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BY PETER JACKEL
A self-described advocate since childhood, Lamell McMorris has used his passion and vision to rise above many obstacles in his life. Now he is high atop the sports world as the lead negotiator for the National Basketball Referees Association and the World Umpires Association. He’s passionate about those around him and those he represents. He sees the power in unifying officials and he’s ready to lead the charge.
He could hear the gorgeous, plaintive harmonizing from winos under a porch as a depressing rain fell on 66th and Cottage Grove on Chicago’s challenged south side. Regulars they were, singing their lungs out between sips of hard stuff before eventually stumbling back into the rainy night as another day in their wasted lives washed away.
He could see the perpetual darkness of this area, where gang members inhabited among boarded-up buildings and vacant lots that stood out among rows of buildings as prominently as kicked out teeth in a smile. Occasionally, a gunshot shattered the perpetually uneasy solitude of this area, one of which felled a man before his very eyes one day. He could sense the futility of a neighborhood with deadend signs on every street. He could smell the ungodly stench of waste from a meat market in an alley dumpster, the perfume of a repressed area.
And he could dream of escaping an area that is so difficult to escape. So many never succeed. Lamell J. McMorris did in such a massive way, earning a position of leadership in two professional sports by the age of 34 as the lead negotiator for the National Basketball Referees Association and the World Umpires Association.
This man is a superstar, on the same level in his field as his boyhood heroes, Chicago icons Michael Jordan and Walter Payton, once were in their respective sports. He is a bright, perceptive, articulate, energetic, unifying presence, the kind of guy one naturally turns to when times get tough. With McMorris and his Washington D.C.-based law firm Perennial Strategy Group charting the course, the labor interests of referees and umpires are quite possibly being served with an unprecedented passion and vision.
“He traveled with me around the country for a couple of years and he has good judgment beyond his years,” Rev. Jesse Jackson said. “And he is mature. His thought process is beyond his years. By traveling with me, he got to know the country and he got to meet all levels of people, whether they were corporate people, labor people, politicians or religious leaders, and he has a sense of the struggle in American society.
“He learned to work easy and to build relationships. It’s hard to find a Lamell enemy. I’ve got a bunch of them.”
INFLUENCED BY MANY
But once upon a time, McMorris was just an impressionable fatherless kid with one sibling — brother Kenny is 10 years older — who admittedly could have swayed toward either side of the tracks in the tempting expanses of south Chicago.
From the security of his second-floor window of the gray flat with green aluminum awnings on East Marquette Road, this curious, gifted child, a child with a fertile mind that would be cultivated by so many movers and shakers in addition to Jackson over the years, used to mentally absorb all that transpired on the streets below. The boy with a natural father he never knew — he was gunned down during a robbery at his moving business before Lamell was born — could have taken the easy way out by figuratively descending down the stairs of his flat and losing himself in this environment, but he resisted.
Instead, he somehow knew better. There was just something about McMorris that was above all the temptation, something that separated him from the rest and eventually elevated him into one of the true powerbrokers in professional sports. Oh, he had plenty of guidance along the way — his mother, Bertha, and cousin Stanley N. Washington especially come to mind — but what McMorris’ impressionable eyes saw outside that window remains with him to this day.
“Your surroundings can sometimes be the motivating factor to excel and to run a little faster and to get up a little earlier,” said McMorris, who regularly gets by on four to five hours of sleep, yet is able to enter each new day without any gulps of caffeine stimulation. McMorris kept running toward the fulfillment of his potential throughout his younger days. This restless boy, who often aced spelling bees, and once organized a walkout at Whitney Young High School in the interest of voting privileges and sought out former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington on a whim, was destined to rise above where he came from and shine.
Over the years, he would be heavily influenced by leaders like Jackson, Barack Obama and Martin Luther King III, synthesizing their attributes and stirring them within the mixing bowl of his mind.
“I grew up around preachers, I grew up in the church, I’ve been around individuals in business, I’ve had mentors who were very much corporate executives. … I’d like to think if you put all those individuals in a blender, I’ve got a little bit of all of them,” McMorris said. “And I’m proud of that.”
Those leaders are likewise proud of McMorris.
“I’m not only proud of him, I’m honored and humbled to be able to call him a true friend,” said King, the oldest son of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.
