You remember Larry Johnson from the basketball court dunking on would be defenders at UNLV and in the NBA before his injury. On the court, he was amazing, but off the court, Larry Johnson has always been very outspoken when it comes to the player, ownership structure of the NBA.

Last year during the Donald Sterling, NBA Clippers franchise fiasco, Johnson turned some heads with a tweet mentioning black people should start their own sporting league and teams. (The tweet was made available for you below.)

This wasn’t the first time Johnson made a master, slave relationship between NBA players and NBA Owners.

[ADSENSE2]According to BlackSportsOnline, in 1999 during the NBA finals while playing with the Knicks against the Spurs, Johnson said, “We’ve got a lot of rebellious slaves on this [Knicks] team.”

This relationship of the NBA superstars of the world and their glorified contracts being compared to a slave may shock you a bit. However, the analogy and discussion is far from new. In fact, this thinking has been around since good money was made in sporting events.

Black people your Focusing on the wrong thing. We should be focusing on having our own, Own team own League! To For Self!!

— Larry Johnson (@TheRealLJ2) April 26, 2014

There is a great book on the discussion called “40 Million Dollar Slaves”. Can’t say I agree with everything in the book, but it lays a basis for a real discussion while giving a pretty good historical overview of black in the industry of sporting during and post American slavery.