Cleveland Cavaliers superstar and four-time league MVP LeBron James recently made waves when asked about the impact that the NBA’s new television rights deal will have on future collective bargaining (CBA) negotiations. He took a very strong stance.
The whole thing that went on with the last negotiation process was the owners was telling us that they were losing money. There’s no way they can sit in front of us and tell us that right now.”
SheridanHoops managing editor Chris Bernucca detailed NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s comments on the TV deal Monday.
As Bernucca mentioned, the big issue for players is the loss of income. The owner’s insistence that they were losing money equated to a loss of roughly seven-percent of basketball-related income (BRI) in the last CBA negotiations. Now, with the new nine-year extension to the league’s television rights set to kick in in 2016-17, the NBA stands to earn $2.66 billion annually — nearly three times as much as the current deal.
Tuesday another big name NBA athlete spoke up, this time going directly to social media.
Players are “encouraged” per new CBA to take less to win or risk being called selfish+ungrateful while nbatv deal goes UP by a BILLION #biz
— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) October 7, 2014
*Correction, Kobe, it went up by $1.73 billion.
Los Angeles Lakers fans, and many NBA fans in general, were disapproving of Bryant’s 2013 two-year contract that guaranteed him $48.5 million while his health (and the quality of the players around him) continued to fall. Fans were hoping for a “sacrifice” for the sake of winning. However, as Bryant and James would likely both point out, the players already made their sacrifice in 2011.
NBA owners are now getting big dividends. Bryant is right, basketball is “#biz” [business]. It’s BIG business, to be exact, and with big names like James (and Bryant) speaking out, the tone is being set for the players, who can opt out of the current CBA in June of 2017, to get theirs.
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Michael Brumagin writes the Tweet of the Day for SheridanHoops.com and is also a correspondent for BleacherReport.com. Follow @mbrumagin