By Chris Sheridan
Billy Hunter will be in Beverly Hills, Calif. today, expecting to brief about 50 players on the state of negotiations. David Stern will presumably be relatively dormant, because Mount Stern rarely erupts on consecutive days — and Stern went volcanic Thursday with his statement that his “gut” tells him there will be no NBA games by Christmas if a deal isn’t reached by next Tuesday. (UPDATE–Stern went on ESPN radio this morning and repeated his phrase from Monday night “I’m proud of our owners” but did not break any new ground.)
So with the doomsday scenarios and the negotiating positions laid out there publicly in greater detail than ever before, let’s have a look around the Web for the most astute observations of the day:
This is freshly posted, as of 12:30 p.m. EDT, by Marc Stein of ESPN.com: “Widely broadcasting an unfiltered message to try to influence the rank and file to put pressure on Hunter is part of it, but Stern is likewise clearly in no mood to play out the exact same script that unfolded in Lockout ’98-99. This is a commish, remember, who absolutely revels in his rep for innovation. No surprise, then, that he quickly diverted from the lockout script of 13 years ago to announce that to “have a season or not have a season” was at risk as early as Sept. 28. As reassurance for those of you who, like us, will be reduced to unspeakable misery (and probably worse) if there isn’t an NBA game until after the 2012 Olympics in London, be advised that strong rumblings continue to be conveyed to ESPN.com about the league preparing a secret schedule that starts Dec. 1 and still manages to pump out 82 games. The New York Post has likewise reported that NBA schedule-maker Matt Winick has quietly drafted a variety of contingency plans spanning anywhere from 50 to 74 games. It’s thus probably not an accident that Stern, upon telling WFAN Radio in New York on Thursday that “my gut is that we won’t be playing on Christmas Day” without a major breakthrough at Tuesday’s mediation session, threw in the following disclaimer: “This is not in my official capacity of canceling games.”
Marc Spears of Yahoo Sports has a long Q & A with Hunter: How tough of a position is the union in in trying to come up with the right deal to satisfy the star players, the midlevel exception players, the lower-paid players, by NBA standards, and the rookies? Hunter: “We did it in ’98. We did it in 2005. Our goal, our aim is to always come up with a deal that protects at least 80 percent of our membership. Nobody is going to be totally happy because it’s a compromised deal. We can design an agreement that could represent most of the interests of our players, so that every player will continue to get paid as they’ve done in the past. The issue that we are struggling with is whether we are willing to accept a hard salary cap, which we’ve indicated that we are not. [The NBA] contends that they are worried about three franchises in New York, L.A. [Lakers], Chicago and possibly New Jersey being [at a competitive advantage]. Our contention is we can impose a luxury tax. It could be a punitive tax, but it can’t be a tax that creates a hard salary cap.”
Mitch Lawrence, New York Daily News: Locked-out NBA players believe they scored a major victory Wednesday when the National Labor Relations Board denied David Stern’s request to have the union’s charge of an unfair labor practice dismissed, although the players are a long way from seeing this tactic get them back onto the basketball court. The NBA commissioner went before the NLRB on Wednesday seeking the dismissal, as first reported by the Daily News, but the NLRB decided to continue with the case, which the players union hopes will lead to the league being forced to restart operations and open the season under the previous collective bargaining rules. “That is what Stern and his owners are worried about,” insisted a union legal source. Perhaps, but first, the players’ case has several more steps to go, and it’s being viewed by legal experts as a long shot to help them break the 106-day-old lockout.
Ken Berger of CBSSports.com: Stern didn’t mention the aspect of the league’s proposal that would forbid tax-paying teams from using the Bird exception to retain their own free agents, but did reveal that the league proposed a so-called “Super Bird” exception whereby teams could re-sign one designated free agent for a maximum of five years. Other contract lengths would be capped at four and three years under the league’s proposal. Previously contracts could be no longer than six years for free agents who stayed with their teams and five years for those who left. The union has offered to cap contract lengths at five and four years, respectively. “I was a participant in developing the Bird exception in 1983, so it doesn’t break my heart to see it continued,” Stern said. “But frankly, our owners went into this thinking that it was better to eliminate it so that teams could only keep certain players and the rest would be available to other teams.”
Michael Wilbon, ESPN.com: People aren’t going to clamor for basketball in the same way they do football. But they will trash basketball, especially basketball players. NBA owners are going to spend the next weeks and perhaps months telling you how little pro basketball players are worth; then, once they get a deal, be faced with the task of trying to build ’em back up again for the purpose of public consumption. And there’s always the complex and even more divisive element of race. Both the NFL and NBA are predominantly black. But the NFL has never been perceived as a “black league” because it has white megastars in players such as Tom Brady and Peyton Manning and coaches such as Bill Belichick. The NBA, on the other hand, has been perceived exactly as a black league for 30 years, even when it featured the likes of Larry Bird and Bill Walton. A championship team led by a blond, blue-eyed German, Dirk Nowitzki, isn’t the same as having an iconic white American superstar on the level of Bird or Jerry West. Nor is a coach in the mold of Phil Jackson or Pat Riley. And while every generation moves further away from stereotypes, more quickly in sports than just about any other industry, the fact is that NBA players with their guaranteed contracts and lavish lifestyles are the objects of derision much more often than their helmeted and more anonymous peers in the NFL — who, except for those quarterbacks, make quite a bit less. And besides, people of any race and nationality more closely identify with people who look like them.