McMorris ascended to new heights in February 2003, when he became the NBA referees’ union lead negotiator and spokesman through the assistance of official Derrick Stafford, who met McMorris at Morehead College and developed a friendship with him. After leading his clients through tough waters that included a protest of the NBA’s punishment for referee Michael Henderson for a missed call in 2004, to the scandal involving official Tim Donaghy that rocked the NBA in the summer of 2007, a similar opportunity presented itself with the World Umpires Association, the MLB umpires’ union.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said that associating with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was akin to popping open a vintage bottle of wine. The same goes for McMorris, who has a way of seeming like a lifelong friend after an initial 10-minute conversation.
“Oh man, I don’t think I could find the words to describe what a major impact he’s had,” Stafford said. “He has a way with people. He’s firm, but by the same token, he tries to be fair. So I think in the end, a lot of people have looked past the age and just respected him as a person.
“The other thing is, Lamell is good at getting other opinions. Even if he doesn’t take your advice, at least he listens to other people’s opinions and I think that helps him to make a more educated decision. So his greatest asset is probably being able to surround himself with intelligent people regardless of their age. He respects them but makes them understand that in the end, he’s going to make the final decision, but he respects everybody’s opinion.”
Call him a master communicator with the guts to stand in the heat of an oppressive kitchen. Call him an astute businessman who looks out for his clients. And call him one bright guy, because that’s exactly what he is.
“After you meet him, you feel like you’ve known him for a long time,” said John Hirschbeck, president of the umpires’ union. “Working with him over these six months already, I’ve gotten to know him well and he’s a good person. You find out more and more about a person the more you’re around him and he’s not only good at what he does, he’s a good person.”
But the ultimate praise comes from Jackson, who articulates what this young man is all about as only he can.
“Some time ago, I said I wanted my children to have five qualities,” he said. “One, I want them to be smart, to be intellectually competent. I want them to have the courage of their convictions. I want them to have a good work ethic. I want them to have a sense of scientific objectivity, to see others as they are and not as they would have them to be. And, five, to have a sense of faith, a sense of religious convictions.
“And Lamell has those five qualities. To see Lamell walking around with these multi-racial umpires and referees, who see him as their leader, that in itself is one of the great fruits in this period in American history. It’s beautiful.”
A PASSIONATE ADVOCATE
Born Lamell J. Hunter on June 22, 1973, there was just something about this youngster that would set himself apart from the others. Maybe it was in his genes all along to be a mover and shaker since Bertha remains an expressive woman of perpetual motion at the age of 70 — “my hands are always moving when I talk,” she said — and the father he never knew and never saw, even in old snapshots, supposedly had a similar drive.
“He opened up a very successful business and he was always doing something,” said Bertha McMorris. “He was always going after other things, trying to make the business successful.”
Like father, like son. While in kindergarten and grade school, McMorris regularly brought home certificates for math and spelling bees and for good conduct. His analytic gifts revealed themselves at an early age when he memorized license plates and recited road signs while riding in the family car. And the cowboy and Indian figures he meticulously arranged on the floor at home — toys his mother still has to this day — were not devices to enact the fantasies of a naïve young mind. Instead, they were strategic figures organized by a perceptive child who would one day organize so much more.
“I was never pretending these cowboy and Indian men were killing each other,” said Lamell, whose name was changed to McMorris in the third grade, when his mother married Henry McMorris. “I was fascinated with current events. I always watched the news since I was a little kid. Instead of doing the normal cowboy and Indian thing with these plastic figures … I was obsessed with the presidency and the Secret Service around the president. I would pick one to be the president and the rest were the Secret Service men protecting the president. I would emulate everything I saw on TV.
“I always had this image of the presidency and government. I don’t think I’m embellishing, but I don’t think I ever received less than a perfect score on a current-events test when I was a little kid. I could always tell who the mayor was, the president, the governor, the state senators, the aldermen … I could tell you all of that stuff.”
One day, McMorris decided on a whim that he wanted to meet Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor. McMorris bypassed the obvious obstacles with a genuine boyish charm.
“My mom and I were walking to Hyde Park and I noticed this official-looking car outside this building,” he said. “And so I pulled away from my mom and knocked on the window of the car. This guy has this big gigantic earpiece in his ear and I said, ‘Excuse me, sir, is this where the mayor lives?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Yeah,’ and I said, ‘Would you mind if I stayed out here and said hello to the mayor? Would you let the mayor know that I want to say hello to him?’
