The Official NBA Collective Bargaining Thread vol Phased in Hard Cap

[big j 33]

I'm a pessimist

but that's still good news.

 

[big j 33]

I'm a pessimist

but that's still good news.

 

[pmatic]

NBA lockout heads to key stretch this weekend

Regular-season games could be at stake when NBA owners and players meet this weekend.

And those might not be all that is lost, Commissioner David Stern warned, without real headway toward a new labor deal.

"All I'd say to that is that there are enormous consequences at play here on the basis of the weekend," Stern said Wednesday. "Either we'll make very good progress, and we know what that would mean - we know how good that would be, without putting dates to it - or we won't make any progress and then it won't be a question of just starting the season on time, it will be a lot at risk because of the absence of progress."

Talks between negotiators ended after two days Wednesday so they could return home before summoning their respective bargaining committees to New York for the most important stretch of the lockout. They will meet Friday and are prepared to talk through the weekend if progress toward a new collective bargaining agreement is being made.

There hasn't been enough of it so far, with the lockout nearly three months complete.

Both Stern and union president Derek Fisher of the Lakers said they are not close, with the Nov. 1 season opener a little more than a month away, and Fisher added the commitment to block out multiple days this weekend "points more toward the calendar than actually being able to measure progress."

"It points to the realities that we face with our calendar and that if we can't find a way to get some common ground really, really soon, then the time of starting the regular season at its scheduled date is going to be in jeopardy big-time," he added.

Training camps already have been postponed and 43 games scheduled for the first week of the preseason have been canceled. The league has said it will make decisions about the remainder of exhibition play as warranted, and those could come shortly.

Fisher said some of the league's biggest names could join the executive committee in Friday's meeting, and Miami guard Dwyane Wade has committed to attend.

Wade was part of a meeting about labor issues at the 2010 All-Star weekend in Dallas, when players were briefed about owners' plans for dramatic changes to the league's salary structure. Owners have been looking to reduce the players' guarantee of basketball-related income from 57 percent to somewhere in the mid-40s.

"I look forward to learning something that I didn't learn two years ago," Wade told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "Hopefully, it's different information, something that will move us forward. Hopefully we don't walk out of the meeting back at where we were at the All-Star game two years ago."

Wade has been in New York for the past couple days for business meetings. When the invitation came to attend Friday's session, he did not hesitate.

"I've talked to a couple guys," Wade said. "I'm here. ... I was going to leave tomorrow, but I'm going to stay in town and go to the next meeting."

Fisher will brief the players first on the state of the talks.

"I can't say that common ground is evident, but our desire to try to get there I think is there," Fisher said. "We still have a great deal of issues to work through, so there won't be any magic that will happen this weekend to just make those things go away, but we have to put the time in."

The sides met for about four hours Wednesday, again in small groups.

The full groups have met only once since the lockout began July 1, and it resulted in a setback. Players were prepared to make what union executive director Billy Hunter called a "significant" financial concession, but owners rejected their call to leave the current salary cap structure intact as a condition of the move.

Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said it was time to go back to the larger groups again because "whatever decisions we are now going to be making would be so monumental given the point of the calendar that we're at."

Stern wouldn't comment on reports that owners had softened their insistence on a hard salary cap in favor of adding more restrictions to the current cap system that allows teams to exceed it through use of certain exceptions. Nor would he say if the season could still start on Nov. 1 without any preseason play.

"I shouldn't deal with hypotheticals here," he said. "I'm focused on let's get the two committees in and see whether they can either have a season or not have a season, and that's what's at risk this weekend."
Link

@brianmahoney The NBA lockout reaches the point where it's time to cancel weekend plans, and then maybe cancel games. http://apne.ws/lfoHVY

@brianmahoney Stern wants to play 12/25. Not sure how much he cares about 11/1, so players could try to call his bluff on long-range cancellation threat.

@brianmahoney But would it be worth it? Feels like a lose now or lose later situation for the players, which is where this was probably always headed.

 

[pmatic]

NBA lockout heads to key stretch this weekend

Regular-season games could be at stake when NBA owners and players meet this weekend.

And those might not be all that is lost, Commissioner David Stern warned, without real headway toward a new labor deal.

"All I'd say to that is that there are enormous consequences at play here on the basis of the weekend," Stern said Wednesday. "Either we'll make very good progress, and we know what that would mean - we know how good that would be, without putting dates to it - or we won't make any progress and then it won't be a question of just starting the season on time, it will be a lot at risk because of the absence of progress."

Talks between negotiators ended after two days Wednesday so they could return home before summoning their respective bargaining committees to New York for the most important stretch of the lockout. They will meet Friday and are prepared to talk through the weekend if progress toward a new collective bargaining agreement is being made.

There hasn't been enough of it so far, with the lockout nearly three months complete.

Both Stern and union president Derek Fisher of the Lakers said they are not close, with the Nov. 1 season opener a little more than a month away, and Fisher added the commitment to block out multiple days this weekend "points more toward the calendar than actually being able to measure progress."

"It points to the realities that we face with our calendar and that if we can't find a way to get some common ground really, really soon, then the time of starting the regular season at its scheduled date is going to be in jeopardy big-time," he added.

Training camps already have been postponed and 43 games scheduled for the first week of the preseason have been canceled. The league has said it will make decisions about the remainder of exhibition play as warranted, and those could come shortly.

Fisher said some of the league's biggest names could join the executive committee in Friday's meeting, and Miami guard Dwyane Wade has committed to attend.

Wade was part of a meeting about labor issues at the 2010 All-Star weekend in Dallas, when players were briefed about owners' plans for dramatic changes to the league's salary structure. Owners have been looking to reduce the players' guarantee of basketball-related income from 57 percent to somewhere in the mid-40s.

"I look forward to learning something that I didn't learn two years ago," Wade told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "Hopefully, it's different information, something that will move us forward. Hopefully we don't walk out of the meeting back at where we were at the All-Star game two years ago."

Wade has been in New York for the past couple days for business meetings. When the invitation came to attend Friday's session, he did not hesitate.

"I've talked to a couple guys," Wade said. "I'm here. ... I was going to leave tomorrow, but I'm going to stay in town and go to the next meeting."

Fisher will brief the players first on the state of the talks.

"I can't say that common ground is evident, but our desire to try to get there I think is there," Fisher said. "We still have a great deal of issues to work through, so there won't be any magic that will happen this weekend to just make those things go away, but we have to put the time in."

The sides met for about four hours Wednesday, again in small groups.

The full groups have met only once since the lockout began July 1, and it resulted in a setback. Players were prepared to make what union executive director Billy Hunter called a "significant" financial concession, but owners rejected their call to leave the current salary cap structure intact as a condition of the move.

Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said it was time to go back to the larger groups again because "whatever decisions we are now going to be making would be so monumental given the point of the calendar that we're at."

