The Official NBA Collective Bargaining Thread vol Phased in Hard Cap

[cosmiccanon]

Originally Posted by Animal Thug1539

Originally Posted by Beware The Underdog

Originally Posted by DubA169


these big market teams need to straight strong arm the small market ones

Small market teams run the leauge on and off the court.


  

Thank you.

And I stand behind Dan Gilbert 100%. I don't give a damn what these analyst got to say.

Like I said before, a hard-cap will only spread the talent around the league - it's an adjustment that will help the league in the long-run. Otherwise, how else will the league survive? On some 8-team league !*$@? F outta here. This wouldn't happen if these lame NBA players focused more on the game of basketball instead of what happens outside the arena.

  

Still mad about Bron, huh?

 

[cosmiccanon]

Originally Posted by Animal Thug1539

Originally Posted by Beware The Underdog

Originally Posted by DubA169


these big market teams need to straight strong arm the small market ones

Small market teams run the leauge on and off the court.


  

Thank you.

And I stand behind Dan Gilbert 100%. I don't give a damn what these analyst got to say.

Like I said before, a hard-cap will only spread the talent around the league - it's an adjustment that will help the league in the long-run. Otherwise, how else will the league survive? On some 8-team league !*$@? F outta here. This wouldn't happen if these lame NBA players focused more on the game of basketball instead of what happens outside the arena.

  

Still mad about Bron, huh?

 

[statis22]

Originally Posted by PMatic

By my count;
Lakers, Knicks, Bulls, Clippers, Nets, Mavericks, Heat and Warriors should all want the season to start on time.

50/50 would be teams like the Rockets, Pacers and Thunder.

Everybody else I think would definitely want a lockout or want to wait and see.

The Astros and Rockets are on the verge today of finalizing their partnership with Comcast, the nation's largest cable television provider, on a new Houston regional sports network that will begin airing Rockets games in the fall of 2012 and Astros games in 2013, according to officials with knowedge of the negotiations.

The teams are expected to own at least 70 percent of Comcast SportsNet Houston, which will be the newest of nine regional networks operated by Comcast in conjunction with pro sports franchises from coast to coast.

The pending announcement would be the culmination of a decade-long effort by the Rockets and Astros to leverage maximum revenue and control over their TV operations. That effort included a 20-month legal battle with Fox Sports Net, their longtime carrier, that ended in 2004 with a new rights deal estimated to be worth about $50 million per year to the teams.

That contract, however, included a window for the teams to opt out for a new agreement at its midpoint, and the Astros and Rockets have been negotiating for at least a year with Fox, DirecTV, AT&T and Comcast before coming to terms with the cable provider, which took over the Houston cable system and its 750,000-plus subscribers from Time Warner Cable in 2006.

By signing on with Comcast, the Rockets and Astros will bring an end in two years to their historic affiliation with Fox Sports Houston, which was created in 1983 as Home Sports Entertainment, one of the first regional sports networks in the nation.

Sorry Nas.....

 

[statis22]

Originally Posted by PMatic

By my count;
Lakers, Knicks, Bulls, Clippers, Nets, Mavericks, Heat and Warriors should all want the season to start on time.

50/50 would be teams like the Rockets, Pacers and Thunder.

Everybody else I think would definitely want a lockout or want to wait and see.

The Astros and Rockets are on the verge today of finalizing their partnership with Comcast, the nation's largest cable television provider, on a new Houston regional sports network that will begin airing Rockets games in the fall of 2012 and Astros games in 2013, according to officials with knowedge of the negotiations.

The teams are expected to own at least 70 percent of Comcast SportsNet Houston, which will be the newest of nine regional networks operated by Comcast in conjunction with pro sports franchises from coast to coast.

The pending announcement would be the culmination of a decade-long effort by the Rockets and Astros to leverage maximum revenue and control over their TV operations. That effort included a 20-month legal battle with Fox Sports Net, their longtime carrier, that ended in 2004 with a new rights deal estimated to be worth about $50 million per year to the teams.

That contract, however, included a window for the teams to opt out for a new agreement at its midpoint, and the Astros and Rockets have been negotiating for at least a year with Fox, DirecTV, AT&T and Comcast before coming to terms with the cable provider, which took over the Houston cable system and its 750,000-plus subscribers from Time Warner Cable in 2006.

By signing on with Comcast, the Rockets and Astros will bring an end in two years to their historic affiliation with Fox Sports Houston, which was created in 1983 as Home Sports Entertainment, one of the first regional sports networks in the nation.

