The New Head Of The NBA Players Union Went All Daenerys Targaryen In Regards To Her New Job

Pro Basketball Talk- Just a few weeks ago there were frustrated, venting-to-repoterts agents who were concerned that the person the NBA players were electing to lead their union, the person that will sit across from Adam Silver in 2017 and negotiate a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, lacked experience and vision. I’m not seeing it that way. Read Andrew Keh’s profile of new NBA players union executive director Michele Roberts in the New York Times and that is not the impression you get at all. Roberts is a bad ass. She said she was all too aware that if she was selected, she would represent several hundred male athletes in the N.B.A.; she would deal with league officials and agents who were nearly all men; she would negotiate with team owners who were almost all men; and she would stand before reporters who were predominantly men. She did not flinch. “My past,” she told the room, “is littered with the bones of men who were foolish enough to think I was someone they could sleep on.” She’s an experienced litigator with a fantastic courtroom reputation — the kind of thing that can translate over to the negotiating room.

And that’s how you make a mother fucking entrance!  I don’t care who you are, male or female, if that quote doesn’t strike fear into you then you’re lying.  Absolutely terrifying.  There’s two ways a woman can act when they take a job where the people she’ll be working with are 99.9% male (not just male, but ego-driven males who make a shit ton of money).  You can say something like, “Me being a woman should not and will not effect my job.  I will participate simply as the head of the players union and that’s as far as my job description goes.  Doesn’t matter what sex I happen to be.”  OR you can walk in the door and start throwing (casual) haymakers like, “Go ahead!  Fucking try me!  Yeah, I’m a woman, so what?  I’ve eaten pieces of shit like you for breakfast and I’ll do it again.  I dare you to think I’m weak.  Do it and I’ll crush you.”  That’s how you do it.  Intimidation tactics from the very beginning.  She’s already making more waves with this quote than the previous head of the players union made during his whole time there.  Quiz: what was the name of the previous head of the NBA players union?  Don’t know?  It was Billy Hunter and he was so bad at his job and dropped the ball in so many ways during the negotiations of the last collective bargaining agreement that he got pushed out.  If you’re the players, you have to feel better about getting rid of Billy and bringing in somebody who talks like Daenerys Targaryen.