NBA fires back after Michele Roberts calls salary cap ‘un-American’

Michele Roberts is bringing the heat in her first year as the National Basketball Players’ Association executive director, and her criticism of NBA leadership came out strongly again on Thursday, this time in an interview with ESPN The Magazine’s Pablo S. Torre.

Roberts went as far as saying the league’s salary cap system is “un-American” and a monopoly that works against the country’s capitalistic background.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver wasted little time before responding.The NBA released a statement from Silver shortly after Roberts’ interview with ESPN was published.

“We couldn’t disagree more with these statements,” Silver’s statement read. “The NBA’s success is built on the collective efforts and investments of all of the team owners, and thousands of employees at our teams and arenas, and our extraordinarily talented players. No single group could accomplish this on its own. Nor is there anything unusual or ‘un-American’ in a unionized industry to have a collective system for paying employees -- in fact, that’s the norm.

“The Salary Cap system, which splits revenues between team owners and players and has been agreed upon by the NBA and Players Association since 1982, has served as a foundation for the growth of the league and has enabled NBA players to become the highest paid professional athletes in the world. We will address all of these topics and others with the Players Association at the appropriate time.”

While hitting on other issues that will likely be addressed when the players and the owners can opt out of their current collective bargaining agreement two years down the road, Roberts questioned the 50-50 revenue split between league owners and its players.

“Why don’t we have the owners play half the games?” Roberts said, speaking in her Harlem office to ESPN The Magazine. “There would be no money if not for the players.

“Let’s call it what it is. There. Would. Be. No. Money,” she added, pausing for emphasis. “Thirty more owners can come in, and nothing will change. These guys [the players] go? The game will change. So let’s stop pretending.”

Roberts also took aim at the league’s salary cap, which limits how much teams can spend.

“I don’t know of any space other than the world of sports where there’s this notion that we will artificially deflate what someone’s able to make, just because,” she said, talking about a salary cap -- a collectively bargained policy that, in its current form, has constrained team spending in the NBA since 1984-85. “It’s incredibly un-American. My DNA is offended by it.”

From the age-limit to the proposed salary cap smoothing that could take place when the NBA’s new $2 billion television deal kicks in, Roberts has taken to her new position looking to create discussion well in advance of the next collective bargaining agreement -- and potential lockout.