Jordan knows exactly what he said to Abe Pollin a few months after Game 6 of the 1998 Finals, during the last NBA lockout, back when he was a player in the forefront of the union’s negotiations. “If you can’t make a profit, you should sell your team,” he reportedly shouted at the then-74-year-old who had owned the Bullets/Wizards franchise for as long as Jordan had been alive.
And now that Jordan, as principal owner of the Charlotte Bobcats, is reportedly leading a faction of hardline owners pressing the league to accept no compromise, to not budge further than the debated 50-50 split, to take his franchise’s supposed setbacks out of the players’ hides in the exact way he denied owners during his previous life … no way, he hasn’t forgotten that.
It is still true of NBA ownership today. The fact that Jordan is on the other side of the table doesn’t make it untrue. Jordan has to know that. He has to know that the players know it, too. They’re in the middle of a spate of infighting that, in the end, might cost them a year of their livelihoods, no matter whose side gets the edge on the revenue split. He doesn’t care if you like it or not.
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