// NEW YORK — Armegeddon arrived suddenly for the NBA today, with the players’ union legally disbanding and saying it will file a lawsuit seeking triple damages under anti-trust laws rather than accept the final proposal put forward by NBA owners. Billy Hunter is now disempowered, David Stern says the season is in jeopardy, and the new man in charge is high-powered attorney David Boies, who represented NFL owners defending themselves against a decertification movement last summer and whose most famous case, Bush
Lockout update: Decision day for players, or not
NEW YORK — Billy Hunter is getting a break today from the cabal of agents who want to kick him out of his job. They are sitting on a decertification petition with more than 200 signatures, and a source in that cabal told SheridanHoops.com that it is highly unlikely the petition will be filed with the NLRB until Hunter meets with 30 team player representatives at a Times Square hotel. So Hunter has bought some time. What remains to be seen is whether
Lockout update: Misinformation rules
NEW YORK — Players reps from all 30 NBA teams are arriving in town today, and tomorrow they’ll get debriefed on what is and what isn’t in the owners’ latest proposal. Up until now, they’ve been getting fed plenty of bad information in the two days since the owners and players went their separate ways at the conclusion of Thursday night’s bargaining session. Case in point: ESPN.com drew 5,000-plus comments on a story about how players could be sent down to the D-League
Lockout update: Player reps to meet Monday
NEW YORK — Player representatives from each of the 30 NBA teams will meet Monday in New York, and it is a guessing game as to what happens from there. Reject that deal that is on the table and demand further talks? Approve a vote of the entire player population but refuse to endorse the owners’ latest offer? Endorse the growing decertification movement? We will find out soon enough. In the meantime, some details have emerged of what is contained in the latest proposal. The
NBA Lockout: What’s next
csprtContainer(); NEW YORK — The season will start Dec. 15, there will be 72 games, and the start of the NBA finals will be pushed back into mid-June instead of early June. That is assuming the players ratify the proposal David Stern made to the union late last night. Here are the next several steps: 1. The union’s player reps, with one player representing each team, will have the proposal detailed for them at a meeting in New York on Monday or Tuesday (depending
Kobe Bryant wants another meeting with owners
Kudos to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports for landing the interview of the day: “As the NBA and Players Association trudge toward a possible doomsday deadline, Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant urged owners to meet with the players union before Wednesday and spare the league from “spiraling into a nuclear winter.” “We need for the two sides to get together again before Wednesday, because we’re too close to getting a deal done,” Bryant told Yahoo! Sports on Monday. “We need
Buy This Shoe, Plus Morning Lockout Roundup
NEW YORK — I was supposed to go to a Converse event late last week, but the lockout interceded when the union called a media briefing at its headquarters in Harlem and I had to choose news over shoes. I told Mandy Gutmann (who left her post as a Knicks media relations staff for the greener pastures of Converse) that I would find a way to make up for my absence, and there it is. (I saw more people wearing Chuck Taylors in
Involuntary Decertification Possible in NBA lockout
// Updating what I am reporting in the above video, there is more news: As many as 50 NBA players held two conference calls this week to discuss decertification as a fallback option. This was a strategy that was employed in the summer-long 1995 lockout, forcing Charles Grantham from power as he was replaced by Simon Gourdine. This time, it would be a revolt from within the ranks aimed at stripping Billy Hunter of his power, and it would fall under the category