During the NBA lockout there were rumors and reports of conflict between NBA players union president Derek Fisher and union executive director Billy Hunter. They pushed and pulled in different ways. But for the sake of the negotiations, they tried for the most part to present a unified front.
But now those cracks have deepened and gone public for all to see — a fight for control of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) is on.
Hunter and the NBPA executive committee have asked Fisher to resign as president, according to both Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo and Sam Amick of Sports Illustrated.
That came after Fisher had pushed for an independent audit of the finances and practices of the union, an audit that was killed by Hunter and the executive committee earlier in the week. We’ll let Wojnarowski explain more.
Fisher has flatly refused to step down and has been working to gather a coalition of players to challenge Hunter’s business and financial practices, sources told Yahoo! Sports. Fisher has told peers he will not resign, but rather fight Hunter for further transparency regarding the NBPA.
This showdown has been building for months and escalated in the past week when Fisher initially convinced the executive committee to vote for an independent auditor to look into Hunter’s regime. Nevertheless, Hunter helped to convince the eight members of the committee to change course and turn on Fisher.
There are plenty of agents and players who thought Hunter didn’t take a hard line enough stance during the lockout negotiations. To be honest, if he had we wouldn’t be talking playoff races today. But the animosity from those negotiations still lingers in the union (and among ownership, to a degree).
But according to a source with knowledge of the situation, Fisher’s strong suspicions remain about the way in which the union’s business has been run in recent years. The source said that support outside of the union is growing among players and agents. And while the executive committee has made its stance known, there are plenty of others among the league’s 400-plus players who were highly critical of Hunter and the union during the lockout that ended in December and are believed to be behind this latest push.
Fasten your seatbelts, we may be in for a bumpy ride.