SAG-AFTRA national executive director David White may be leaving to become the next head of the NBA Players Association, Yahoo Sports reported Friday. According to the report, he has emerged as the frontrunner to replace Billy Hunter, who was fired last February by a unanimous vote of player representatives.
The New York based Players Association – the union for pro basketball players – is scheduled to meet Saturday, but sources told Yahoo Sports that no vote is scheduled to be taken on the job.
A SAG-AFTRA spokeswoman declined to comment, and White did not respond to a voicemail.
White was national executive director of SAG starting in 2009 and led the union during its merger with AFTRA in 2012. A graduate of Stanford Law School and a Rhodes Scholar, White was a labor and employment attorney at O’Melveny & Myers before joining the staff at SAG, where he served as general counsel from 2002 to 2006. He is a graduate of Grinnell College, where he was a football quarterback.
The possible departure of White would come at awkward time for the union, because its triennial contract negotiations are expected to begin within a few months with White as chief negotiator. (The WGA is negotiating now, and the DGA ratified its deal last month.) Whether White would still play that role if he were offered and accepted the NBAPA job is unknown; also unknown is when the new job would start.
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