NEW YORK — If he had to do it all over again, Billy Hunter still would have walked out of the negotiating room.
That was the defiant tone Hunter struck Thursday as the NBA players’ union held a news briefing at its headquarters in Harlem after owners and players decided they would resume discussions Saturday afternoon for the first time since their acrimonious blowup last Friday.
At that meeting, after two days of discernible progress, Hunter and the players’ union representatives walked out of the room when commissioner David Stern offered a 50/50 split of revenues, refusing to budge off his previous position.
“I thought it was appropriate, because the signals we were getting was they would be receptive to moving off their number,” Hunter said. “We wanted to send a message to the other side.”
Hunter and Derek Fisher also denied there was a rift between the two, but Fisher did disclose that the union’s executive board spent “95 percent” of its meeting on the subject of damage control and maintaining a united front.
When the last round of labor talks ended last Friday, Stern said the owners had received assurances from the union on three different occasions that 50/50 would be enough to get the deal done. Fisher and Hunter each denied making any kind of an informal 50-50 proposal to league officials, saying it was outside counsel Jeffrey Kessler who first proposed something resembling a 50-50 framework, and that the league “turned that into a representation of our offer,” Hunter said, claiming that deputy commissioner Adam Silver later acknowledged during a formal bargaining session that it was a “mischaracterization” to represent Kessler’s idea as the union’s official bargaining position.
According to the union, the genesis of Saturday’s resumption of talks was a phone call made by federal mediator George Cohen to Hunter earlier this week asking if the union would like him to rejoin the discussions.
Hunter initially said no, but then reconsidered and telephoned Stern on Wednesday to propose a resumption of talks. He said the onus was now on the owners to decide whether they wanted Cohen to rejoin the negotiations.
Asked if he was prepared to go a “penny lower than 52 percent” — the words Stern quoted him as saying last Friday — Hunter would only reply: “I’d prefer not to answer that question.”
“What we’ve consistently done is given, given, given to try to get a deal,” Hunter said, further explaining his decision to walk out of talks last week. “We were getting a lot of blowback that we were giving away the house, and they said ‘Shut it down.’ ”
“We’ve been too fair, that’s the reality,” Hunter said. “Now I think it’s all about breaking the players.”
Hunter and Fisher said the union had not yet discussed negotiating tactics, and thus could not say whether the union would bring a compromise offer to the table Saturday. Aside from the split of revenues, the sides remain apart on several system issues related to how punitive the new luxury tax system will be. For example, owners want taxpaying teams to be forbidden from executing sign-and trade deals or signing mid-level free agents, but players are opposed to those stipulations.
Still, the biggest obstacle to overcome will be coaxing a financial offer from the owners that gives the players more than a 50/50 split.
Stern has given no indication that he is inclined to budge from that number, but the commissioner did say last Thursday that everything is negotiable. (One of the great unknowns in this dispute: If Hunter hadn’t led the march out of the bargaining room last Friday, would Stern have moved off 50/50 later that night in order to close a deal?)
Now, it is unclear if the owners remain willing to do a 50/50 split if an 82-game season can no longer be salvaged, as Stern unequivocably stated was the case. And if the owners come Saturday with an offer lower than 50 percent, it is fair to presume that the meeting will be a brief one.
“Our platform has always been reasonableness,” union attorney Ron Klempner said. “But they really do have to meet us halfway.”
ah, question answered. still, it seems to not have been qualitatively different from the 50/50 precondition situation that was blocking progress before if they really weren’t going to go higher than 50%.
it’s getting harder to get worked up about all this, though. that can’t be a good sign, can it?