Along with many Stanford Law School students who were part of the first Sports Law course offered here, I grieve the death of my co-teacher and Golden State Warriors great Alvin Attles, Jr. Like most basketball fans, I had seen “Al” as a terrific player and coach for the Warriors. But a chance encounter in the mid-’80s in Oakland led to an enduring friendship and the chance to teach together. Lucky for me and our students, I was able to induce Al to serve as a Stanford Law School lecturer for a tour of duty that lasted two decades. Many Stanford Law School students were to become the beneficiaries of Al’s experience, wisdom, and wit.
The Stanford Sports Law seminar began in 1987, after I helped my buddy and co-author Bob Berry with the curriculum for the first such course at Boston College (Bob and I co-authored A Long Deep Drive to Collective Bargaining (1981) and shortly thereafter Labor Relations in Professional Sports and an op ed in The New York Times, which figured in the curriculum). So, the SLS seminar was not quite the first in the country, but it was taught by a fun trio. Al covered the player and coach perspective, our mutual friend the late Leonard Koppett covered the journalist perspective, and me labor and law and a love of sports. Al co-taught the first Sports Law seminar in 1987 and continued co-teaching until about 2003. We not only discussed matters like sports rules, draft systems, and tradition, we also had a lot of fun together in those days. The staff (particularly the IT guys) and students often observed and heard our conversations as we walked through the hallways together—Leonard, the journalist and a Mr. 5 by 5, and Al, a giant of a man (though short by today’s NBA standards) spoke with a distinctively deep voice (he never had to identify himself when he called my office or home). I think that most of the students had a good sense of the camaraderie between us, sometimes sharing in it.
Al was a graduate of the Historically Black College North Carolina A&T and had a teaching position in his hometown Newark, New Jersey public school system when he tried out for a position with the Philadelphia Warriors (before they moved to the West Coast). Every year he would tell our students about his dramatic negotiation with Philadelphia owner Eddie Gottlieb which had led to his first contract of slightly more than $5,000 and a distinguished basketball career—well before the advent of agents, unions and antitrust and labor law (arbitration too) in sports. Every year the students were surprised to have Al, known more for his defensive abilities, tell them (after my prodding) that he was the second highest scorer (17 points) when Wilt Chamberlain tallied a stunning 100 points in Hershey, PA.
Al was always a true gentleman and a distinguished ambassador for organized sports, basketball and his near lifelong employer, the Golden State Warriors.
Stanford Law School and its alumni grieve Al’s death. And, like so many others here and throughout the country, we send our condolences to his family as we mourn the loss of this good and decent man.
Labor and sports law expert William B Gould IV is the Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Stanford Law School. A prolific scholar of labor and discrimination law, Gould has been an influential voice in worker–management relations for more than fifty years and served as Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB, 1994–98) and subsequently Chairman of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (2014-2017). He has been a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators since 1970. As NLRB Chairman, he played a critical role in bringing the 1994–95 baseball strike to its conclusion and has arbitrated and mediated more than three hundred labor disputes, including the 1992 and 1993 salary disputes between the Major League Baseball Players Association and the Major League Baseball Player Relations Committee. He is the author, most recently, of For Labor to Build Upon: Wars, Depression and Pandemic (Cambridge University Press, Spring 2022).