Stern wouldn't comment on reports that owners had softened their insistence on a hard salary cap in favor of adding more restrictions to the current cap system that allows teams to exceed it through use of certain exceptions. Nor would he say if the season could still start on Nov. 1 without any preseason play.

"I shouldn't deal with hypotheticals here," he said. "I'm focused on let's get the two committees in and see whether they can either have a season or not have a season, and that's what's at risk this weekend."
Link

@brianmahoney The NBA lockout reaches the point where it's time to cancel weekend plans, and then maybe cancel games. http://apne.ws/lfoHVY

@brianmahoney Stern wants to play 12/25. Not sure how much he cares about 11/1, so players could try to call his bluff on long-range cancellation threat.

@brianmahoney But would it be worth it? Feels like a lose now or lose later situation for the players, which is where this was probably always headed.

 

[bigmike23]

Stern needs to shut the ++*% up with that fake threat

 

[bigmike23]

Stern needs to shut the ++*% up with that fake threat

 

[pmatic]

Stern aims to close out labor win

Here was David Stern playing the lockout bogeyman on a city sidewalk, reaching past Billy Hunter and Derek Fisher to speak directly to the players with a doom-and-gloom prophecy. Come on down to the posh Manhattan hotel on Friday, stay the weekend, and let me show you all over again how the commissioner buries the NBA bodies. When Stern dictates this lockout is over, it ends.

That’s the hard truth, the hard road to labor peace. Stern’s job is convincing the owners to pull off the press, take the 30-point victory and leave the floor with some grace and dignity.

This has been rigged for years and months and weeks, and here’s how a deal happens this weekend: In the carnage of a devastating collective bargaining loss for the union with billions of dollars redirected into owners’ pockets, Stern has to give Hunter something to take back to the players, so that the union’s bloodied, bruised and beaten executive director can still raise his arms and declare that, yes, we won.

Stern’s “going to make a real hard push to get a deal this weekend,

 

[pmatic]

Stern aims to close out labor win

Here was David Stern playing the lockout bogeyman on a city sidewalk, reaching past Billy Hunter and Derek Fisher to speak directly to the players with a doom-and-gloom prophecy. Come on down to the posh Manhattan hotel on Friday, stay the weekend, and let me show you all over again how the commissioner buries the NBA bodies. When Stern dictates this lockout is over, it ends.

That’s the hard truth, the hard road to labor peace. Stern’s job is convincing the owners to pull off the press, take the 30-point victory and leave the floor with some grace and dignity.

This has been rigged for years and months and weeks, and here’s how a deal happens this weekend: In the carnage of a devastating collective bargaining loss for the union with billions of dollars redirected into owners’ pockets, Stern has to give Hunter something to take back to the players, so that the union’s bloodied, bruised and beaten executive director can still raise his arms and declare that, yes, we won.

Stern’s “going to make a real hard push to get a deal this weekend,

 

[pmatic]

NBA Lockout: Where the settlement lies, dollar-wise

From what I can gather, it is looking more and more like a deal is going to be cut in the 51/49 or 50/50 range when it comes to the split of basketball related income.
It’ll probably take the sides a couple of days to get to that point when negotiations resume Friday, with the owners currently offering only 46-48 percent (down from 57 percent in the last deal) and the players at 54 (but having shown a willlingness to drop to the 52 range).

The owners also have moved only slightly off their late June flatlined offer of $2 billion per season with no increases over the following six seasons. But move they will, and if they come to the table with an offer that keeps salaries and benefits close to where they were in 2010-11 — $2.19 billion, that’ll be the clincher in getting players to ratify the deal.

I have been telling you since this site opened for business early this month that the two main words to keep in mind throughout this process were “aggregate dollars

 

[pmatic]

NBA Lockout: Where the settlement lies, dollar-wise

From what I can gather, it is looking more and more like a deal is going to be cut in the 51/49 or 50/50 range when it comes to the split of basketball related income.
It’ll probably take the sides a couple of days to get to that point when negotiations resume Friday, with the owners currently offering only 46-48 percent (down from 57 percent in the last deal) and the players at 54 (but having shown a willlingness to drop to the 52 range).

The owners also have moved only slightly off their late June flatlined offer of $2 billion per season with no increases over the following six seasons. But move they will, and if they come to the table with an offer that keeps salaries and benefits close to where they were in 2010-11 — $2.19 billion, that’ll be the clincher in getting players to ratify the deal.

I have been telling you since this site opened for business early this month that the two main words to keep in mind throughout this process were “aggregate dollars

 

[statis22]

3:1 luxury tax

4:1 luxury tax

 

[statis22]

3:1 luxury tax

4:1 luxury tax

 

[pmatic]

Meetings reach critical stage

After two years of mostly fruitless labor talks, league officials and union leaders will reconvene Friday in New York on the 92nd day of the NBA lockout for what is being widely regarded as a now-or-never weekend of negotiations.

The cancellation of regular-season games is a certainty if significant progress toward a deal isn't made over the next 72 hours, according to sources close to the talks, but NBA commissioner David Stern left the impression this week that far more is at stake with his comments after Wednesday's bargaining sessions.

"I'm focused on let's get the two committees in and see whether they can either have a season or not have a season," Stern said, "and that's what's at risk this weekend."

ESPN.com reported Thursday that Stern is prepared to threaten the cancellation of the entire season if the sides don't emerge from the weekend with a deal. The league has denied that Stern has any such intentions, with NBA spokesman Tim Frank saying: "It's simply not true."

Friday's session is expected to attract as many as 15 owners. Sources told ESPN The Magazine's Chris Broussard that Miami's LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, New York's Carmelo Anthony, Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant and Boston's Paul Pierce are among the star players scheduled to attend in support of the union's executive committee, which includes New Orleans' Chris Paul. The respective parties have pledged to keep meeting through Sunday as long as the direction of talks is positive.

Stern said Wednesday the owners and players "are not near a deal," but there is a level of optimism around the league -- albeit modest -- that the framework of a deal can indeed be agreed to by the middle of next week and thus preserve the entire 82-game regular season.

That optimism, sources say, stems from the fact that the construction of a deal made in the next 72 to 96 hours would not include a hard salary cap and would preserve guaranteed contracts for the players, which rank as two of the union's biggest priorities.

Yet sources say the owners, in exchange for those two concessions, continue to make stringent demands in a number of other areas in their quest to dramatically slice the amount of annual revenue earned by players, shorten contract lengths and institute a far more restrictive system to divide revenues.

