The NBA's New Union Leader Is a Total Badass

“It was clearly run by Hunter without much input from other people,” she said during a long interview at her office in Washington. “It’s completely inconsistent with the way any entity, let alone any union, should be run.”

She’s held strong opinions for a long time. Here’s her describing what she learned as one of the only black students in her high school class:

“It was actually some of the best training for my professional life,” Roberts said. “Once I realized that being different does not mean being inferior — I scoff at that nonsense if I see it.”

That experience also seems to have prompted her incredibly well-chosen high school yearbook quote:

In her senior yearbook, she quoted Malcolm X and Nikki Giovanni: “Joy is finding a pregnant roach and squashing it.”

On her time as a public defender for men on death row at San Quentin:

“All they wanted was to be able to have sex with their girlfriends,” Roberts said. “You’d do a hearing with them, and they’d be crying like you’d gotten them their freedom.”

This about sums it Michele Roberts up:

“My past,” she told the room, “is littered with the bones of men who were foolish enough to think I was someone they could sleep on.”

Screenshot via The Washington Business Journal/YouTube