Lebron James Clears the Air About Disgraced Phoenix Suns Owner Robert Sarver, but do His Words Carry Weight?

There’s a joke that the late great Paul Mooney once said: “Why can’t white men jump? They don’t need to, they own the team!”

With whatever racist, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-women slurs hurled from this miscreant named Robert Sarver’s mouth, or the inappropriate images he shared, it just shows how impotent the players of the major sports leagues are, especially the black ones.

Lebron James can chatter about how players, coaches, general managers, owners and everyone in between should conduct themselves. He can call for a league ban akin to the permanent dismissal of former Clippers owner Donald Sterling.

Yet, in all this, James is missing the kernel of the truth; players need to have more power in the boardroom. It doesn’t matter if they’re red, brown, yellow, black or white, it is incumbent upon the NBA, WNBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, NWSL, and NFL (among others like NASCAR) to claim partial or total ownership of the teams for which they play.

Of course this will not eliminate misogyny and racism and swipes against the LGBTQ+ community, but it would be a start. If the stars of the game with their hundreds of millions of dollars or a billion like James could move from the court to the front office and still play ball, what exactly would this look like?

Could more faces of color be included not based on their skin tone but their brains? Will we see a groundswell in the amount of athletes running the show on the floor and field and ice and race track and within the confines of the head office?

What Lebron James is talking about might have some heft, but is it sufficient to say that just one bad apple got caught (again) when the entire structure of organized major league professional sports is collapsing due to drops in viewership, merchandise, and other factors.

What ought to happen is for players to use selfishness. They should be committed to the morality of self-interest and stand on their own minds as the main controllers of their bodies and images.

Combined, the sports leagues are multi-hundred-billion-dollar enterprises. James and his ilk ought to be focused on creating either their own league or forging ahead with knowledge of how the business of sports is played.

A $10 million fine and a suspension for an entire season for Sarver ought to be enough in others’ eyes, but not for James. He is right to fight to see a total exit in Sarver’s case. At the same time, he should be battling to make even more money to secure the right to his own team.

Imagine an NBA where the players didn’t have to hang onto the idea of being what author William C. Rhoden called “forty million dollar slaves.” They would be able to shrug off that notion. They should strive to make the kind of money that mainly white men have earned based on their merit and skill. They should have the agency to determine their destinies. It’s too bad that the current collective bargaining agreement and other rules forbid players from being active athletes and able to own a team in leagues like the NBA. In 2024 this rule just may be overturned and permit the freedom for players to keep ownership and play on the same team.

While they’re sitting in ice baths, they could be reviewing not just waterproof game plays and strategies but also laminated balance sheets. Think of the women in soccer who always seek to make more money, they would have a player/owner to broker deals with advertisers and streaming services to ensure that they’re committed to the glory of the dollar.

If we see that there is a rotten piece of elimination amongst the owners, he or she should be ejected as well. Just because the players would have more agency will not make them immune from the advent of predators.

As rosters will forever be one of the deciding elements to games across the spectrum, so too will the ideas of planning, adapting, and challenging the status quo.

The players shouldn’t just want a piece of the pie, they should endeavor to own the entire recipe. That’s what Paul Mooney always intoned, too.