TicketsCINCINNATI – University of Cincinnati basketball legend Oscar Robertson will be honored with the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the 2025 ESPYS on Wednesday night at 8 p.m. on ABC, recognizing his fight to establish free agency in the NBA.
Robertson, one of the greatest players in basketball history, served as president of the NBA Players Association from 1965 to 1974 and led one of the most consequential labor battles in the history of professional sports. In 1970, despite threats against his career and fear of retribution, he filed an antitrust lawsuit to block the proposed NBA-ABA merger, fighting to end restrictive contract rules and liberate athletes from systems that limited their agency. The landmark 1976 settlement, known as the Oscar Robertson Rule, introduced restricted free agency and paved the way for the modern rights and freedoms enjoyed by professional athletes today.
As the first African American president of a national sports or entertainment labor union, Robertson used his voice and platform to challenge the power structure of professional sports, testifying before Congress, enduring backlash from owners and refusing to be silent.
“Despite the personal and professional risk of taking on the sports establishment, I would have done it again in a heartbeat,” Robertson told SLAM Magazine in 2020. “Because basketball players, athletes, and African Americans should be treated as any other person in American life.”
The Arthur Ashe Award for Courage honors members of the sports world whose actions transcend the playing field. Past recipients include the USA Gymnastics sexual abuse survivors (2018), Bill Russell (2019), Kevin Love (2020), Maya Moore (2021), Vitali Klitschko (2022), the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (2023) and Steve Gleason (2024).
Robertson graduated from UC in 1960 as the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer and a three-time national player of the year. The Big O went on to become an NBA Champion and MVP, an Olympic gold medalist and the first player to average a triple-double. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1980.