OK, the NBA is back. Now what will it look like? In the days leading up to Christmas – and likely through the first month of a truncated season – there will be a fair amount of hand-wringing about the quality of play. Gloom-and-doom purists will reference the last lockout preceding the 1998-99 season, which by any measure was not among the NBA’s brightest days. In that forgettable season, the NBA was replete with quickly formed teams made up of poorly conditioned
Two new trade rules in the new CBA
Okay, we’ve already discussed the amnesty provision and the stretch exception, two new pieces of the NBA’s pending collective bargaining agreement. Time to look a little further. Here are two cool things, especially for those of you who feast on player movement and possible trades. 1. It will be easier to make trades. Under the old labor agreement, the salaries of the traded players had to be within 125 percent (plus 100K) of each other. That will remain the case for taxpaying teams,
Heisler Column: Morning in Lakerdom: $150 mill profits, Dwight and CP3 too?
LOS ANGELES — What was THAT about? Chris Sheridan and I were both wrong on our predictions that the NBA would start on time (Chris), or by Dec. 1 (me). On the other hand, actual events, which were always going to reveal the real deal, proved our basic premise: The NBA was in far better shape than it claimed, citing $300 million annual losses, making a long work stoppage, as Spock used to say, most illogical (which in Vulcan can mean anything
Stretch exception means bad contracts could proliferate under new CBA
The hot topic right now in the NBA is the amnesty provision of the new collective bargaining agreement. The next thing to take a closer look at is the stretch exception, which is a mechanism that is designed to give relief to teams that make mistakes once the new collective bargaining agreement goes into effect. (The stretch exception does NOT apply to contracts signed under the old CBA). Here is the exact wording regarding the stretch exception from the memo that was
Amnesty program includes secondary waivers
And what, you may ask, is secondary waivers? The details still need to be ironed out in “secondary negotiations” between lawyers from the league office and the, ahem, union, but there is going to be a bidding process for players released under the amnesty clause of the new collective bargaining agreement. How will that bidding process work? Something like this: Let’s say the Orlando Magic decide to release Gilbert Arenas, who has $62 million remaining on his contract over the next three years, including
Mitnick Column: What NBA Players Learned In Europe
From FIBA-Europe
Guest Column: Twitter’s fascinating role in the lockout
(Readers: When the news came just after 3 a.m. today that the NBA lockout had been settled, there was no live TV coverage of the announcement, no streaming video on the Internet. The only place to get the news was Twitter, through updates from reporters in the room covering the news briefing. In this age of instant communications, it was another fascinating glimpse into the power of the 140-character communication tool.-CS) By Ryan Spoon of www.ryanspoon.com Sports fans got a Black Friday
Sheridan column: How the NBA deal got done, and what’s in it
csprtContainer(); NEW YORK — When it came time to be flexible, the commissioner who once called himself “Easy Dave” moved like he was Shakira. David Stern and the NBA’s team owners made concessions on several key issues, both financial and system-related, to get the NBA lockout settled in the wee hours of the morning today at the close of a 15-hour bargaining session. Here are some of the key details of those moves, according to a league source who was privy to the