The Failures of the National Basketball Players Association
The union's only notable success in the last 15 years is making NBA owners unfathomably wealthy
Players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) are unionized, each a member of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). The NBA is a “closed” league, which means the teams competing in it are the same year after year. Most American sports, including the NBA, MLB, and NFL operate closed leagues. Most European sports operate open leagues, in which teams are promoted or relegated to higher/lower leagues after each season. By their nature, closed leagues are anticompetitive: in a capitalist economy, these types of barriers to entry are illegal. Meaning, if someone like Michael Bloomberg wanted to start a basketball club in New York City and compete in the NBA, there should be a pathway for him to do so. But he cannot. It is rare in America for industries to restrict access to select groups. There is not, for example, an oligarchy of fast food restaurants that decides if the country gets to have more choices in fast food. But the 30 owners of NBA franchises do get to decide how much professional basketball America gets to have.
Over many decades and many court decisions, America has decided that closed leagues are legal only if the oligarchs that run the league allow the workers in on the hustle. The thinking is: if labor — the players in this case — agrees to the demands of management, then, by definition, management is not exploiting labor. This is how sports now work in America: provided union and management agree, monopolies are permitted. The NBA could not, therefore, operate as it does without the cooperation of the union, the NBPA. Without the union, there is no salary cap, no draft, no ability to restrict what teams enter the league, no restrictions on team relocations, and on and on it goes. This was last made clear in the collective bargaining negotiations of 2011, when the NBPA dissolved and ceased to represent the players. After dissolving the union, players filed antitrust lawsuits against the NBA. Eleven days after dissolving the union, an agreement between the NBA and NBPA was reached. The NBA wants no part of trying to operate without the cooperation of a union. The NBPA is, therefore, very powerful.
The NBPA’s website documents and highlights its impressive history, which includes winning the right to free agency, establishing pensions, and sharing revenue with NBA owners. The union was an important part of ending the highly unfair labor practices that MLB, the NFL, and the NBA used prior to the 1970s. But since the 2011 lockout, the NBPA’s website highlights two notable events: the hiring of Michele Roberts as Executive Director in 2014 (notable because of her gender and race) and the renewal of Ms. Roberts’s contract in 2018. No specific accomplishments of Ms. Roberts are highlighted. Per its own marketing, the NBPA has done little since 2011.
NBA Then and Now: 2011 to 2025
The NBA, in collaboration with the NBPA, has been incredibly successful since 2011. And the NBPA has leveraged this success to increase the compensation of its members:
In 2011, the minimum NBA salary for a player with five years of experience was a bit less than $1 million. In 2025, that number has nearly tripled, to $2.7 million.
In 2011, the maximum NBA salary for the very best players was about $18 million. In 2025: over $54 million. A three-fold increase.
While three-fold increases in salary are impressive, they pale in comparison to the windfall NBA owners have received over the past 15 years. Consider:
In 2011, the Los Angeles Lakers were estimated to be worth about $640 million. In 2025, the Lakers’ majority owners, the Buss family, sold a majority stake in the Lakers to Mark Walter at a valuation of $10 billion. A fifteen-fold increase.
In 2011, the NBA’s least valuable team, the Milwaukee Bucks, were estimated to be worth about $250 million. In 2025, Forbes estimates the Bucks to be worth $4 billion. A sixteen-fold increase.
In 2011, the media rights deal that started in 2007 was in effect and paid the league about $930 million annually in revenue. In 2025, the deal that starts in 2025-26 pays the league an average of about $7 billion per year. A more than seven-fold increase.
The value of the NBA’s media rights suggests the demand for professional basketball has increased substantially over the past 15 years — by at least 700 percent. The valuations of teams indicate that investors are betting that the demand will keep increasing. In contrast, the supply of professional basketball in the US has not increased at all: in 2011, the NBA had 30 teams; in 2025, the NBA has the same 30 teams.
All told, the collective success of NBA team owners and the NBPA over the past 15 years has resulted in disproportionate benefits to the owners, rather than the players. This is a failure of the union.
What is the Union trying to Achieve?
Imagine if the United States allowed Ford to be the only automobile company in America — no General Motors, no Tesla, no imports from Japan or South Korea or Germany, just Ford. Further imagine that our hypothetical Ford had 30 factories in 2011, each of which produced a single vehicle model, and each independently owned (i.e., Ford operated via a franchise/franchisee model), with each staffed by workers that all belonged to a single union.
Now, let’s assume that our hypothetical Ford produced about 2.5 million vehicles in 2011 and sold each for about $40,000. The most lucrative factory, say the F-150 factory, was sold for about $640 million in 2011 and factory workers were paid about $50,000 per year.
In 2025, let’s assume that the 30 Ford factories still produced about 2.5 million vehicles, with each producing the same vehicle model, and sold each for about $280,000. The F-150 factory was sold again, this time for about $10 billion and factory workers were paid about $150,000 per year.
This hypothetical motivates several questions, as follows:
Why would Americans allow the Ford monopoly to produce the same 30 vehicle models, year after year? Wouldn’t they prefer to have different and new choices?
As demand for automobiles increased from 2011 to 2025, why did Ford raise prices rather than increase supply?
As prices rose, why did workers allow the factory owners to take a larger share of the revenue, expressed via the market value of factories, than the factory workers? What kind of union would allow demand to increase by 700 percent and not force management to increase the number of factories such that more vehicles could be produced?