The only ppl who are able to recognize racism are usually those who have racially discriminated against. Just bc u eat Skittles don’t mean you’ll sh!t rainbows….wat dat has 2do w/anything? Idk, but been wantin2say it ALL day! Lol
The mediator is interesting…is he unbiased? He worked at MLBPA for Fehr, and then went to a law firm in DC whose motto is “labor’s voice”. Seems kinda strange.
The owners LOCKED the players out. The players aren’t on strike. So do the owners not live lavish lifestyles? Come on man
You don’t get it , do you ? Joe Lacob of the Warriors just paid 450mils for the team. Did Step Curry and Monta Ellis contribute a cent ? Will Step Curry and Monta Ellis pay for marketing, chartered plane, security staff , baby sitters for these spoiled kids ?
Without Curry and Ellis, Lacob has nothing to market. Lacob doesn’t buy the team if the players aren’t bringing in the fans and tv deals. No one is paying to watch Joe Lacob sign contracts. The owners sign bad contracts and now they want a system that protects them from themselves.
Lacob does not have to buy the team. He is rich and can make money w/o the team. Curry and Ellis and other NBA players can become an owner by buying teams. There are teams for sale. Lets see if they can run their own team.
Steph and Monta will play basketball in an entertaining fashion, thus making Lacob’s investment pay off. That’s what they, and others like them, contribute: they make NBA basketball a profitable investment.
It’s weird that you think of adult men as kids when they’re under enormous pressure to perform in their jobs and make more money for themselves and their employers than any of us are likely to if we had five lifetimes to put into it.
Their positions are extremely hard to get and there are countless people out there who are doing everything they possible can to take their jobs year in year out and simply aren’t good enough to do it.
Your condescention is unreasonable, strange, and out of place.
Great website Chris!
Michael Wilbon is such a punk. It is not about race…it is about a bunch of guys who would have nothing if it were not for the game of basketball wanting to stick it to the people who still have a lot even without basketball. Players ….play the game and be lucky you can live the lifestyle thanks to that round leather orange thing . Good Bye!
Everything today is about race? So stoopid. Make me sick. People are sick of the players because them have been acting like spoiled kids. They fly on the best chartered planes. They stay in the best hotels. etc.and they want more.
Hey let’s see if Amero Stoudamire can put together his own league. LOL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The players won’t find jobs in Euro, China or anywhere else. Most of the players in Euro are scrubs at best.
I’m not sick of the players at all. The really good ones actually make the NBA worth watching. I can’t stand NCAA basketball because even when there’s a good player, he’s surrounded by guys who can’t play. Euroleague is better, but it’s also got a set of rules that aim to make up for the shortcomings of having rosters full of so-so athletes. It’s got its merits, but I don’t think it’s worth my time to watch a league where Bo McCalebb is a superstar.
This is the owners’ lockout. THEY decided that they’d rather cancel the season than live with 7 badly run teams losing money in a system with negligible revenue sharing. THEY are the ones who guaranteed that we’d miss games by fielding ridiculous proposals that no reasonable union would accept in a time of league prosperity.
If it wasn’t about maximizing profits for badly run teams at the expense of the players and the sport, there’s no way there ever would have been a lockout in the first place. The players offered to cover the league’s triply exaggerrated “losses” in a show of good faith and the owners should have taken it.
Instead, we’re getting a long hard look at the Robert Sarvers of the world actually are. It’s never been about fairness, only squeezing every last possible penny out of a sport that already rewards its owners far out of proportion to what they actually do for the communities that support them.
The players OFFERED to take a PAY CUT that would cover ALL of the owners’ exaggerrated losses!
All the players are doing is standing up, as best they can, to an outrageous ownership group that clearly doesn’t care about the game when there’s the slightest whiff of money in the air.
I’d be pissed at the players if they hadn’t put forth a genuine effort to bargain in good faith from the very beginning. They’re doing nothing wrong in rejecting the owners’ outlandishly selfish demands.
It’s not like we can’t find other stuff to entertain ourselves with if the NBA suddenly goes away for a year. It’ll be that much harder to convince people to care about all the storylines when they can’t rely on the game to stick around.
sorry,that post was waaaay too long. ouch.
Ignaras: Great Post!
The Marc Spears article is interesting. I think the players association has done a great job protecting a system that ensures the mid-level guys get paid. But from the owners point of view that is a big part of the problem with the system! The are way too many guys like David Lee making way too much money for the value they offer. Also, the owners talk about wanting to keep their stars but today’s system already provides the players current team with the advantage to keep it’s players (Bird rights, more years on contract). The problem is that the system allows the team to keep it’s players by paying more and for a longer period of time which has inflated contracts (think Joe Johnson). So what the owners want is to be able to keep their players without having to bid more than the competition. It doesn’t look to me like the owners are going to give in on this stuff. And, unfortunately, after a year of record revenues, the players simply can’t roll over and concede the system and revenues. I think the players will fracture at some point and cave in but it’s not going to happen anytime soon.