Over the course of the week, various sources with knowledge of the talks have shared some of the concepts being discussed with ESPN.com. Possibilities presented by the league as alternatives to a hard cap include:

•  The institution of a sliding "Supertax" that would charge teams $2 in luxury tax for every dollar over $70 million in payroll, $3 for every dollar over $75 million in payroll and $4 for every dollar for teams with payrolls above $80 million

•  A provision to allow each team to release one player via the so-called "amnesty" clause and gain both salary-cap and luxury-tax relief when that player's cap number is removed from the books

•  Shortening guaranteed contracts to a maximum of three or four seasons

•  Limiting Larry Bird rights -- which enable teams to exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own free agents -- to one player per team per season

•  Reducing the annual mid-level exception, which was valued at $5.8 million last season, to roughly $3 million annually and limiting mid-level contracts to a maximum of two or three seasons in length as opposed to the current maximum of five seasons

•  A new "Carmelo Rule" that would prevent teams -- as the New York Knicks did in February with Anthony -- from using a Bird exception to sign or extend a player acquired by trade unless they are acquired before July 1 of the final season of the player's contract

•  The abolition of sign-and-trades and the bi-annual exception worth $2 million

•  Significant reductions in maximum salaries and annual raises and a 5 percent rollbacks on current contracts

There are also still some teams, sources say, who are pushing for some sort of franchise-tag system similar to what the NFL employs as well as a restriction that allows big spending teams to exceed the annual luxury-tax threshold only twice every five seasons.

Yet it remains to be seen how many of these concepts, many of which have been met with union resistance, actually become elements of a deal. Agreeing on those finer points is secondary to striking an agreement on the percentage of the revenue split, which literally shapes what the rest of the next labor pact will look like. The players are still seeking 52 to 54 percent of basketball-related income and the owners remain intent on getting the figure in the high 40s. Players earned 57 percent of basketball-related income last season.

"We just haven't been able to get to a space, at least the formal proposals that have been on the table, get us to place where we can agree on a deal at this point," Players Association president Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers said Wednesday.

"And so economically, we've tried to kind of leave that one floating and deal with some system issues and see what we can carve out there. But we're working at it."

Players Association chief Billy Hunter has said his players have instructed union leadership that they would rather continue to sit out than accept a bad deal. But Stern's warnings Wednesday were especially ominous, when he seemed to be suggesting that the notion of a shortened season -- as seen in 1998-99 when the NBA settled for a 50-game schedule after finally striking a deal Jan. 6, 1999 -- is not an option.

"Either we'll make very good progress -- and we know what that would mean, we know how good that would be, without putting dates to it -- or we won't make any progress and then it won't be a question of just starting the season on time, there will be a lot at risk because of the absence of progress," Stern said Wednesday, insisting that "enormous consequences" are looming if this round of talks can't generate the framework of a deal.

Training camps have already been postponed indefinitely and 43 preseason games scheduled for Oct. 9-15 were canceled last week. With the scheduled Nov. 1 season openers just over a month away, Stern said there would be "a lot of risk" attached to a failure to reach an agreement in principle by the middle of the next week. Sources say that's essentially as long as the league can hold out in order to ensure that the entire 82-game regular season can be saved.

The weekend's most interesting sidebar, meanwhile, would arise if Miami's James and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert end up in the same negotiating session. That would result in their first face-to-face meeting since James left Cleveland for Miami last summer.
Link

 

[pmatic]

Meetings reach critical stage

After two years of mostly fruitless labor talks, league officials and union leaders will reconvene Friday in New York on the 92nd day of the NBA lockout for what is being widely regarded as a now-or-never weekend of negotiations.

The cancellation of regular-season games is a certainty if significant progress toward a deal isn't made over the next 72 hours, according to sources close to the talks, but NBA commissioner David Stern left the impression this week that far more is at stake with his comments after Wednesday's bargaining sessions.

"I'm focused on let's get the two committees in and see whether they can either have a season or not have a season," Stern said, "and that's what's at risk this weekend."

ESPN.com reported Thursday that Stern is prepared to threaten the cancellation of the entire season if the sides don't emerge from the weekend with a deal. The league has denied that Stern has any such intentions, with NBA spokesman Tim Frank saying: "It's simply not true."

Friday's session is expected to attract as many as 15 owners. Sources told ESPN The Magazine's Chris Broussard that Miami's LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, New York's Carmelo Anthony, Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant and Boston's Paul Pierce are among the star players scheduled to attend in support of the union's executive committee, which includes New Orleans' Chris Paul. The respective parties have pledged to keep meeting through Sunday as long as the direction of talks is positive.

Stern said Wednesday the owners and players "are not near a deal," but there is a level of optimism around the league -- albeit modest -- that the framework of a deal can indeed be agreed to by the middle of next week and thus preserve the entire 82-game regular season.

That optimism, sources say, stems from the fact that the construction of a deal made in the next 72 to 96 hours would not include a hard salary cap and would preserve guaranteed contracts for the players, which rank as two of the union's biggest priorities.

Yet sources say the owners, in exchange for those two concessions, continue to make stringent demands in a number of other areas in their quest to dramatically slice the amount of annual revenue earned by players, shorten contract lengths and institute a far more restrictive system to divide revenues.

Over the course of the week, various sources with knowledge of the talks have shared some of the concepts being discussed with ESPN.com. Possibilities presented by the league as alternatives to a hard cap include:

•  The institution of a sliding "Supertax" that would charge teams $2 in luxury tax for every dollar over $70 million in payroll, $3 for every dollar over $75 million in payroll and $4 for every dollar for teams with payrolls above $80 million

•  A provision to allow each team to release one player via the so-called "amnesty" clause and gain both salary-cap and luxury-tax relief when that player's cap number is removed from the books

•  Shortening guaranteed contracts to a maximum of three or four seasons

•  Limiting Larry Bird rights -- which enable teams to exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own free agents -- to one player per team per season

•  Reducing the annual mid-level exception, which was valued at $5.8 million last season, to roughly $3 million annually and limiting mid-level contracts to a maximum of two or three seasons in length as opposed to the current maximum of five seasons

•  A new "Carmelo Rule" that would prevent teams -- as the New York Knicks did in February with Anthony -- from using a Bird exception to sign or extend a player acquired by trade unless they are acquired before July 1 of the final season of the player's contract

•  The abolition of sign-and-trades and the bi-annual exception worth $2 million

•  Significant reductions in maximum salaries and annual raises and a 5 percent rollbacks on current contracts

There are also still some teams, sources say, who are pushing for some sort of franchise-tag system similar to what the NFL employs as well as a restriction that allows big spending teams to exceed the annual luxury-tax threshold only twice every five seasons.

Yet it remains to be seen how many of these concepts, many of which have been met with union resistance, actually become elements of a deal. Agreeing on those finer points is secondary to striking an agreement on the percentage of the revenue split, which literally shapes what the rest of the next labor pact will look like. The players are still seeking 52 to 54 percent of basketball-related income and the owners remain intent on getting the figure in the high 40s. Players earned 57 percent of basketball-related income last season.