“He actually radioed up and told (Washington) I was down there and the mayor came down on his way out and signed a little card for me. I still have it. I’ll never forget that.”
Initially growing up without a father figure, McMorris was mentored by his cousin Stanley Washington, 17 years his senior, and maintained strong relationships with men of the church. “Stanley used to call me his shadow,” said McMorris. “He spent a lot of time with me. You look back and start to think about the kinds of things that kept you out of trouble and that made you a little older than your age. I spent a lot of time around people who were two or three times my age as a child growing up.”
When McMorris needed answers, Stanley always provided them in a relationship that tilted more toward uncle-nephew than cousin-cousin.
“We had a real close relationship,” Washington said. “I would take him around with me as much as possible. I guess I was just trying to be a positive influence. I certainly was trying to do the best I could and I just tried to have him stay around with me, including church, work and traveling around in the Chicagoland area.”
By fourth grade, he was considered gifted enough to be transferred from James McCosh Elementary to the more challenging Beasley Academic Center.
“When I got to Beasley, kids were from every ethnic group,” he said. “That was the first time in a classroom setting with white kids, Latino kids, Asian kids and that kind of blew my mind. I remember the first day walking into school. I was wearing these red Converse Chuck Taylors and I kind of did this cool walk into the room and I didn’t even realize it. Everyone was looking at me like, ‘Who is this kid?’
“I immediately caught the attention of everyone and made great friends.”
And those friends went on to follow McMorris. He became involved in student-activism and student government, regularly staying after school for functions. When he graduated from Beasley in 1987, McMorris was the one who stood before the student body to give an eloquent speech. And when he moved on to Whitney Young High School, McMorris was the one making waves — positive waves.
McMorris wasn’t bringing home overly impressive report cards in those days because “girls were a bigtime priority for me and I really didn’t put in as much energy,” he said. He also was far from an exceptional athlete, with his only experience in organized sports being as a cross-country runner for a couple years. What set him apart was his activism. In that respect, McMorris was tireless, which was exemplified dramatically in 1989.
“The first year of the school-reform legislation, I was voted the school representative to the local school counsel at Whitney Young,” he said. “I was a student representative, but I was a non-voting member. I compared that to being invited to a party and not being allowed to dance.
“So I thought, how in the world can I sit and discuss every-day issues that I’m dealing with and not be allowed to vote? So I formed a coalition in high school called the ‘Local School Counsel Student Representative Coalition.’ …
“We would meet and try to get the students the right to vote. I was running around Chicago talking and meeting with all these other adults and organizations. I had to go down to the board of education headquarters and have a joint press conference with the superintendent of schools … this was in high school!
“All this stuff about who I am now and how I’m an advocate and passionate about issues, I didn’t just start doing this. This stuff happened when I was a kid.”
During this same period, McMorris forged a relationship with Obama, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Presidency this year.
“Barack was fresh out of graduate school, a young guy working in the south side and he headed up this thing called ‘Project Vote,’ when they were trying to do voter registration and voter education,” McMorris said. “I was introduced to him and he said, ‘Lamell can help get high school students at the voting age registered through his organization. We can tap into his network.’
“I found him then and now to be a very thorough, prepared, and committed public servant. I am a supporter and adviser to his current presidential campaign.”
After high school, McMorris attended Morehouse College in Atlanta (Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s alma mater) and joined Martin Luther King III to serve in county government. It was at Morehouse where another McMorris attribute — compassion — was underscored.
“When Lamell was in college, I sent him some money — regular weekly money sent from a parent,” Bertha McMorris said. “He called back the next day and said that he needed more. I asked, ‘What happened to the money that you received yesterday?’ He said that he gave it all to a homeless man who was once a classmate of his who was down and out.”
He went on to earn a divinity degree in 1998 from the Princeton Theological Seminary and returned to Chicago to serve as director of youth development in the Urban League, where he first became acquainted with Jackson. McMorris made such an impression on Jackson that the president of the Rainbow/PUSH coalition hired him as his special assistant, a title he held until 2001. Then he moved back to Atlanta to serve as national executive director and chief operating officer under King for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
“I don’t know if there’s one word I can think of that actually characterizes who he is,” King said. “‘Resilient’ is one of the qualities. And tenacity. He’s just a diligent and smart worker.”
