NEW YORK — The owners’ labor relations committee will hold a conference call today, presumably to do one of two things, or both: Second-guess themselves on being so stingy with their offer last Thursday when one or two crumbs could have gotten them a deal; Plot their next move.
It’ll likely be the latter, because none of them have the guts to call David Stern “Leona” for his actions last week at the Helmsley on 42nd Street, which caused nothing but “Trouble.”
So it’ll be a slow day unless the commissioner wants to go on another p.r. offensive, or pick up the phone and speak to the “routinely despicable” Jeffrey Kessler, as Stern called him. (Technically, Stern cannot call Billy Hunter to initiate dialogue.)
To help you kill the time, a little lockout tune for y’all set to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” complete with mutant pizza reference, courtesy of the fine folks at outsidethearc.com: (Lyrics are below the jump)
Derek Fisher’s here to say, we’re not getting NBA.
Disclaim union, file lawsuit, to the courts we go.
Jeffrey Kessler, David Boi-es, Second Circuit, with the lawyers,
Antitrust for treble damage, how will it all go?
Time to deal? Day’s gone, Stick to po-ems. Kay, Etan?
Michael Jordan’s hardline, MLE for Sarver’s wife.
Kobe Bryant, Italy. Can’t make money? Sell your team.
Basketball is disappearing, I can’t help but wonder why.
CHORUS
We didn’t start the lockout,
It was all the players,
They make too much money.
We didn’t start the lockout,
It was all the owners,
They were just so greedy.
Blake Grif-fin on Mozgov, Not this year the season’s off.
We won’t see a Duncan banker or a Howard block.
Steve Nash, all alone. Dirk Nowitzki stays home.
Da-vid Stern stalled, now were out of clock.
Prokhorov, Jay-Z, When will Brooklyn get a team?
Henry Abbott, Howard Beck, David Aldridge, Sheridan.
Zach Lowe, Alan Hahn, Mutant Pizza, it’s all gone.
At the Waldorf, up all night. Did I get that quote right?
CHORUS
We didn’t start the lockout,
It was o-ver nothing,
And we lost the sea-son.
We didn’t start the lockout,
They just could-nt settle,
A-gents had to med-dle.
Adam Silver cat-ching flak, Talking points repeated back.
Gilbert, Hardline 9, Stare into Paul Allen’s eyes.
Rookie scale, have a ball, Sac-ra-men-to Kings fall.
All the players at his side, JaVale McGee should run and hide.
Steve Aschburner, Berger, HP b-ball, Ric Bu-cher.
Play-er rep, No-show, Boozer of Chicago.
How u, COUNT THE RINGS, You got LeBron or Kobe?
Have a sea-son? Hell no. NHL route we will go.
CHORUS
We didn’t start the lockout,
No more basketball,
They don’t care at all.
We didn’t start the lockout,
It was David Stern and
It was Billy Hunter.
Cha-ri-ty, Live streams, Sixty-Five from K. Durant,
Ruc-ker, Good-man, Brandon Jen-nings said he’s in.
Larry Coon, Dan Devine, Ziller take downs on the side,
Baron Davis huge beard, all this stuff is getting weird.
Chris Paul, Player X, Checketts says the lockout ends,
DDL, This is hell, when will all the madness end?
CHORUS
We didn’t start the lockout,
You pissed off the fans,
Cause you sat on your hands.
We didn’t start the lockout,
It wound up in court,
Now we’ll all be bored.
Two weeks canceled yet again, when will it be back again?
No Z-Bo, On the block, Not even a shot clock.
Hit-ting the gym, Rise and grind, Owners on the hardline,
Bil-ly Hunter showed his hand, David Stern is eff-ing mad.
Fif-ty/Fif-ty, BRI, Now that offer goes goodbye.
MLE for $3 or $5, Room teams? $2 point 5.
NBA exists no more, Try some hockey if you’re bored?
Dav-id Stern o-pen the doors, I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE.
We didn’t start the lockout,
It was all the players,
They make too much money.
We didn’t start the lockout,
It was all the owners,
And it still goes on and on and on and on…
We didn’t start the lockout,
It was o-ver nothing,
And we lost the sea-son.
We didn’t start the lockout,
They just could-nt settle,
A-gents had to med-dle.
We didn’t start the lockout,
No more basketball,
They don’t care at all.
We didn’t start the lockout,
It was David Stern and
It was Billy Hunter.
We didn’t start the lockout,
You pissed off the fans,
Cause you sat on your hands.
We didn’t start the lockout…
Very funny song. But I’m holding on to a different lyric:
“Out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train”
Some people’s children.
A conference call. Ho hum. Stern has known this action has been coming for almost 2 years, so I doubt there’s any panic going on in that meeting. I’d expect it’s it’s basically confirming there’s still a consensus toward the planned next step.
The owners talked for 20 minutes? A season and perhaps a league on the line and all they could do in conference call for 20 minutes? These guys are insane. It’s sad when billionaires pout when they don’t get what they want. It’s no doubt the owners have been planning on missing a season for a long time. I wish communities that funded arenas could sue them to. They have boiles number. Give it a ring and settle this garbage.
Unfortunately In the biggest NBA news in their history Chris is like a deer in the headlights as far as his insights and thoughts on the lockout. Chris, your naivety is beyond belief. Although Peter Vecsey is often wrong on trade info his column had been spot on on the lockout issue.
Thanks again for the linkage on my lockout song, Chris.
It would be cool if NBA TV becomes NBA Court TV and they have all this bickering happening on live TV…. NOT!!!!!
Chris, Is there a reason to keep NBA TV?
The only way a deal gets done is if one side puts away their pride and be grateful for the position they are in. It’ almost thanksgiving, so you would think that the owners or the players would come to their senses…………….naaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!! Who I’m I kidding.
Chris, I’m not sure the narrative that the owners just needed to toss some “crumbs” and a deal would get done is accurate. There were a number of major system issues on the table and at each of the last two major bargaining sessions the owners moved off their positions with wiggle room under almost all of them. It almost seems like the owners were bargaining with themselves based on the last two weeks of discussions.
If there was one or two single issues the players needed, all they had to do was go public with proposed solutions on them. Instead I think the players union was far too divided and confused on what was important to them. If the system issues were so important, all they needed to do was offer an option. System issues and 52% BRI or 50% and open system. They never went public with a unified response. All we heard was that the owners “were being unfair”
Boies lawsuit coincidentally was all in the can, ready to go and be filed on exactly the first date the paychecks were missed so there would be “damages” to claim by the players. And within 24 hours after he showed up as the new “leader”. I’d guess the plan to file that suit was “in the can” for many weeks or months so to speak and that a faction of leadership were planning to do that all along. So that faction probably didn’t do much negotiating either, knowing that they were going to unleash Boies on November 15th (paycheck day). Didn’t you see Boies at one of your stakeouts a month ago?
I’m not absolving the owners of all culpability, but it seems like the players themselves may have been too fractured to ever agree on anything.
Good point about the players being fractured, it was rumored players were collecting signatures for decertification over the weekend in which they had to review the last proposal. Which could mean that deal never really had a chance(unless it was drastically different than the previous). Perhaps at that point Billy and Fisher weren’t the strongest voice inside the union anymore and weren’t even capable of getting the deal in its present form to pass. Obviously that happened but it is different to think of parties being proactive against a deal than the union meeting on the deal and only then deciding on the course of action.
Even so everyone says the deal wasn’t all that bad and if the owners had made it a little sweeter would that have enticed enough players to clamor for it or would the leadership pushing for litigation have crushed that opinion?
I disagree with you on just about virtually everything with regards to the lockout, but I think close to the target on this one. Your general idea that the two sides were ever that close to begin with is something I agree with. I think the Union was making a number of concessions throughout the process, but I don’t feel they ever had the consent of the players to go as far as they did.
I recall reading many articles about players who were upset with the amount of BRI points the Union had been giving up (and with good reason imo). There were sources that said certain players/agents didn’t feel like they should have conceded a single BRI point, let alone seven of them.
The fact that the Union was able to gather 200 decertification signautes so quickly (especially when you take into account the likelihood of the significant number of players who probably play no active role or don’t have a clue as to what’s going on with the negotiations due to their own lack of interest) leads me to believe there was a significant chunk of players that was upset with the way this CBA process was going as well as how the Union was handling these negotiations. I don’t think this move was just out of disagreement directed towards just the owners, but disagreement directed towards the Union as well.