"We just haven't been able to get to a space, at least the formal proposals that have been on the table, get us to place where we can agree on a deal at this point," Players Association president Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers said Wednesday.

"And so economically, we've tried to kind of leave that one floating and deal with some system issues and see what we can carve out there. But we're working at it."

Players Association chief Billy Hunter has said his players have instructed union leadership that they would rather continue to sit out than accept a bad deal. But Stern's warnings Wednesday were especially ominous, when he seemed to be suggesting that the notion of a shortened season -- as seen in 1998-99 when the NBA settled for a 50-game schedule after finally striking a deal Jan. 6, 1999 -- is not an option.

"Either we'll make very good progress -- and we know what that would mean, we know how good that would be, without putting dates to it -- or we won't make any progress and then it won't be a question of just starting the season on time, there will be a lot at risk because of the absence of progress," Stern said Wednesday, insisting that "enormous consequences" are looming if this round of talks can't generate the framework of a deal.

Training camps have already been postponed indefinitely and 43 preseason games scheduled for Oct. 9-15 were canceled last week. With the scheduled Nov. 1 season openers just over a month away, Stern said there would be "a lot of risk" attached to a failure to reach an agreement in principle by the middle of the next week. Sources say that's essentially as long as the league can hold out in order to ensure that the entire 82-game regular season can be saved.

The weekend's most interesting sidebar, meanwhile, would arise if Miami's James and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert end up in the same negotiating session. That would result in their first face-to-face meeting since James left Cleveland for Miami last summer.
Link

 

[pmatic]

Wade, LeBron make stand in labor meeting

Before a stunning confrontation between Dwyane Wade and NBA commissioner David Stern in Friday’s labor meeting, Wade, LeBron James and Chris Paul told their Players Association peers that they’re willing to sit out the season rather than make further concessions to the owners, sources told Yahoo! Sports.

Wade, James and Paul were at the forefront of a strong players presence at a Park Avenue hotel for Friday’s contentious bargaining session. In a private union meeting prior to the bargaining session with owners, James kept reiterating to the group of elite players that they shouldn’t give back a greater share of the league’s basketball-related income (BRI) than what they’d already conceded in previous negotiations.

“We’re all together on 53 [percent], right?

 

[westcoastsfinest]

 

[pmatic]

Meeting is going on 7 hours and counting.

 

[big j 33]

Chris Mannix: With seemingly minimal progress made at today's labor negotiations, expect remainder of the preseason to be cancelled in the next day or two

Chris Broussard: I asked Matt Bonner if the owners & players closed the gap today: "maybe a little but u have to remember how large the gap was."

Chris Broussard: Union council Jeff Kessler just said "still very far apart."

Ken Berger: Union lawyer Jeffrey Kessler: No discussion of BRI today, just system. Back at it Monday in small groups

 

[doublejs07]

Originally Posted by Big J 33



Chris Mannix: With seemingly minimal progress made at today's labor negotiations, expect remainder of the preseason to be cancelled in the next day or two

Chris Broussard: I asked Matt Bonner if the owners & players closed the gap today: "maybe a little but u have to remember how large the gap was."

Chris Broussard: Union council Jeff Kessler just said "still very far apart."

Ken Berger: Union lawyer Jeffrey Kessler: No discussion of BRI today, just system. Back at it Monday in small groups

At least their working (looking for a positive here

)....i'm still thinking the season starts with a maximum of 10 games lost....no biggie in the grand scheme of things.  They'll hammer it out by the end of next week. 

 

[duba169]

[h1]Long session yields little progress; sides to meet Monday[/h1]

Posted Oct 1 2011 7:38PM - Updated Oct 1 2011 9:28PM

NEW YORK -- The longest negotiating session yet in the NBA labor talks produced only modest progress Saturday, offering neither a breakthrough nor a breakdown. No new collective bargaining agreement but no cancellation of games, regular season or even preseason (officially), either.

Instead, it was more of the same: Meetings Monday (small group) and Tuesday (large group) back in Manhattan.

On the first day of the lockout's fourth month, negotiators for the owners and the players spent more than seven hours discussing system issues -- the salary cap, luxury taxes, other structural clauses -- either face-to-face or in their respective huddles.

No time, however, was spent discussing the economic elephant in the room, union attorney Jeffrey Kessler and others said. That is, the split of basketball-related income that will either green-light or red-light every other topic in play.

"We're not near anything," NBA commissioner David Stern said. "But wherever that is, we're closer than we were before."

Said Billy Hunter, executive director of the National Basketball Players Association: "They put some concepts out, we put some concepts out and we're still miles apart. There's a huge ... gap that, I don't know whether we're going to be able to close it or not."

Ninety-three days in, lest anyone forgets.

At Hunter's suggestion, the sides agreed to "de-couple" the financial and system issues in Saturday's session. This was done, the two sides said, to hone in, maybe take a stab at dividing-and-conquering. Then again, it might have been a case of being so far apart on the former that they opted to take a crack at the latter.

"It at least helped us to focus on a couple of issues," deputy commissioner Adam Silver said. "Some of the earlier meetings had been a little bit more rambling in terms of various issues raised, put on the table, taken off the table. Here, there was an agreement there was a set of issues that both sides went back and forth on, and I think it was very helpful."

In fact, there had been attempts at tackling each issue separately in September and even back in June. But the calendar wasn't providing the same urgency then that it is now -- what should be the start of training camps Monday instead will bring only more talking.

The first week of preseason games (Oct. 9-15) has been canceled and it seems only a formality until the balance of October dates will get zapped too. That puts something even bigger on the line: The league's regular season is scheduled to open Nov. 1. But Stern said there would be no cancellations of practice or real games announced Monday.

While Hunter was the one who raised the "de-coupling" idea of money and structure for Saturday, even he acknowledged that the beams inevitably cross. To put it simply, if the economic split -- which favored the players 57/43 in the old CBA -- was appealing enough to one side, it probably could tolerate all sorts of structural concessions. And vice versa.

"When you're talking about the system, you're still sensitive or conscious about the number," Hunter said, "because the number is going to have an impact on the system.

"If we say that we don't want an egregious luxury tax, well, they may want one and it depends on where the number is going to be set what the tax might look like. So if you say you're going to postpone talking about one, it's still in the back of your mind."

Hunter confirmed that the owners' offer on BRI continues to be a 46 percent share for the players. The union has been seeking 54 percent or something closer to it. In lieu of "hard cap" verbiage, the owners have proposed a stiffened and escalating luxury tax that would go from a dollar-for-dollar penalty for exceeding the cap to 2-for-1, 3-for-1 and 4-for-1 levies.

There was a smaller number of players at Saturday's session -- no Dwyane Wade, for one, or LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony or Chris Paul -- but several stayed over from Friday, including Paul Pierce, Ben Gordon, Baron Davis and Arron Afflalo. The 10 owners on hand were the same, and both Stern and Hunter said the discussions benefited from the added voices.

