The Spencer Haywood rule battles basketball and the making of an American icon, a class written by our colleague Mark Spears from the Undefeated and Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe.

Spencer, as we know, grew up in rural Mississippi.

He was born to indentured servitude, picking cotton in 1970.

He earned the A B a work e of the year and M v P honors in the same season.

He later challenged the MBA's draft rules in the Supreme Court.

This book is phenomenal, and we're now thrilled to have co author Marc Spears here with my copy.

I got my copy.

That's right.

You get your copy, Richard, I got my copy.

I told him I was gonna do unless he unless it was signed in.

And he did it.

Got Thank you.

Got all right.

So when did you and Gary Washburn decided?

You guys just had to write this book talking to Spencer.

Hey, reached out to me and I've done a couple stories with him with undefeated.

And as you mentioned, there's a lot of stuff that goes with him, and he was comfortable talking about picking cotton and the racism that he dealt with in Mississippi and free agency and the drugs.

There's a lot being married to a woman.

This dude deserves a 30 for 30 and then also, you know what I mean when he was married to him on Yeah, there's some stuff with a Okay, Spits.

Yeah, but you know, Gary and I've been covering MBA over 20 years.

He's been coming over 15.

This is the first real book offer we got and to get it for a guy like Spencer man and we had to jump at it.

No, that that's awesome.

And meeting him just very briefly.

You know so much about people's stories and kind of what he did to help open up.

You know, players getting free agency and all the different things.

But when you talk to him, he feels like his place in history.

Up in that kind of important place of other individuals isn't where it should be like.

Is that something that's conveyed in this book?

The name the Spencer Haywood rule he wants, like things about free agency to be named after him.

He's like, really, really adamant about it.

been fighting for it for years, and when they read the book, they'll learn about his history in in free agency.

So the Spencer Haywood rule is something that he wants implemented in terms of giving them respect for what he's done, What he fought for, he went to the Supreme Court.

Yes, he deserves that respect 100 person.

And I got to say, I love the way the book looks by the way.

It's not just the front, but the back cover as well, he says.

I was fighting for everyone before me and everyone after me also.

And I think that that is so meaningful and so true and that learning about guys like this for people who are, you know, it's funny.

Tyler hero.

You're gonna hear a little quote from him later in the show because I sat down and interviewed him this morning on I was joking with him about Hey, do people scream songs that you because of hero, right?

He's like half of them.

I've never even heard of him because he's so young and you just get reminded that a lot of people in the NBA Finals in the game today they're young.

Maybe some of the players don't even know Spencer, and he's a character he used to eat.

Roadkill.

Can't you know?

Okay, that's not that's not a Southern boy way.

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