individually individual
NBA players Premu Bards another great example, who had strong
identities and took strong stands, not an accident. In both
of those cases, the Nation of Islam were part of
the way that they made statements. But there's really been
a main streaming of the expectation that NBA players are
de facto leaders of public consciousness, both for white and
(17:29):
for black people. And I'm wondering as you watch that happen,
how much of it do you think was driven by
the aspirations of the players, how much of it by
the expectations of the public, how much by the fact
that it's also a period of time historically where NBA
players came to be extremely well paid, so that now
black NBA players were among the best paid prominent African
(17:53):
Americans in the country, and which confers a certain obligation
of leadership. Arguably, Yeah, I think a little bit of
all that may be there, but I think the principal
component is the players themselves, right, I mean, there are
any fans who are pushing them into the streets and
into protests. In back. Quite the contrary, we get a
(18:13):
lot of fans who used you've heard a million times,
just shut up and dribble. So it's not as if
I think that our fans are pushing us there. And
now the community that's a different piece. None of these
men that I'm working with go out on the streets
or write those checks, or do those those community forums
build schools because they feel, well, I got to do
it for my public. I absolutely believe this with every
(18:36):
ouncew of my being. But they do it because they
feel it so strongly. I'm in the middle of reading
Mellow's book right now, and it's just the way. It's
a great read. If yeah, I have it too, it's
on myself. I'm excited to read it. It's a great read.
It goes very quickly. And Mellow is one of the
one of the players who before became popular, was in
Baltimore in the streets marching with the community. That he
(18:57):
was a player, but he was in the streets marching
the community because he passionately felt that what was happening
in that community was wrong. Well, that's the same thing
our players are doing now. I think they passionately feel
these things the day friends, though, and I'm still marveling
at this is their appreciation that, oh, I feel this way.
Maybe I can do something about it because I've got
(19:20):
a platform, and it's a platform that Muhammad Ali didn't have.
It's a platform that Kareem didn't have, that Bill Russell
didn't have. Despite the passion of all those men. It's frankly, Noah,
it's social media. We just got a new rookie class
come in and as I try to get to know
who they are, and I check out their Twitter and
all this Graham and they've got hundreds of thousands of
(19:42):
people that purport to want to hear what they have
to say. On a good day, I might have five
people that call me and ask me what's up, Michelle.
I can even imagine being able to have that audience
and know that if I say black lives matter, whether
you leave it or not, two millions of my followers
are going to hear me say it, and some of
(20:04):
them are gonna say, yeah, that's right. Something I say,
what is he talking about it? And And maybe learn something
about these issues in the community. Involving the police misconduct.
Bottom line is, these players completely appreciate the power of
their platform. And when we went to the bubble, a
condition of going to the bubble was that we'd be
permitted to talk about these issues. There would have been
(20:26):
no season had the league made the stupid bone hit
of the mistake of saying, no, you just play, We
don't want to use any of your iMedia time or
any of the quarts to the uniform. None of that
that had happened that have been those seasons. So they
appreciate that they've got platforms. Michelle, I want to just
ask one more question about the kind of responsibility power question,
(20:47):
you know, the kind of with great power comes great responsibility,
And that had to do with how the Players Association negotiated,
not the bubble part, which is itself totally fascinating and
I think part of your incredible legacy, but also the
post bubble, the vaccination period, where you guys sort of
came out from the beginning and said mandatory vaccinations are
(21:07):
a non starter. But going to voluntarily vaccinate up to
a very very high percentage, I forget it somewhere between.
How did you hit on that particular combination of factor,
because it must have been very delicate internal thinking about,
you know, what was the right thing to do for
your players, for their health and safety, for those smaller
(21:28):
number of players who might have not wanted to get vaccinated,
and ultimately for the industry as a whole. You know,
I frequently say, especially in the last few days or weeks,
that it was a lot easier when there was no
vaccine in many ways, because I could just concentrate on
understanding what what we needed to do to keep the
players as safe as possible, to keep COVID out of
(21:50):
the house, so to speak. You know, the vaccine was
going to be something that frankly none of us thought
was going to be available as quickly as it became
a bill. Sure, or it would work as well as
it works, right. So the bubble, as horrific ideas that sounded,
was actually, in any ways an easy decision to make
because it was a way to have the players play
but protect them. I mean, there was no way we
were going to be traveling all over the country and
(22:12):
being on planes and buses all that, and we had
zero Once once we got to the bubble and people tested,
I was there. I was there with the guys. We
didn't have any cases, and so it was a completely
artificial environment, but I knew that they would be safe
and it turned out well. We could be finished the season,
nobody got infected, let alone sick. That was a success.
