Fred VanVleet Was a Critic of the NBA Players’ Union. Now He’s Leading It.

Business|He Was a Critic of the N.B.A. Players’ Union. Now He’s Leading It.

Fred VanVleet sat in an Italian restaurant a short drive from the Houston Rockets’ practice facility. Between bites of his spicy pepper-topped pizza, he considered how the ubiquity of sports gambling has affected the players he represents as the president of the National Basketball Players Association.

“Kind of feels like it’s gotten away from us a little bit,” he said.

He tried a metaphor.

“A nice little campfire makes you feel warm,” he said. “You got marshmallows and s’mores. But if it turns into a wildfire — that kind of feels like where we are right now. I don’t know how you rein it back in.”

This is the kind of issue that is now on Mr. VanVleet’s plate.

In September, before the 10th season of his N.B.A. career, he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. Under normal circumstances, his job would primarily entail the grueling recovery from that injury. But last summer, the players elected him president of their union, which was under pressure from its members for a collective bargaining agreement that some of them did not like. Now in the third year of that deal, Mr. VanVleet has taken on the task of rebuilding players’ trust in the organization.

“There’s a vision of how we want things to be going forward,” Mr. VanVleet, 32, said.

The union has tried to communicate better with its members, engage with younger players who had felt disconnected from decision making and urged all of its members to think about their power as a collective brand, which can lead to new kinds of investment and marketing opportunities.

The union is going through a leadership transition more broadly.

In November 2023, it named Andre Iguodala, a former most valuable player of the N.B.A. finals who had retired as a player weeks earlier, as its acting executive director after Tamika Tremaglio abruptly resigned from the role. A former player had held the position only one other time, briefly, in the 1990s.

Mr. Iguodala encouraged players who had never been part of union leadership to join. He recruited Mr. VanVleet, who follows CJ McCollum, a guard for the Atlanta Hawks, as president for a four-year term. He brought in David Kelly, a former Golden State Warriors executive, to be the union’s managing director and general counsel. Mr. Kelly will succeed Mr. Iguodala in July.