As for the tone and intensity of those voices -- Stern admitted to his "heated exchange" with Wade on Friday -- Hunter said: "It was mellow. ... It was nice. There were some light moments where we laughed, and other moments when the voices go up if somebody says something or you think folks are trying to push something on you that they know you don't want.

"But we're all professional. One minute we're at each other and the next minute, we're sitting around drinking tea and talking about something that's much more pleasant."

Stern joked, when asked, that he had wrestled Wade to the floor Friday. He added: "I would guess that neither of us remembers, but there was a heated exchange of some kind. I feel passionately about the system that we have and what it has delivered and what it should continue to deliver for the players and the owners. And he feels passionately too."

Davis, veteran point guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers, exited the session before its midpoint and called it "very constructive." He also minimized the rancor in the room and said of the Stern-Wade episode: "I think a lot of that was blown out of proportion."

A report on NBA.com required clarification too. Stern did seek out Hunter for a brief conversation, prompting a resumption of Friday's talks. But contrary to information provided to NBA.com, no formal apology to Wade was offered or sought.

As the Saturday session went on -- bumping into a lavish evening wedding at the luxury hotel in midtown Manhattan and mingling the participants for a spell -- it seemed as if serious progress might be made. Instead, it's as if the two sides rolled a proposed Sunday meeting into Saturday's.

Why no talks Sunday? "I generally don't work on Sundays," Hunter said. "I go to church on Sundays. We took off for Rosh Hashanah [Thursday]."

A day to break, review and formulate was likely anyway, though, so if the sides had met on Sunday, Monday probably would have served that purpose. Now the principal figures -- Stern, Silver, Hunter, Kessler, union president Derek Fisher and a couple more -- will gather Monday, with the committees returning to the table with them Tuesday.

Said Stern: "If we didn't think there was any hope, we wouldn't be scheduling the meetings. But that's the best I would say right now."

 

[duba169]

[h1]Long session yields little progress; sides to meet Monday[/h1]

Posted Oct 1 2011 7:38PM - Updated Oct 1 2011 9:28PM

NEW YORK -- The longest negotiating session yet in the NBA labor talks produced only modest progress Saturday, offering neither a breakthrough nor a breakdown. No new collective bargaining agreement but no cancellation of games, regular season or even preseason (officially), either.

Instead, it was more of the same: Meetings Monday (small group) and Tuesday (large group) back in Manhattan.

On the first day of the lockout's fourth month, negotiators for the owners and the players spent more than seven hours discussing system issues -- the salary cap, luxury taxes, other structural clauses -- either face-to-face or in their respective huddles.

No time, however, was spent discussing the economic elephant in the room, union attorney Jeffrey Kessler and others said. That is, the split of basketball-related income that will either green-light or red-light every other topic in play.

"We're not near anything," NBA commissioner David Stern said. "But wherever that is, we're closer than we were before."

Said Billy Hunter, executive director of the National Basketball Players Association: "They put some concepts out, we put some concepts out and we're still miles apart. There's a huge ... gap that, I don't know whether we're going to be able to close it or not."

Ninety-three days in, lest anyone forgets.

At Hunter's suggestion, the sides agreed to "de-couple" the financial and system issues in Saturday's session. This was done, the two sides said, to hone in, maybe take a stab at dividing-and-conquering. Then again, it might have been a case of being so far apart on the former that they opted to take a crack at the latter.

"It at least helped us to focus on a couple of issues," deputy commissioner Adam Silver said. "Some of the earlier meetings had been a little bit more rambling in terms of various issues raised, put on the table, taken off the table. Here, there was an agreement there was a set of issues that both sides went back and forth on, and I think it was very helpful."

In fact, there had been attempts at tackling each issue separately in September and even back in June. But the calendar wasn't providing the same urgency then that it is now -- what should be the start of training camps Monday instead will bring only more talking.

The first week of preseason games (Oct. 9-15) has been canceled and it seems only a formality until the balance of October dates will get zapped too. That puts something even bigger on the line: The league's regular season is scheduled to open Nov. 1. But Stern said there would be no cancellations of practice or real games announced Monday.

While Hunter was the one who raised the "de-coupling" idea of money and structure for Saturday, even he acknowledged that the beams inevitably cross. To put it simply, if the economic split -- which favored the players 57/43 in the old CBA -- was appealing enough to one side, it probably could tolerate all sorts of structural concessions. And vice versa.

"When you're talking about the system, you're still sensitive or conscious about the number," Hunter said, "because the number is going to have an impact on the system.

"If we say that we don't want an egregious luxury tax, well, they may want one and it depends on where the number is going to be set what the tax might look like. So if you say you're going to postpone talking about one, it's still in the back of your mind."

Hunter confirmed that the owners' offer on BRI continues to be a 46 percent share for the players. The union has been seeking 54 percent or something closer to it. In lieu of "hard cap" verbiage, the owners have proposed a stiffened and escalating luxury tax that would go from a dollar-for-dollar penalty for exceeding the cap to 2-for-1, 3-for-1 and 4-for-1 levies.

There was a smaller number of players at Saturday's session -- no Dwyane Wade, for one, or LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony or Chris Paul -- but several stayed over from Friday, including Paul Pierce, Ben Gordon, Baron Davis and Arron Afflalo. The 10 owners on hand were the same, and both Stern and Hunter said the discussions benefited from the added voices.

As for the tone and intensity of those voices -- Stern admitted to his "heated exchange" with Wade on Friday -- Hunter said: "It was mellow. ... It was nice. There were some light moments where we laughed, and other moments when the voices go up if somebody says something or you think folks are trying to push something on you that they know you don't want.

"But we're all professional. One minute we're at each other and the next minute, we're sitting around drinking tea and talking about something that's much more pleasant."

Stern joked, when asked, that he had wrestled Wade to the floor Friday. He added: "I would guess that neither of us remembers, but there was a heated exchange of some kind. I feel passionately about the system that we have and what it has delivered and what it should continue to deliver for the players and the owners. And he feels passionately too."

Davis, veteran point guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers, exited the session before its midpoint and called it "very constructive." He also minimized the rancor in the room and said of the Stern-Wade episode: "I think a lot of that was blown out of proportion."

A report on NBA.com required clarification too. Stern did seek out Hunter for a brief conversation, prompting a resumption of Friday's talks. But contrary to information provided to NBA.com, no formal apology to Wade was offered or sought.

As the Saturday session went on -- bumping into a lavish evening wedding at the luxury hotel in midtown Manhattan and mingling the participants for a spell -- it seemed as if serious progress might be made. Instead, it's as if the two sides rolled a proposed Sunday meeting into Saturday's.

Why no talks Sunday? "I generally don't work on Sundays," Hunter said. "I go to church on Sundays. We took off for Rosh Hashanah [Thursday]."