(22:33):
Then the vaccine started to happen, and unfortunately, and again,
you can't separate the politics that were going on in
the country from the vaccine and this notion of whether
we'll take it or not, and the messages that were
coming from the White House were so mixed that on
the one hand, AD's not a big deal, and the
other hand, I got this just super special vaccine. Is
(22:55):
he really saying that? Because it's true all the scientists
political There was so many questions that were not merely
being asked in the country at large, but among our players, Michelle,
is this typical for a vaccine to be ready this quickly?
I've flunk seventh great biologies. I'm the last person to
ask because we ended up getting our own experts. Everybody
(23:17):
was sort of learning as it went. And to be
candidate with you know, you would ask me months into
the vaccine's production, I'd have said, I will be lucky
if we get fifty percent of our players to take it.
And you know, and I'll admit to this as well,
I was suspicious. I mean I used to. In my
whole life, I've represented pharmaceutical companies that were being sued
(23:41):
in class action matters because of allegations that their drugs
were not safe. How did I defend those lawsuits by
pointing out the years and years of study and writings
about the efficacy and the safety of these drugs that
we're going for. That was our defense. It was very effective.
People said, you know, one, I know, I think that
they didn't. They didn't just throw something out there. They
(24:02):
study this at first in animals got to give them,
then in humans, and then none of that had happened
with this vaccine, and so I was hard pressed to
even personally believe that this was safe. At my age,
I determined I don't have any choice because of people
that were dying were in my cohort. And so to me,
the decision was, oh, I know what COVID's gonna do
(24:22):
to me, I'll take my chances, exactly. But I thoroughly
understood and I still understand, that people have to get there,
and people are making to find my players, But they're
right those are saying it. Do the research, satisfy yourself
that this is something that is in the best interests
of yourself. And now what I would I have had
(24:43):
a mandatory vaccination, Michelle, You damn right I would. I
would have. And I told the players, I strongly believe
that we should, every one of you should have a vaccination.
But I also understand that I got here how I
got here, and you get you need to get there
as well. And I believe that they would, And so
(25:03):
we voted at the time we voted, we voted a
couple of times on this. By the way the players
voted on this. The first time it was a non starter.
There will be no mandatory vaccinations. And I can remember
players who I know are vaccinated right now who said,
I don't care if the Good Lord himself tells me
to roll up my sleeves, I'm never taking that. So
I knew it was going to be a process. And
(25:23):
both times we voted that the players understood that there
was a risk that was being taken, but not only individually,
but for themselves and their families and their players families.
Now we're at ninety six percent. I think we're going
to get even better than that. What I have a
mandatory vaccine, I would, but it's not my call. And
(25:43):
the only thing I felt responsible for doing was making
sure that they had as much information as they needed.
In fact, I'm still working on some things which I
think might be helpful for those guys that was still
I'm not sure. I'm still worried. My wife says, no,
these are unprecedented times and all of us have had
to figure out how we want to manage this. It's
kind of thought saying what you're saying, because I mean
(26:06):
it sort of fits one of the themes that we've
been talking about. The way that you guys in the
Players Association were successful was not by laying down a law,
but by a process of convincing people slowly and for
them doing the research and convincing themselves. In other words,
it turned out to be not that aspect of the
way we think as lawyers, that's, you know, there's a
(26:27):
right and a wrong, there's justice and there's injustice, and
they're going to fight it out, but rather about collaborative
conversation in a more open ended environment. And that actually
leads me to my last question, which is as you
transition to whatever you're planning to do next. Do you
think that the old Michelle, you know, the warrior who
loves to be in the courtroom, will predominate or will
(26:51):
the Michelle who's enjoyed building tremendously successful collaborative relationships even
across different sets of interests be the one who predominates.
Do you think not to imply they're not the same person,
but they seem like two aspects of the same fascinating life.
