Mayor Bing urges today's players to commit to community

DETROIT -- Dave Bing, former NBA Rookie of the Year, the league's top scorer in his second season and one of the most famous players of his era, once briefly worked as a bank teller in the offseason.

He made roughly $15,000 a season playing basketball early on, and with two kids and a wife, the extra money from the bank came in handy. Still, he moonlighted not necessarily for the second paycheck, but for the second career.

Eventually, the second overwhelmed the first, both in financial clout, scope and importance to the community. It swelled to the point where Bing became a civic leader, business magnate and major employer in Detroit, where he now serves as mayor.

Which makes Bing often wonder: Where's the next Dave Bing coming from?

The money generated by today's NBA stars is several times greater than what yesterday's players made in entire careers in the 1960s and '70s. And yet there's a lack of sizable reinvestment within the communities where the players work or grew up. Not many players are visibly building the type of businesses that revitalize cities or using their millions to create legacies. Bing took the knowledge and wisdom gained from a degree from Syracuse, coupled with the understanding that basketball wouldn't last forever, and parlayed that into a business empire that served him and his community well. It also gave him the additional credibility needed to be elected mayor.

Bing isn't scolding today's players, nor saying they should follow his example, nor does he believe players aren't charitable or helpful. There are too many examples to the contrary. He's just wondering if they're putting their money and fame, two advantages that most people will never enjoy in their lifetimes, to the best use possible. Bing convinced Derrick Coleman to return to his hometown of Detroit after retirement and help rebuild. Coleman now has various business interests spread across the city and years ago decided to build his permanent home in the working class Detroit neighborhood where he was born and raised. But Coleman is a rarity.

"Guys today could care less about connecting to the city," Bing said. "It's about, 'Who's going to pay me the most money?' Well, how much can you spend and how much do you need? The guys making the big dollars today, they can be the biggest businesses of the cities they represent. And you don't have to invest big sums of personal money. Because of who you are and your earning capacity, you can leverage 10 times what you make. You can make a substantial difference in the city."

Bing cites free agency and player movement as the reason the stars don't have a lasting link to their city today. With few exceptions, most of today's superstars will change teams at least once. Shaquille O'Neal is on his fifth. Bing played nine years in Detroit and wanted to be with the Pistons for life when they traded him. But even though he spent his golden NBA years in Washington and finally Boston, he returned to Detroit to immerse himself into the city's business, social and political scene and became famous for being someone other than an identifiable sports star.

Bing cites the free agent summer of 2010 and how cities may lose an asset just when that player is forming a bond with the community. LeBron James, born and raised in Akron, Ohio, who came of age in Cleveland, is such a resource to Northeast Ohio that Bing wonders about the impact of LeBron leaving for another city.

"He can make a significant difference in that city," Bing said. "He already has. But that's the problem with free agency. You want guys to maximize what they can make, for sure, but free agency can work against any connection with a city."

Money has changed the game, mostly for the better, but also to the detriment of certain players who become consumed with salary. Bing says that culture is all too obvious, given the ample opportunities enjoyed by players and the cold realities of a league where All-Stars can easily command eight figures a season.

"The game is about money," he said. "It's about business. Guys today think about marketing themselves, to hell with the team."

He had other views on the current state of the NBA:

On the quality of play: "I worry about it. When I played, there were 11 or 12 guys on a team who knew how to play. Today you're lucky if you've got four or five. The other guys are just earning a lot of money.

"I think the players today are better athletes than in my era but they're not students of the game. Once they reach an age where their athletic skills retract, they won't last long, because they're not fundamentally sound."

On respecting the game: "Most of us were respectful of each other. We played each other 6 or 7 times a year. We knew each other. I don't see that as much. We took a lot of pride in what we did."

On Allen Iverson: "I can relate to what he's going through. When I was traded to the Celtics, where I spent my last season, I came off the bench and I thought I was still good enough to start. As it turned out, I ended up starting anyway, as the season went on. So I can see both sides to his situation in Memphis. It's hard for a player with his body of work and his career to accept a lesser role on a team where he knows he can play a bigger role."

In his fifth season, at the height of his career, Bing suffered a detached retina, serious enough to ruin his career. Not only was it a career-altering moment, it forced him to re-think what he did and how he did it.

"Even though I had corrective surgery, my vision was not the same," he said. "So I had to drive to the basket more, become more of a true point guard. When situations like that happen, you adjust. I knew I needed to change."

Bing did. The blurred vision changed his game, but it didn't affect his outlook on his master plan for himself and his community. As we now know, that remained sharp.

Also: Bing takes charge in getting Detroit back on track.

Shaun Powell is a veteran NBA writer and columnist. You can e-mail him here.

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