Make that a diligent and smart worker with the credentials of a preacher.
“I’m very much in line with that King-Jackson duality of theology and public policy,” McMorris said. “That’s been the theme permeating my entire life, frankly. As a kid growing up, I acknowledged a call to ministry, but not in the traditional sense where everyone thinks of pastoral ministry. No. I acknowledged a call in college to public ministry.
“It had a lot to do with how I felt my life was being shaped by those individuals around me and how I interpreted how God was calling me.”
Even after his career took him to the leadership role of two major officiating unions, where his days are dominated by constant cellphone usage, McMorris still hears the call to preach. On Jan. 19, for instance, McMorris was in Chester, Pa., to serve as preacher for the annual King Day celebration.
Having accumulated such impressive credentials, McMorris’ ascent continued in May 2002, when he founded Perennial Strategy Group, a bi-partisan government relations and consulting firm. He arrived at the name because, “I wanted to send the message that we would be here for many years to come.” With that firm, which employs 11, including three lawyers, McMorris was able to conduct business with the principles he acquired through the years.
“More than anything, I think it’s a commitment to his faith,” Lindsey Maxwell, a partner at Perennial, said when asked what most impresses him about McMorris. “I think that attributes to what he does and how he goes about doing it. He’s a very principled person and, in the business we’re all in, you’ve got to have some moral fiber and a lot of people in this business don’t.”
SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY
Opportunity knocked when NBA official Derrick Stafford presented McMorris with an offer that propelled him into the high profile sports arena.
“(Stafford) was on the board of the National Basketball Referees Association at the time,” McMorris said, “and he said, ‘Hey man, it’s in the middle of the season and we have to respond to the NBA regarding the pay increase, officials all over the place and we’ve got to get this done in a timely manner and we’ve got to do it by a silent ballot. Our current general counsel is busy and can’t get to it right now. Is this something that you and your firm can facilitate?’
“I’m a typical entrepreneur and I say, ‘Of course!’ I hung up the phone and looked over to the rest of my team and called somebody in and said, ‘OK, how are we going to do this?’ Basically, that was the turning point. The door was open and we facilitated the silentballot process, we did it effectively and efficiently.
“So my (new) firm at that time now represents the referees in the NBA and is negotiating their five-year collective bargaining agreement. Nothing in sports would have happened if Derrick wouldn’t have called on a whim and said, ‘Can you help us facilitate this silent-ballot process?’”
McMorris put his foot in the door at that point and then proceeded to burst inside. Since his career breakthrough, McMorris has worked with right-hand man Brian Lam to make his presence known.
At the moment, he and his staff are working on new collective bargaining agreements for major league umpires and NBA officials. Both expire in 2009. He also implemented a website for NBA officials, bringing them in line with contemporaries.
“I think the referees hired us and the umpires hired us out of all the firms they looked at has a lot to do with the fact that not only did we demonstrate that we have the skills and ability to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement, we also demonstrated we have a vision beyond the collective bargaining agreements. So what does that mean? It means that when you walk in the door and you notice that the referees at the highest level of basketball don’t even have something as basic as a website, you do that. So now the referees have a website dedicated to the organization.
“And then you notice that they don’t have a charitable or philanthropic arm. Why would the referees at the highest level of basketball not be engaged in doing something for the community? That’s consistent with who I am, so why would I not try to bring that to bear on the organization?
“So we started the (National Basketball Referees Foundation). And around that, why not have an opportunity to bring other stakeholders in basketball together to talk about officiating — both current NBA referees and those who aspire to be at that level of basketball? So we started the foundation conference.”
With that vision has been McMorris’ role as a peaceful, effective leader, which was evident for one of the first times during the Michael Henderson situation. Reflecting the influences he acquired, McMorris orchestrated having all referees wear their jerseys inside out to protest the league-imposed suspension of Henderson, who was taken off three assignments for a missed call. (All but two participated.) The officials wrote Henderson’s number 62 on their jerseys.
At the time, NBA Commissioner David Stern responded to the incident in a statement. “Last night’s display was woefully inconsistent with the professionalism with which NBA officials normally conduct themselves,” he said.
