Michele Roberts is a smart person. You don’t go from being a public defender to major law form partner to becoming the first female head of a major professional sports union without having a healthy combination of savvy, smarts and substance.
So what was she doing last week when she told ESPN that the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement, with its maximum salaries, age limit and rookie salary scale, is “un-American?”
(And by the way, that “un-American” comment clearly struck a nerve with the NBA, which issued a news release stating its disagreement.)
Roberts was doing what lawyers do. And what union chiefs do. And what negotiators do.
She was posturing. And she was trying to dictate the narrative.
We are still 25 months away from the date when the players (or the owners) can opt out of the current 10-year Collective Bargaining Agreement, and an awful lot can happen in 25 months. If both sides want to keep the peace, they can find a suitable middle ground prior to the opt out date, and the NBA can have labor peace for a full decade.
If they can’t strike a deal without an opt-out, Roberts can continue to repeat her “un-American” comment, maintaining the moral high ground. That is how you dictate the narrative. She made a good point in an interview with me last month that it just does not seem right that Emmanuel Mudiay, an adult, cannot make a living in his own country. So he is putting up triple-doubles in China rather than going the one-and-done route.
In order for a lockout to be avoided, the owners are going to have to give back some of what they got from Billy Hunter in 2011 when the NBA went through its last work stoppage. By the time the opt-out date arrives, the players will have given back (or negotiated away, depending on the semantics) $1.5 billion.
That’s billion with a “B.”
And then players, to put it mildly, are not at all happy about it. They feel they got fleeced; they still feel like their are being bullied by the owners; and they are competitive by nature. They hired Roberts with the goal of undoing some of the wrongs that happened on Hunter’s watch, and it will be impossible for Roberts to put forth a proposal for a player vote unless there is some “give” from the owners.
Roberts wants to prove herself, and the only way for her to do that at the end of the day is to present a proposal to the players that gives them a bigger slice of the revenue pie than the 50-50 split they are basically getting now. With the NBA set to nearly triple its yearly broadcast revenues from its national TV deals with Turner Sports and ESPN, there will be a lot more money to divvy up.
Does Roberts have a chance of getting the players back to the 57 percent share as they had for nearly two decades before the current labor deal was reached? That chance would be “zero,” IMO. But is there a suitable middle ground in the BRI equation? Or is there a way to change the revenue distribution formula in order to incentivize winning? Currently, the playoff pool, which is split among the 16 teams that qualify for the postseason, is $14 million — with an “M.” The salary pool during the regular season is about $2.1 billion — again, with a “B.”
That means players on playoff teams receive a cumulative bonus of less than one percent, split among all of them (16 teams equals 240 players, and players customarily vote shares and half-shares to support personnel such as trainers, medical staff and p.r. people), for succeeding. Let me repeat that: Less than one percent, split 300-plus ways.
Jeff Van Gundy once told me his ideal labor solution: “If you win, you get paid. If you lose, you don’t get paid.”
So how about a modified Van Gundy idea …
If the players could get back some of the money that Hunter negotiated away through the incentivization of winning, might that be a way for Roberts to get a deal done. Just my opinion, but it is pretty “un-American” to have a system in place with so little incentive for winning.
You build a second pile of money aside from BRI, you use that to satisfy the players’ demand for a larger portion of the revenue pie, and in doing do you make the game more competitive. The more players win, the more money they will make. Under my plan, the owners and commissioner Silver stay happy (they stick somewhere close to 50-50), the players and Roberts are mollified (they recover financially from the Hunter fiasco) and the fans are satisfied (winning becomes more important). That’s a win-win-win.
More on the labor posturing that had been stealing the NBA headlines recently in this interview with CineSport’s Noah Coslov.
For more on the NBA labor situation, check out these two columns: My Q and A with Roberts; and Jan Hubbard’s column from this past Sunday asking why it seems Roberts is channeling the spirit of David Stern.
Chris Sheridan is publisher and editor-in-chief of SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter.