The 1 Percent Solution (Cont.): Let’s see, a 2 percent difference, divided by two warring parties is …
Anyone?
Anyone?
OK, it’s still insoluble for NBA owners and players, now reportedly down to back-channel contacts, which may just mean Tim Frank and Dan Wasserman, the p.r. guys, found themselves in the same line at Starbucks.
On the other hand, if the side at 50 percent of revenue isn’t in touch with the side at 52 percent while their lawyers prepare to sue each other back to the Stone Age, someone is crazy.
Not that that means much with so many of the participants having already gone certifiably bonkers.
With 24 percent of the schedule gone, the tab is $1 billion, payable this season… to fight over one percentage point worth $500 million, over 10 years.
That’s before assessing the damage the NBA has done to itself after 12 seasons of trying to rebuild its image since Michael Jordan left Chicago.
Happily, or not, who even knows the NBA isn’t playing?
Check national talk shows. Aside from broadcast partners like ESPN, few people are paying the NBA the compliment of noticing it’s gone.
The few who do aren’t really paying attention, saying predictable things about Players Spurning All That Money.
Yes, NBA players are often divas, and, as a group, teams (if not owners) have long lived close to the blade economically.
Now the owners’ problem is as much their rich ones trying to keep their wildly disproportionate profits from the small ones.
The players have already signed off on a mega-giveback.
As far as gains, the players get none in this deal which cuts contract length and raises as usual… ready to take 51 percent, down from 57, a giveback worth $2.7 billion over 10 years, by itself.
That’s a conservative estimate, based on splitting the NBA’s projected 5 percent gain this season in half (that’s 2.5 percent for owners unfamiliar with the process), which would put revenues at a $4.5 billion average over 10 years.
Offered $2.7 billion, the owners said they couldn’t live with $1 less than $3.2 billion and the players could take it or leave it.
The owners are now supposedly back down to 47 percent, seeking rollbacks of existing contracts, etc., at least according to the timetable they announced.
Actually, David Stern hasn’t mentioned that lately, to avoid confusion with the players’ charge the NBA refused to bargain in good faith, the basis of their anti-trust suit.
Leaving legal strategy aside, if there are owners waiting for the players to give up, and we know who you are, they got it wrong, again.
The only pressure on Billy Hunter and Derek Fisher has come from big agents and other militants that finally led to decertification.
Actually, Hunter should have done it months ago.
In 1998-99 with the big agents in control of the union ready to shut down in defense of their stars’ uncapped salaries, the divided players held out until the January drop-dead date and made a deal without decertifying.
Hunter could be forgiven for thinking nothing could be that bad again.
Or maybe, as Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski suggested, Billy wanted to keep drawing his pay.
In any case, courts have a sobering effect on over-entitled owners, who recognize few enough limits.
The conventional wisdom is that last spring’s NFL players’ suit had no effect, since the league got its lockout reinstated on appeal.
Actually, decertification hit NFL owners, the most entitled of all, between the eyes.
One day Carolina Pantthers owner Jerry Richardson was calling Peyton Manning “son” and asking if he needed help reading a profit and loss sheet.
The next day, the owners’ demand for an expanded schedule was relegated to an issue they could reintroduce (and the players could resist). Peace arrived in time to play almost all the exhibition games.
Meanwhile, Hunter was giving Stern and NBA owners the summer off.
Maybe Hunter thought too much of Stern, even knowing how crazed the owners were.
Maybe Billy thought too much of the NBA owners.
Actually, so did I, after a career of covering as many owners’ foibles as players’ foibles. Live and learn.
When this started, I dismissed the owners’ incredible claims of $300 million annual losses, assuming time and the process would reveal the truth.
Indeed, Stern, who’s rational, if not one who likes to be crossed, dropped his draconian demands in October, trying to get the 50-50 deal insiders said he wanted all along.
Knowing the pressure on Stern, it wasn’t surprising that he cancelled the first two weeks.
Big kidder that he is, Stern had an ace in the hole, a plan to turn back the clock and play 82 games.
That was when they almost made peace, after which the warmongers inherited the league.
Of course, no one goes to war for 2 percent unless they’re wackos, don’t need the money or both.
OK, wackos, whose move is it again?
Mark Heisler is a regular contributor to SheridanHoops. His columns appear each Monday.
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The owners are trying to implement a system where they won’t have to compete for player services. The overall effect would be a league-wide compression of player salaries.
That’s the BIG PROBLEM for players
The players would be guaranteed exactly 50% of BRI, no more, no less. The issues are not what you think they are.
Not about the split, Dan. It’s about player movement and owners not having to bid in free agency.
Please explain how the owners’ proposal means players are restricted to offers from one team, thus no bidding.
The owners have spelled out what they feel needs fixing for long term health of the league, and what they propose to do about it. You may not think it needs fixing, but it’s their league, their money, not yours. What have the players, or what do you, offer to address the owners’ concerns? The door is wide open for alternative solutions.
If only 3 or 4 teams can bid for a player’s services, it restricts movement and cuts paycheck.
DeeNBA – If the players as a whole are getting 50% of BRI, one player’s paycheck getting restricted incrementally increases every other player’s actual pay. While one player’s paycheck being bid higher and higher reduces every other player’s salary incrementally, such that the total remains at 50%. As such, the players’ union as a whole will not be impacted by any such scenario, financially.
Movement may indeed be restricted – of course, with shorter contracts, you should actually see increased movement under this CBA compared to the last one.
Some owners want more control over player movement and contract negotiations, but they would also happily have a system that guarantees them profits as well (47%BRI).
They say it is for competitive balance; players say it is training wheels for GM’s and completely unnecessary for any small gain in competitive balance.
If only 3 or 4 teams can bid for a player’s services, it restricts movement and cuts paycheck.
So, you suggest that the right thing to do is for the owners to give control of how the league is run, and how the owners’ moneys are spent, to the players
So, you suggest that the right thing to do is for the players to give in to a system where 1 -2 players get paid nicely, consuming 60 – 70% of the salary cap while the other 10 – 12 players on the team fight for scraps? While at the same time restricting player movement and compressing salaries league-wide?
This is a poorly written article. On top of that, it’s mashed with a lot of arguments and rheteric we’ve been hearing the last several months. Seems several media outlets covering the NBA are getting board with the lack of movement because there is really nothing else to report. Morever, have we ever witnessed the amount of reporters getting burned by so called “Sources” during this process? I honestly blame twitter for this…
Brutal.
Only thing worse than the lockout is reading Heisler’s jumbled, unstructured columns about it.
Agreed. I always appreciate the input and analysis one can get from this site, but yikes, this column is nearly impossible to follow.
I thought the whole problem on the part of the players are the “system issues”. The union tells us they signed off on 50-50 but want no restrictions on player movement.
Meanwhile Heisler is back writing as if the BRI split is still a problem or the only problem. Where has he been the last two weeks? Has he been following any of this?
Heisler must have been in a coma for the last couple weeks..The players and owners settled on a BRI number and it’s the system issues that are causing all the issues
yeah im not sure this guy even follows the lockout. Also- it wasnt stupid not to decertify. If the two sides were able to come that close, I think it was reasonable to assume they would be able to get a deal done. Granted that turned out to be inaccurate…. but I dont think it was that far fetched to think a deal could be reached. That’s kind of the frusterating part about all of this.
NO KIDDING!! Why is something as clueless as this even being published here? The esteem I had for this place just dropped a chunk.
Even if this was 2 weeks ago, the owners had made it quite clear from square one that system issues were a big part of this “negotiation”. Everyone even knew the owners weren’t buying into tying the two issues together, like the players wanted. The players blindly feel that since they gave on BRI, the owners should completely drop the system issues. As far as I’m concerned, the owners tweaked those system issues too much already, but Heisler seems to be living in a world that passed months ago.
Well when the players have done only one thing, capitulate, it is easy to keep asking for more.