What NBA stars and Occupy Wall Street protesters have in common

LeBron James is as far as you can get from the 99 percent.

The NBA superstar is paid more than $16 million a year as a forward for the Miami Heat and has a $90 million contract with Nike. After his team lost the NBA finals to Dallas in June, he told griping fans to go back to the humdrum reality of “the real world,” while he retreated to his recently purchased $9 million home in South Beach.

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New Gingrich, Herman Cain and Eric Cantor on Occupy Wall Street.

So James may seem to share nothing with the 99 percent — in Occupy Wall Street’s terms, the vast majority of American workers, who suffer in a culture of unabashed greed that has created a historic gulf of inequality between the richest Americans and everyone else.

But he and the other NBA players have something important in common with the 99 percent. James is an employee of the Miami Heat. Despite his recent tweet hinting that he will try to join the National Football League if the NBA lockout continues, he finds himself, like most Americans, beholden to the owners and managers who control his workplace and industry. If the owners want to lock out the workers, or leave the country in search of greater profits, he — like American workers whose jobs have disappear ed overseas — is left with few options. He is beholden to team owners who are not always upfront about their revenue and profits, and who are claiming a right to make more money without equitably sharing it with the workers who make the huge windfalls possible.

In the split between NBA players and owners, the players are voicing frustrations that may seem awfully similar to what the Occupy Wall Street protesters are saying. The players are accusing the owners — who keep recording yearly profits as a group while claiming hardship and the need for belt-tightening — of playing by different rules; avoiding public scrutiny; and benefiting from a range of insider deals, bailouts and protections without sharing the profits.

At issue in this dispute is whether the league can impose a tighter salary cap on the teams, which would effectively lower the salaries of the players. The other major conflict is over how “basketball-related income” — which includes revenue from the sale of tickets, parking, food at concession stands, player jerseys and broadcast rights — will be split between players and owners. Until now, players got a slight majority of this revenue. This made sense, since it was superstars such as Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, and now Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, who brought the league to new heights in popularity and profits. The owners, however, say it is unsustainable to maintain high salaries and existing profit margins. They want a 50-50 split of the basketball-related income.

The players have remained united and responded angrily to NBA Commissioner David Stern’s initial threats of cancelling the season. Dwyane Wade, James’s teammate and one of the league’s biggest stars, yelled at the commissioner in a heated meeting, saying: “You’re not pointing your finger at me. I’m not your child.” Steve Nash, two-time NBA most valuable player, questioned the owners’ representation of their finances, tweeting, “Why are the owners unwilling to negotiate in good faith?”