A day to break, review and formulate was likely anyway, though, so if the sides had met on Sunday, Monday probably would have served that purpose. Now the principal figures -- Stern, Silver, Hunter, Kessler, union president Derek Fisher and a couple more -- will gather Monday, with the committees returning to the table with them Tuesday.

Said Stern: "If we didn't think there was any hope, we wouldn't be scheduling the meetings. But that's the best I would say right now."

 

[pmatic]

Next 48 hours will determine fate of NBA's future

Welcome to the most important 48 hours of David Stern's reign as commissioner of the NBA. Welcome to a transformational moment for the league, one that dwarfs Magic Johnson's retirement, Michael Jordan's retirement(s), cocaine scandals and a crooked referee.
This is it. On Monday and Tuesday in a swanky Manhattan hotel, Stern and his owners and Billy Hunter and his players will have their fingers pointed directly at each other -- and also, on the detonation button.

Will they press it?

This is where we are.

I have thought for some time that calmer heads would prevail and staunch bargaining positions would evolve into reasonable beliefs in time to save the 2011-12 season. That can still happen, and it can still happen a week from now, or two weeks from now -- though starting on time and preserving a full schedule would be impossible at that point. Monday and Tuesday in Manhattan is the fourth quarter for Stern, Hunter and their sport. It is winning time, or losing time. There are no ties. There's no in between.


It is time to get a deal. And there is a deal there to be made -- a fair, reasonable one for both sides. It is too bad that, at this point, neither side has been pushed far enough to the brink for fair and reasonable to carry the day.

We will know in the next 48 hours if that is going to happen -- if the positions each side is anchored to represent their actual beliefs and requirements in a new collective bargaining agreement or simply negotiating tactics.

It is time to put the cards on the table and find out who is bluffing.

The possibility -- a great one, at that -- that nobody is? That should terrify everyone involved.

After a brief glimmer of hope a couple weeks ago that the owners and players had an agreement on the economics within reach, it turns out that they're still so far apart on how to divide the NBA's nearly $4 billion in revenues that they had to stop talking about it or watch the negotiations implode. But after two mostly fruitless days discussing the other elephant in the room -- salary cap and system issues -- the real conflict here remains centered on what it is always about in sports.

The money.

And here is where I get lost. Here is where I don't understand how the businessmen and capitalists who own the 30 NBA teams could be willing to strike a match to $4 billion based on the economic negotiating points as we know them.

To review: The owners say they are losing $300 million a year. The players already have offered to cover more than a third of that by dropping their percentage of basketball-related income (BRI) from 57 to 54 and have signaled a willingness to negotiate down from there. The owners? At last check, their 10-year proposal would give the players 46 percent of BRI on average.

This is a serious problem, one that even someone who holds the biased, stereotypical view of the greedy, out-of-touch athlete would view as unfair -- unreasonable.

Anyone with even cursory knowledge of negotiation can see where this is going. Suppose for a moment that the players were to accept 52 percent -- a $200 million concession accounting for two-thirds of the owners' stated losses. This would leave the owners with a $100 million shortfall to address, an average of $3.3 million per team.

Never mind that Paul Allen finds $3.3 million in his couch cushions every week, or that many teams (including Allen's Trail Blazers) are paying coaches and executives who were fired two coaches and executives ago that amount and more. Would the owners and league executives view this offer as fair and reasonable, or as one they could accept?

Well, as to the point about fair and reasonable, these are words that do not matter in these negotiations. No matter how you paint the picture, one side is going to wind up losing -- and it might even be both.

As to whether the owners would accept it, the answer at this very moment is a resounding no. Nor, apparently, would the owners accept even a $300 million salary cut for the players -- one that would fully erase their annual losses.

Why not? To understand that, you have to involve yourself in a game of mental poker and ask yourself whether this is the owners' actual position or simply their bargaining position. In other words, is this what they need, or is it what they want -- what they are trying to scare the players into giving them?

Whatever it is, here's the math: As far as the owners are concerned, if the players gave them $300 million, and revenue sharing was conducted so that every dollar of profit was shifted to a team losing money, the NBA would be a zero-sum game. Its net profit would be exactly nothing.

Think about that for a moment, and it will be easier to understand how negotiators could spend nearly eight hours in a conference room and get nowhere. It also crystallizes a point I have made many times, though in a different way than I've made it previously: If the players submitted and gave the owners the $300 million they are losing, and there still was no profit? That would mean there is a serious flaw with this business model that has nothing to do with the players, and everything to do with there being too many teams -- and teams in markets that can't succeed.

That is a story for another day, so let's stay focused here. Even if the players offered to subsidize the entire loss claimed by the NBA's 30 teams -- an amount, by the way, that includes non-operational expenses that aren't actually going out the door -- it wouldn't be good enough. So while even a legal novice like myself can see where the fair deal exists -- and I'd like to believe some sort of honorary J.D. will be forthcoming whenever this is over -- we don't even know if fairness matters. We will find out in the next 48 hours.

But since I can't help myself, here it is: If the owners have a $300 million problem, and the players are willing to solve $200 million of it for them, doesn't that strike you as fair? If not, please tell me you'll never be making a change for me at the bank, conducting my next salary negotiation or pouring my drinks at the next Marriott bar.

Why is $200 million not enough? Why wouldn't $300 million be enough? Why is nothing ever enough for Stern's owners? Again, we don't know yet if they're bluffing. But assuming they're not, here are the points they would make:

[size=+1]•[/size] They never should have agreed to pay the players 57 percent in 2005, when the previous CBA was ratified.

[size=+1]•[/size] They've been paying the players too much for a long time, and it's time for a correction, or "a reset," as deputy commissioner Adam Silver has put it.

[size=+1]• [/size]If it's possible for a $300 million loss to appear better than it actually is, the NBA has achieved it. According to a person familiar with the league financial records turned over to the National Basketball Players Association, the losses break down roughly like this: 22 teams lost $450 million and eight teams MADE $150 million. There is a serious economic problem here, and it's real.

[size=+1]• [/size]The league already has cut $50 million in expenses and laid off nearly 300 people around the world in the past two years.

The last point is worth repeating, because clearly, the league has attempted to address the difficult, though probably temporary conditions created by the 2008 economics crisis and ensuing recession. It isn't all on the backs of the players; other people have suffered too.

The others strike me as a business suddenly finding religion after years of debauchery -- a household or a government suddenly cutting up the credit cards after practically melting them from overuse.

In the end, will it matter that it seems disingenuous at best or alarming and unfair at worst for the owners to use this opportunity extract from its employees the crippling costs of mismanagement, past CBAs that didn't work out and an economic catastrophe that was neither side's fault? Nope, not at all. It's their business. Their game.

