With the National Basketball Association playoffs set to kick off this weekend, three Am Law 100 firms are caught in the middle of a nasty players association leadership fight that has focused attention on the outside legal advisers hired by the union’s executive director.
The dispute comes some five months after Weil, Gotshal & Manges litigation department cochair James Quinn and partner Bruce Meyer helped negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement between players and team owners that ended a 161-day lockout imposed by league management. Now the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), former federal prosecutor G. William “Billy” Hunter, and elected player president Derek Fisher, a backup point guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder, are battling over a proposed audit of the union’s business practices.
