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As a vice president with the National Basketball Players Association, Maurice Evans had made getting the players a new, fair collective bargaining agreement his primary goal since the season ended. The players’ union and the NBA owners have yet to meet that objective without losing regular season games, but Evans can still feel a sense of accomplishment about this offseason.
Because in the midst of attending numerous bargaining sessions in New York, running regional players meetings in Chicago and Las Vegas, and going over strategies with union president Derek Fisher and executive director Billy Hunter, Evans managed to finally get his degree in education from the University of Texas.
“I was very proud of that,” Evans said this week. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t make as much news as the bargaining sessions, but I’ve had a great and productive summer.”
Evans, 32, left Texas after his junior season in 2001, hoping to be drafted in the first round but wound up going undrafted. He scrapped his way into a NBA and has outlasted 12 first-rounders from that draft, but he always felt the void of not having his degree. “I know I’m a leader on and off the court and before you can commence in anything, you have to finish stages and that was the stage left open due to me continuing my NBA career,” Evans said. “Once I had a break due to this lockout, I was able to find the time.”
— Reported by Michael Lee of the Washington Post Blog
