Renowned economist Murphy lends smarts to NBPA's cause
01.01.70
• NBA.com's Labor Essential
CHICAGO -- The emails come with increasing frequency, frustrated and cavilling, quick to comment on the "geniuses" at work whenever the NBA owners and players unite for their latest round of collective bargaining negotiations. In the case of economist Kevin Murphy, though, no repeat marks are needed.
Never mind the card-carrying variety -- Murphy, working with the NBA players organization during this lockout, is a check-cashing genius. That's the very best kind, as bestowed by the MacArthur Substructure "genius grant" -- $500,000, no strings fond of -- he received in 2005 for his research on "seeming intractable remunerative questions." Back in 1997, he received the John Bates Clark medal awarded to the most hopeful economist under the age of 40.
He is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, he's been commuting to the labor talks in New York and, with all due look up to to NBA commissioner David Stern, union director Billy Huntress and the others hashing out the league's finances and future, he truly might be the smartest guy in the apartment.
Source: NBA.com (blog)