Domonique Foxworth joined the National Basketball Players Association as chief operating officer last year. Previously, he’d served for two years as the player president of the NFL Players Association. The former NFL cornerback talks here about the challenges and opportunities for NBA players today, the impact that the league’s stars can have, and the responsibilities of being an executive compared with being an elected player leader.
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The stars in this league have the potential to have more power just because the league is more star-oriented. ... There are a number of guys on every team [where] if they decided they wanted something to change, it would change.”
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| Photo by: NBPA |
His biggest concerns in the NBA: A lot of the biggest issues are around the health and safety and welfare of the players. I think back-to-back [and] playing four games in five nights is very important [to discuss], along with mandatory days off. … Especially recently, the concussion protocols in the NBA came into question, which is something I don’t think people really anticipated a couple years of ago.
About the NBPA’s changes: We have a lot of areas that we need to grow from where we were before they hired Michele [Roberts, NBPA executive director]. Bringing in this whole new team of executives and seeing how we all fit together and eliminating the inefficiencies and, frankly, some of the improprieties that were taking place in the form of nepotism in the last administration has been one of our priorities. I think we have gotten pretty far in making those things happen. But now we are building a strategic plan and mapping out the next couple of years, especially given what the next couple of years can hold because of the increased revenue that is coming into our game. That is good for everybody.
On being an executive: Being an executive, for me at least, is much more difficult than being an elected player leader. When you are an elected player leader, the responsibility to make decisions on a day-to-day basis: I mean, it isn’t your responsibility necessarily. The words you share carry a little bit more weight because it’s what the president says. That is what is a bit challenging for me is understanding how important these day-to-day decisions are to make and also understanding how to best navigate the interoffice politics.
About the NBA’s star players: It certainly does seem to be a trend that the star players, the top of the top, want to be involved. When you look at our executive committee, most of those guys are also all-stars. One of the things that I have been encouraged to see is the stars are taking more leadership roles. They are not getting involved to control the process and skew it in their direction; that is not the way they think about it. They are team players. Chris Paul and Steph Curry and LeBron James, the three biggest names on our executive committee, those guys are leaders in a sense, just like they are leaders in scoring.