“It happened while we were still trying to negotiate the CBA (collective bargaining agreement) for referees,” McMorris said. “And, frankly, when I look back on it, it’s not my spirit and it’s not ours as a firm to come in the door immediately having tension and dukes up. But I was looking at a situation where some of the top NBA refs were leaving voicemails saying, ‘Look, if you don’t do something about this, I’m not going on the floor.’
“His colleagues thought there was a major injustice that had been done to one of their own. So we’re fresh into this thing and we have to do something to keep the peace. I don’t think individuals really understand that the Henderson situation, the whole jersey, non-violent, civil disobedient protest issue, could have been a lot worse in terms of what individuals wanted to do.”
But the worst — by far — was yet to come. It started with a phone call during the summer of 2007, a phone call which informed McMorris that veteran NBA referee Donaghy was being linked to a betting scandal. Donaghy resigned from the league amid an FBI investigation that he bet on games he officiated the previous two seasons and made calls affecting the point spread.
“You talk about ruining a summer,” McMorris said. “My summer was shot. Planning a vacation or a getaway, those were out the window. Not just from a personal standpoint, but from an organizational standpoint, it was highly stressful, highly emotional and disappointing. “While there was extreme shock and disappointment when this matter came up, the real funny thing about the Donaghy thing from a personal and business perspective was we were in New York preparing to do our final interview with the umpires of Major League Baseball. And in my hotel in New York, the phone rings at about 6:30 a.m. from a basketball reporter and he says, ‘Have you seen the paper today?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m trying to get ready for a major interview that will be about three or four hours.’ And he said, ‘You need to go down and get the paper.’
“So in the middle of trying to get ready for possible representation and trying to secure another major client, I’ve got probably the most horrific thing that could ever happen with my other group. And frankly, the umpires who were on the search committee on the board, they were absolutely flabbergasted that we were able to make it through the interview. They knew that we were stressed because that morning we had been on the phones trying to think through the situation and deal with the matter, but we went through a four-hour interview that morning.
“I’ll tell you what — I am so proud of the officials in the NBA. It’s not anything that we have done. They made it through this difficulty and they are maintaining their professionalism and they are unwavering. It’s just like they turned a lemon into lemonade. And that just brought us together from a unified standpoint. And the major point is that one bad apple is not going to define who we are. We are not that thing that happened. That’s not who we are and we’re going to fight to maintain integrity, fight to keep confidence of fans, players, coaches and the league.
“You don’t mind being an advocate for folks like that. You don’t mind putting it all on the line for individuals in the midst of something that could have not only torn the organization apart, but the league.”
If there was a silver lining to the situation from McMorris’ perspective, it was that the scandal helped form a bond between him and NBA Commissioner Stern. Prior to that, the two had no direct relationship, which McMorris described as “interesting” in one interview.
“Up until this matter, David Stern and I had never had a conversation,” McMorris said. “We may not have been cordial prior to Donaghy, but, I’ll tell you what, we are now. I appreciate the way we relate respectfully now, I appreciate the open dialogue that we have and the accessibility that we have to each other.” But then, McMorris is all about building bridges and forging bonds. And that’s what his mission will be during what could be a long and productive career. He’s already made an enormous impact for NBA referees and he intends to do the same for MLB umpires. This is a man, after all, who gets things done, which is the perception Hirschbeck had when he first met McMorris.
“We were very impressed right from the beginning,” Hirschbeck said. “We had a search committee and he and Lam were really prepared. They knew a lot about our group, they had been through our bylaws, they had been through our agreement with Major League Baseball and it was the way they answered our questions.
“Obviously, we chose them and now, since then, I would say that preparation has kind of carried over into the daily issues that have come up. We’ve moved beyond a lot of the 2000 issues. It’s a slow process, but I think they helped.”
“Moving beyond” is a term that aptly describes what constitutes a great deal of McMorris’ philosophy. And given his youthful age, it’s conceivable that he could be making his presence known in the realm of NBA officials and major league umpires for the next quarter century.
McMorris is ready. And as he proceeds to tear down walls and build bridges, he’ll do so with the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King reverberating within him.
“I’ve got a vision,” said McMorris, echoing King’s timeless rallying cry. “I’ve got a dream, especially as it relates to officials in sports. I dream of the day when all of these individuals in all of these sports come to realize that there’s power in unity and they are all in this thing together.” |