I shell that's going to be our hope in control
(27:13):
within the first year of my retirement, because that's what
I'm doing. I'm not I'm not taking another job. I
hope that she actually dust sought that list and she's
been keeping for the last forty years and being able
to check some things off. There are some things that
I want to do that I'd like to do before
I meet my maker. Having said that they're to share
one or two of those. I gotta tell you, I've
(27:35):
been blessed with incredible travel professionally. I mean, I've been
on some of the greatest cities on planet, in the
country and around the world, and I've never with the
exception of Barcelona, and I just stole four days and said,
I don't care, I'm going to Barcelona. I've never had
a chance to enjoy those cities beyond you know, maybe
taking the walk and the first place. I want to
(27:59):
go to Senegal. I fell in love with that country.
I want to go to Senea. I want to go
back to Brazil. I mean I want to go. I
love South Africa, I've been there a couple of times.
I want to do Nigeria. I love love, love, love,
love room. So I want to do some traveling just
to just to get fat, but then I also want
to pursue some things to keep my brain a little bit.
(28:21):
I want to return to my biggest passion, but just
criminal justice. I have recently joined a board of a
nonprofit that I think is doing great work in this space,
and I'm really excited about the work. I think I'll
be able to be here and then you'll see me
in a couple of next games. Well, those all sound
like they're pretty amazing things. Something for you, something for
the rest of the world, something for fun. Yeah. I
(28:41):
really want to thank you for sharing your insights and
your experiences, and also just for your fascinating work, which
I think has contributed to justice in a lot of
really interesting ways, from different angles and in different perspectives.
So thank you, Michelle, No, thank you, No, I appreciate it.
We'll be right back. Listening to Michelle, I was please
(29:09):
struck by her directness in explaining how she deploys power
in her position and how the players in the NBA
have overtime been able to gain greater power visavi, the
league and the governors as team owners are now increasingly known.
In essence, as Michelle made crystal clear, the power of
(29:32):
the players derives from their ability to walk off the job,
the most fundamental power of any group of employees represented
by a union. Given that circumstance, she has been able
to craft the interests of the players into a far
more collegial relationship with management than exists in other professional
(29:54):
sports leagues or than existed at previous times in the
history of the NBA. From strength, she generated collaboration and collegiality,
always remembering that being willing to go to the mats
and fight as needed is conferral of power. At the
same time, Michelle also made it very clear that she
(30:14):
learned to be collegial and she's benefited from that collegiality
by bringing people to recognize im mutuality of interest. All
of this has given her an inside perspective to watch
the transformation of the power of NBA players through their
leadership on major issues of national social importance, particularly Black
(30:35):
Lives Matter, and also by their ability to wield social
media presence as an important new tool that was not
available to earlier generations of professional athletes. Ultimately, I would
say that Michelle's tenure is a kind of object lesson
in how it looks when things actually work between labor
(30:56):
and management. And it's also an object lesson in how
power subtly and gradually can be transformed at the hands
of sophisticated actors who think things through, strategize and get results.
You can't avoid the possibility of conflict, but sometimes, if
you're as good as Michelle is, you can deploy the
(31:17):
threat of conflict to achieve its exact opposite, namely collegiality
and collaboration. There's a lesson there, I think for all
of us, no matter what we do for a living,
and even if like me, we're never going to play
in the NBA until the next time I speak to
you breathe deep, think deep thoughts, play some ball, and
(31:41):
have a little fun. If you're a regular listener, you
know I love communicating with you here on Deep Background.
I also really want that communication to run both ways.
I want to know what you think are the most
important stories of the moment and what kinds of guests
you think you would be useful to hear from. More So,
I'm opening a new channel of communication. To access it,
(32:04):
just go to my website Noa Dashfelman dot com. You
can sign up from my newsletter and you can tell
me exactly what's on your mind, something that would be
really valuable to me and I hope to you too.
Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our
producer is mo La Board, our engineer is Benaliday, and
(32:26):
our showrunner is Sophie Crane mckibbon. Editorial support from noahm Osband.
Theme music by Luis Gera at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell,
Julia Barton, Lydia, Jean Coott, Heather Faine, Carlie mcgliori, Maggie Taylor,
Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on
Twitter at Noah r Feldman. I also write a column
(32:47):
for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at bloomberg dot
com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts,
go to bloomberg dot com slash podcasts, and if you
liked what you heard today, please write a review or
tell a friend. This is deep background
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