This hypothetical Ford is how the NBA operates. Which is bizarre. And analogous questions exist for the NBA. As the demand for professional basketball increased from 2011 to 2025, why is the NBA not increasing the supply of basketball? Why is it the same 30 teams? Why is the NBPA not advocating for more teams, which would mean more opportunities for their members? If the union is not going to advocate for more teams, why not advocate for a share of the profits when a team sells? What is the union trying to achieve?
A 1983 Mindset
In 1983, the NBA was not nearly as successful as it is today. There was concern that contraction, i.e., a reduction in the number of franchises, may be necessary. As part of the collective bargaining agreement that was negotiated in 1983 and became active for the 1984-85 season, the players accepted a “soft” salary cap (i.e., teams could spend more on players than a fixed number, the cap, but were penalized when they did so) in exchange for a fixed share of league revenues, as well as a guarantee that the same total number of players would be retained if franchises were reduced (i.e., an increase in roster size if contraction occurred).
In 1983, most NBA players would have struggled financially if the NBPA engaged in a prolonged strike — say the full season or perhaps two seasons. If the players had gone on strike in 1983, there was also a non-trivial chance that the NBA could have survived with replacement players, as the NFL did in 1987. In the 1980s, prior to the ascendance of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and Dr. J and then Michael Jordan, it was the league, and the teams, that was the product.
The NBPA seems to remain in the same defensive posture today as it was in 1983. They should not be.
Today, NBA players make at least $1 million dollars in salary. The richest individual players are estimated to be worth more than $1 billion dollars. Star players, like LeBron James, are far more valuable as individuals than the players of the 1980s. Today, it is the players, more so than the league or the teams, that are the stars. Changes in laws and court decisions since 1987 have made the NBA’s antitrust protections contingent on cooperation with a labor union — the NBA could not bring in replacement players today (unless the replacement players formed a new union and negotiated a contract with the NBA), as the NFL did in 1987. The NBPA only has about 450 members. It would be trivial for them to collectively survive a one or two year labor stoppage. The NBA’s star players are celebrities outside of basketball with large followings. LeBron James, for example, has 159 million followers on Instagram; Stephen Curry has aver 58 million. The NBPA therefore has enormous influence and leverage. And with this power, it is … doing nothing?
A Legacy of Inaction
Per its own marketing, the NBPA has accomplished little since 2011. Why? Why isn’t the players’ union advocating, loudly, that the NBA should have 60 or 90 or 120 teams, rather than 30? Why do only 30 NBAPA members (two teams each) get to play in the major media markets of Los Angeles or New York? Why isn’t the players’ union inviting college or high school players, who are no longer amateurs, to join the union? The NBPA need not restrict itself to representing NBA players. It chooses to. Why is it allowing team owners to get obnoxiously rich while the players, the talent, are merely getting very rich?
There are thousands and thousands of wealthy individuals who would happily lose millions of dollars a year to own an NBA team. We know this because, year after year, dozens of European soccer teams lose money. Owning a professional sports team is a status symbol that rich people crave. In the US, and only the US, the players, via their unions, allow the owners of sports teams to make money, year over year, and keep the profits when a team sells. It is only the NBPA and their American colleagues in football and baseball that allow the owners to make a consistent profit. Why? American sports fans have entrusted the unions with representing their, and our interests as fans, and the union has failed us.
Former NBA player Andre Iguodala is the current NBPA Executive Director. In the press release that announced his appointment, Mr. Iguodala stated no goals, only that he was “… honored to take on this role and serve the players, who are the heart and soul of the NBA.” Great. The current collective bargaining agreement ends in 2028. The time to begin making the case for fundamental changes is now. It’s time for NBA players to do their part in moving the game forward. The NBPA should:
Insist on massive expansion, by at least 60 teams, but ideally more. There’s no reason to restrict the supply of professional basketball in the US. Doing so only increases the wealth of existing NBA team owners. How is this in the players’ interest? Why do the NBA players want to give, say, Jerry Reinsdorf, monopoly rights to professional basketball in Chicago? Or James Dolan monopoly rights to Manhattan?
Take a broader definition of labor. The NBPA should represent at least Division I college players, but should also add the top 500 high school players to the union rolls. Non-NBA players are no longer amateurs. The NBPA need not restrict itself to caring only about the interests of NBA players. In England and Wales, the Professional Footballers’ Association represents over 5,000 members, nearly 10 times as large as the NBPA. The point of a union is to represent the interests of labor. Representing the interests of a small, exclusive group of labor largely defeats the purpose of a union. It certainly does not leverage the players’ enormous influence and power.
Eliminate the amateur draft. NBA teams should train and develop their own players. Standing aside and outsourcing player development until players reach the age of 19 is bad for young players and bad for the game. It also sets the stage for an NBA filled with kids who have the resources to receive private, expensive training, as well as players trained properly in Europe.
Insist on under 21, under 18, and under 16 teams. Without a draft and with an interest in developing players, youth will need a place to play. It is not hard to find many young players who are likely to play in the NBA: they are the very tall ones. The NBPA should nurture this talent, rather than turning its back on it, as it does today.
It’s time for the NBPA to move away from its 1983 mindset and move forward with an agenda that is in the interests of basketball players rather than owners of basketball teams.