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Browsing by Subject "Free agency"

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    A new ball game: history of labor relations in the National Basketball Association (1964-1976)
    (2020-08) Çetiner, Ogün Can
    Professional basketball players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) founded the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) in 1954. The first collective act of professional basketball players under the NBPA was a threat to strike just before the 1964 NBA All-Star Game. Eventually, they had achieved to get the pension plan that they hoped for many years. Larry Fleisher, the general counsel of the NBPA, and Oscar Robertson, the president of the NBPA, were determined to abolish the reserve clause in basketball. The reserve clause restrained the free movement of professional athletes for many years, and NBA players were the ones who established staunch struggle against it, in various ways, including litigation. The NBPA filed a class-action lawsuit, also known as the Oscar Robertson lawsuit, against the merger between two basketball leagues, the NBA, and the ABA (American Basketball Association) in April 1970. Thus, professional basketball players were able to prevent the merger. After five years, Judge Robert L. Carter ruled that the reserve clause was illegal. Eventually, the NBA and the NBPA reached a settlement and removed the reserve clause from their collective bargaining agreement. This thesis argues that the NBA players gained the right of free agency through strong leadership and collective bargaining despite proven customer discrimination. The NBPA’s actions demonstrate that it is possible to gain rights without a strike.
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    A new form of fandom: how free agency brought about Rotisserie League Baseball
    (Routledge, 2021-03-10) Ploeg, Andrew Jonathan
    One of the most radically transformative shifts in sport history occurred between 1970 and 1975 with the dissolution of the reserve clause in Major League Baseball. In just five years, the legal proceedings of Curt Flood, Jim ‘Catfish’ Hunter, Andy Messersmith, and Dave McNally ruptured a system that had been in place since 1879 and brought about free agency, revolutionizing the economic relations between baseball players and team owners. Skyrocketing player salaries and increased roster turnover in the ensuing years, however, also transformed the dynamics between fans, their local teams, and their favourite players, relationships that historically had been built on roster continuity. Free agency elicited a heightened awareness of the imminent instability of teams, undermining fans’ traditional team allegiance and opening a space for a new mode of expression of their loyalty. This space facilitated the emergence of Rotisserie League Baseball, a forerunner of fantasy baseball and arguably the first fully-fledged fantasy sport. In other words, the advent of free agency constituted a watershed moment in baseball history that modified conceptions of fan loyalty, control, and ownership, paving the way for the birth of fantasy sport.

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