When I first wrote about Michele Roberts, the D.C. lawyer named head of the National Basketball Players Association, I did not know much about her. But, you didn't have to know much about her to assume that, as a Black woman elected head of a union comprised of several hundred millionaire alpha males, she's a fucking bad-ass.
Since then, she's done nothing to contradict that assumption.
First, there was the NY Times profile on her from August, which included things like…
“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.”
…and…
In her senior yearbook, she quoted Malcolm X and Nikki Giovanni: “Joy is finding a pregnant roach and squashing it.”
…and WHO ASIDE FROM BAD-ASS MOTHERFUCKERS HAS SHIT LIKE THIS IN ARTICLES ABOUT THEM???
Then yesterday, in an interview with ESPN The Magazine, Roberts provided the following quotes. (My translations for the quotes are in bold)
"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." (Translation: "Aint no one coming to see Dan Gilbert's bitch ass dunk. So why should he make all the money while Lebron has a salary cap?")
"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." (Translation: "Don't piss on our heads and pretend it's rain. I've been in the jungle. I've killed and buried men in the jungle. I know what rain smells like. ")
In fact, Roberts doesn't think that teams are hurting for money, period — even if she did recently hear Silver report that roughly one-third of NBA franchises are still unprofitable.
"I initially just started laughing, to be honest with you," she said of her reaction to that statistic. "I know that as a result of the last CBA, at least 1.3 billion dollars in revenue that would have otherwise been on the players' side is now on the owners' side. I see the valuations of these teams going though the roof. … How much more do you need to make money?" (Translation: "White people are crazy.")
Michele Roberts is the baddest motherfucker alive.