So where are we as we enter the most important 48 hours for the NBA since Stern became commissioner? As far as current bargaining positions are concerned, we are nowhere near a deal. We must remember that those bargaining positions can -- and will -- change. Deadlines and the threat of massive financial injury have a way of softening people's negotiating points and distilling them into actual beliefs.

That better happen, and it better happen for both sides. For as fundamentally unreasonable as the owners' economic position is, so is the players' zealotry for antiquated buzzwords and supposed birthrights like five-year guaranteed contracts, mid-level (i.e. mediocre) players making more than $5 million a year (not to mention awful players making $15 million) and annual raises straight out of Gordon Gekko's Wall Street (8 and 10.5 percent, respectively, for free agents leaving and staying with their teams).

The worst outcome for both sides, and for millions of people who derive their enjoyment and/or livelihood from the NBA, would be no deal and a curtailed or blown-up season. But if you can believe it, there is a possible outcome here that's even scarier than that.

Despite its astronomical gains in popularity, there's a lot in need of fixing with the NBA. And there is no shortage of smart people who could do it -- who could create a system that allowed for better competition, more parity, more fan interest and thus, more money for everybody.

The problem? The owners and players have wasted so much time entrenched in their positions and staring at each other across various conference tables -- two years of stubbornness, two years of gridlock -- that there's barely time to get a deal that would save the season. There isn't nearly enough time to get that deal right, to make the kind of meaningful changes that would achieve the goals that both sides should share.

Which means that we could be sitting here a month from now with no basketball, or sitting here five years from now with the same problems and the same broken system that one side or the other will insist is in need of massive repairs.

Or both.


http://niketalk.com/topic/316001/master/1/?page=2Link

 

[pmatic]

Next 48 hours will determine fate of NBA's future

Welcome to the most important 48 hours of David Stern's reign as commissioner of the NBA. Welcome to a transformational moment for the league, one that dwarfs Magic Johnson's retirement, Michael Jordan's retirement(s), cocaine scandals and a crooked referee.
This is it. On Monday and Tuesday in a swanky Manhattan hotel, Stern and his owners and Billy Hunter and his players will have their fingers pointed directly at each other -- and also, on the detonation button.

Will they press it?

This is where we are.

I have thought for some time that calmer heads would prevail and staunch bargaining positions would evolve into reasonable beliefs in time to save the 2011-12 season. That can still happen, and it can still happen a week from now, or two weeks from now -- though starting on time and preserving a full schedule would be impossible at that point. Monday and Tuesday in Manhattan is the fourth quarter for Stern, Hunter and their sport. It is winning time, or losing time. There are no ties. There's no in between.


It is time to get a deal. And there is a deal there to be made -- a fair, reasonable one for both sides. It is too bad that, at this point, neither side has been pushed far enough to the brink for fair and reasonable to carry the day.

We will know in the next 48 hours if that is going to happen -- if the positions each side is anchored to represent their actual beliefs and requirements in a new collective bargaining agreement or simply negotiating tactics.

It is time to put the cards on the table and find out who is bluffing.

The possibility -- a great one, at that -- that nobody is? That should terrify everyone involved.

After a brief glimmer of hope a couple weeks ago that the owners and players had an agreement on the economics within reach, it turns out that they're still so far apart on how to divide the NBA's nearly $4 billion in revenues that they had to stop talking about it or watch the negotiations implode. But after two mostly fruitless days discussing the other elephant in the room -- salary cap and system issues -- the real conflict here remains centered on what it is always about in sports.

The money.

And here is where I get lost. Here is where I don't understand how the businessmen and capitalists who own the 30 NBA teams could be willing to strike a match to $4 billion based on the economic negotiating points as we know them.

To review: The owners say they are losing $300 million a year. The players already have offered to cover more than a third of that by dropping their percentage of basketball-related income (BRI) from 57 to 54 and have signaled a willingness to negotiate down from there. The owners? At last check, their 10-year proposal would give the players 46 percent of BRI on average.

This is a serious problem, one that even someone who holds the biased, stereotypical view of the greedy, out-of-touch athlete would view as unfair -- unreasonable.

Anyone with even cursory knowledge of negotiation can see where this is going. Suppose for a moment that the players were to accept 52 percent -- a $200 million concession accounting for two-thirds of the owners' stated losses. This would leave the owners with a $100 million shortfall to address, an average of $3.3 million per team.

Never mind that Paul Allen finds $3.3 million in his couch cushions every week, or that many teams (including Allen's Trail Blazers) are paying coaches and executives who were fired two coaches and executives ago that amount and more. Would the owners and league executives view this offer as fair and reasonable, or as one they could accept?

Well, as to the point about fair and reasonable, these are words that do not matter in these negotiations. No matter how you paint the picture, one side is going to wind up losing -- and it might even be both.

As to whether the owners would accept it, the answer at this very moment is a resounding no. Nor, apparently, would the owners accept even a $300 million salary cut for the players -- one that would fully erase their annual losses.

Why not? To understand that, you have to involve yourself in a game of mental poker and ask yourself whether this is the owners' actual position or simply their bargaining position. In other words, is this what they need, or is it what they want -- what they are trying to scare the players into giving them?

Whatever it is, here's the math: As far as the owners are concerned, if the players gave them $300 million, and revenue sharing was conducted so that every dollar of profit was shifted to a team losing money, the NBA would be a zero-sum game. Its net profit would be exactly nothing.

Think about that for a moment, and it will be easier to understand how negotiators could spend nearly eight hours in a conference room and get nowhere. It also crystallizes a point I have made many times, though in a different way than I've made it previously: If the players submitted and gave the owners the $300 million they are losing, and there still was no profit? That would mean there is a serious flaw with this business model that has nothing to do with the players, and everything to do with there being too many teams -- and teams in markets that can't succeed.

That is a story for another day, so let's stay focused here. Even if the players offered to subsidize the entire loss claimed by the NBA's 30 teams -- an amount, by the way, that includes non-operational expenses that aren't actually going out the door -- it wouldn't be good enough. So while even a legal novice like myself can see where the fair deal exists -- and I'd like to believe some sort of honorary J.D. will be forthcoming whenever this is over -- we don't even know if fairness matters. We will find out in the next 48 hours.

But since I can't help myself, here it is: If the owners have a $300 million problem, and the players are willing to solve $200 million of it for them, doesn't that strike you as fair? If not, please tell me you'll never be making a change for me at the bank, conducting my next salary negotiation or pouring my drinks at the next Marriott bar.

Why is $200 million not enough? Why wouldn't $300 million be enough? Why is nothing ever enough for Stern's owners? Again, we don't know yet if they're bluffing. But assuming they're not, here are the points they would make:

[size=+1]•[/size] They never should have agreed to pay the players 57 percent in 2005, when the previous CBA was ratified.

[size=+1]•[/size] They've been paying the players too much for a long time, and it's time for a correction, or "a reset," as deputy commissioner Adam Silver has put it.

[size=+1]• [/size]If it's possible for a $300 million loss to appear better than it actually is, the NBA has achieved it. According to a person familiar with the league financial records turned over to the National Basketball Players Association, the losses break down roughly like this: 22 teams lost $450 million and eight teams MADE $150 million. There is a serious economic problem here, and it's real.

[size=+1]• [/size]The league already has cut $50 million in expenses and laid off nearly 300 people around the world in the past two years.

The last point is worth repeating, because clearly, the league has attempted to address the difficult, though probably temporary conditions created by the 2008 economics crisis and ensuing recession. It isn't all on the backs of the players; other people have suffered too.

The others strike me as a business suddenly finding religion after years of debauchery -- a household or a government suddenly cutting up the credit cards after practically melting them from overuse.

In the end, will it matter that it seems disingenuous at best or alarming and unfair at worst for the owners to use this opportunity extract from its employees the crippling costs of mismanagement, past CBAs that didn't work out and an economic catastrophe that was neither side's fault? Nope, not at all. It's their business. Their game.

So where are we as we enter the most important 48 hours for the NBA since Stern became commissioner? As far as current bargaining positions are concerned, we are nowhere near a deal. We must remember that those bargaining positions can -- and will -- change. Deadlines and the threat of massive financial injury have a way of softening people's negotiating points and distilling them into actual beliefs.

That better happen, and it better happen for both sides. For as fundamentally unreasonable as the owners' economic position is, so is the players' zealotry for antiquated buzzwords and supposed birthrights like five-year guaranteed contracts, mid-level (i.e. mediocre) players making more than $5 million a year (not to mention awful players making $15 million) and annual raises straight out of Gordon Gekko's Wall Street (8 and 10.5 percent, respectively, for free agents leaving and staying with their teams).

The worst outcome for both sides, and for millions of people who derive their enjoyment and/or livelihood from the NBA, would be no deal and a curtailed or blown-up season. But if you can believe it, there is a possible outcome here that's even scarier than that.

Despite its astronomical gains in popularity, there's a lot in need of fixing with the NBA. And there is no shortage of smart people who could do it -- who could create a system that allowed for better competition, more parity, more fan interest and thus, more money for everybody.

The problem? The owners and players have wasted so much time entrenched in their positions and staring at each other across various conference tables -- two years of stubbornness, two years of gridlock -- that there's barely time to get a deal that would save the season. There isn't nearly enough time to get that deal right, to make the kind of meaningful changes that would achieve the goals that both sides should share.

Which means that we could be sitting here a month from now with no basketball, or sitting here five years from now with the same problems and the same broken system that one side or the other will insist is in need of massive repairs.

Or both.


http://niketalk.com/topic/316001/master/1/?page=2Link

 

[pmatic]

Eery stuff.

Thomas Boswell Predicts the 2011 Lockout in ’98

Washington Post writer Thomas Boswell in November of 1998:

The popular analogy is to compare the NBA’s lockout, now in its 128th day, to the baseball strike of 1994. This is not only the wrong comparison, but also a deeply misleading one that may delude both sides about the true dangers they face.

The NBA arrogantly believes it won’t repeat baseball’s horrific mistakes. We’re not that stupid. We’ll never wipe out our whole season or jeopardize our TV dollars. By Jan. 1, we’ll be playing. Just chill out.

Meanwhile, the NBA is duplicating — down to the details — the baseball strike of 1981. …

It takes a long time — many years of hatred and mistrust, bad faith and grudges — to do something as historically dumb and destructive as baseball pulled in 1994. You have to lay the groundwork. You have to poison the water. Powerful people, and their ardent disciples, must learn how to despise, demonize and distort their adversaries across the bargaining table. That takes time, pain, public embarrassment and enormous sums of squandered profits.

That’s what the NBA is doing now. Commissioner David Stern and agent David Falk, deputy commissioner Russ Granik and union head Billy Hunter, are doing a textbook job of setting the stage for years of anger, future strikes, erosion of public image and finally — who knows? — maybe 13 years from now, one final battle as idiotic as the one from which baseball is still trying to recover. …

That ’81 charade, orchestrated by owners just like this NBA lockout, had some bad short-term effect on attendance. But the sport quickly regained, then surpassed, its previous popularity. The real damage reappeared only with time. Each succeeding labor negotiation became a bigger and more bitter piece of brinkmanship than the last. Finally, everybody went over the cliff together, consumed by their ancient accumulated animosity.

By the standards of baseball, the NBA has just begun to get ugly. The future — a bad one — has not been written in stone yet. But we’re getting there. Faster than the NBA thinks.

The major issue before basketball’s owners and players is not the present, though they think it is. What’s at stake is the future. Years and years and years of the future.


(Washington Post, 11/6/199


Link

 

[pmatic]

Eery stuff.

Thomas Boswell Predicts the 2011 Lockout in ’98

Washington Post writer Thomas Boswell in November of 1998:

The popular analogy is to compare the NBA’s lockout, now in its 128th day, to the baseball strike of 1994. This is not only the wrong comparison, but also a deeply misleading one that may delude both sides about the true dangers they face.

The NBA arrogantly believes it won’t repeat baseball’s horrific mistakes. We’re not that stupid. We’ll never wipe out our whole season or jeopardize our TV dollars. By Jan. 1, we’ll be playing. Just chill out.

Meanwhile, the NBA is duplicating — down to the details — the baseball strike of 1981. …

It takes a long time — many years of hatred and mistrust, bad faith and grudges — to do something as historically dumb and destructive as baseball pulled in 1994. You have to lay the groundwork. You have to poison the water. Powerful people, and their ardent disciples, must learn how to despise, demonize and distort their adversaries across the bargaining table. That takes time, pain, public embarrassment and enormous sums of squandered profits.

That’s what the NBA is doing now. Commissioner David Stern and agent David Falk, deputy commissioner Russ Granik and union head Billy Hunter, are doing a textbook job of setting the stage for years of anger, future strikes, erosion of public image and finally — who knows? — maybe 13 years from now, one final battle as idiotic as the one from which baseball is still trying to recover. …

That ’81 charade, orchestrated by owners just like this NBA lockout, had some bad short-term effect on attendance. But the sport quickly regained, then surpassed, its previous popularity. The real damage reappeared only with time. Each succeeding labor negotiation became a bigger and more bitter piece of brinkmanship than the last. Finally, everybody went over the cliff together, consumed by their ancient accumulated animosity.

By the standards of baseball, the NBA has just begun to get ugly. The future — a bad one — has not been written in stone yet. But we’re getting there. Faster than the NBA thinks.

The major issue before basketball’s owners and players is not the present, though they think it is. What’s at stake is the future. Years and years and years of the future.


(Washington Post, 11/6/199


Link