Sorry Nas.....

 

[freshnick]

Originally Posted by amel223

damn, billionaires can't dress to save their lives man

 

[freshnick]

Originally Posted by amel223

damn, billionaires can't dress to save their lives man

 

[pmatic]

David Stern's flawed NBA lockout logic

After dueling displays of solidarity, NBA owners and players reportedly planned to meet Wednesday even as regular-season games are being threatened by David Stern's lockout.

The NBA commissioner has adopted a tactic perfectly suited for today's age of shrinking media, anger toward labor and multimillion-dollar athletes: Use the authority to repeat his position until misinformation becomes truth.

Stern has benefited from a disturbing lack of accountability, a familiar blueprint the powerful have used throughout history to justify incorrect political positions, unnecessary wars, greed and corruption with the often-successful hope that the public will lack the interest and stamina to call them out.

Saying it doesn't make it so, and little to none of Stern's rhetoric holds up to scrutiny. He justified the lockout by stating the dominance of big-market teams threatened competitive balance. To curb this dominance, ownership is demanding a hard salary cap and a cap on the length of guaranteed contracts. Stern said NBA teams have lost as much as $300 million because the league's financial system is fatally flawed, and the only remedy to ensure the league's future is to reduce the percentage of money -- 57 percent in the expired deal -- allocated to player salaries.

It all sounds reasonable enough, except that player salaries and big-money teams aren't the primary threats to the NBA. Instead, the real threats are the revenue disparity between owners and the discipline or a lack thereof (the ultimate salary cap) to control spending.

Publicly, the league is tapping into that special vein of the fan psyche to turn them against the players. Many Americans maintain a love-hate relationship with themselves when it comes to being an employee -- they would gladly trade salaries with the lowest-paid athlete yet resent players who stand up for themselves. Most fans would probably consider themselves underpaid yet tend to align themselves with management when players assert themselves, an offshoot of the shut-up-and-play mentality." ("The players are getting 57 percent! They're just employees. That's just wrong!")

If anything, the NBA has many reasons to be optimistic about its future even without reform. For the first time in its history, it has inherited a perfect storm of positive developments that only Stern's bullying and the owners' greed in the form of a protracted work stoppage can destroy:

1. The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers are not only good at the same time but also have played one another for a title twice in the past four years. The Lakers are the one true dynasty in the NBA, flush with cash, well-run, with an enormous pedigree and, most importantly, the greatest advantage: geography. Virtually everyone young and rich would love to live and play in L.A. -- especially during the age of celebrity when athletes seem to make records and movies nearly as often as jump shots. The Celtics, meanwhile, are the NBA's version of the Green Bay Packers. They are the link to the historical roots of the game, tying together the glorious past and ambitious future. Free agents have shunned Boston, but the trade market is robust. When the NBA's greatest rivalry is strong, the league is at its very best.

2. The teams in big television markets are in powerful positions. The Chicago Bulls won 62 games last season and landed a spot in the Eastern Conference finals. The third-biggest media market in the country behind Los Angeles and New York, Chicago has the league's 2008-09 rookie of the year and now most valuable player in Derrick Rose, suggesting a bright future with championship potential for years to come. With the addition of Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire and a playoff appearance, there is more energy around New York basketball than at any time since Pat Riley gave way to Jeff Van Gundy. The Knicks have star power and high energy, and for the first time in years began believing they could beat anyone.

3. In addition to having the game's signature rivalry revived and the league's top television markets all enjoying an upswing, the game's best, most marketable young player, LeBron James, has played in the NBA Finals twice. Through orchestrating his way to the Miami Heat, James increased the level of interest in him and his new team. (Who would have thought that was possible?) The league not only has rivalries flourishing, but also its best individual talent has played at a championship level every season rather than languishing on a bad team. The Heat and James move the ratings needle.

4. Television ratings are up. Interest in the game is up. The league expected a double-digit drop in revenue as the economy crashed two years ago, but that anticipated shortfall never occurred. In fact, revenues did not decrease but remained flat.

Yet Stern and the owners are blaming the players, without proving loss, while shutting the game down.

"Competitive balance" is a term to which Stern refers frequently, suggesting that the top teams in the biggest markets are controlling the game, both in the standings and on the balance sheets. Where the NBA is concerned, however, "competitive balance" is nothing more than a buzzword to justify its greed.

Since 2000, teams in the country's top 10 television markets have not dominated the NBA. Along with the Lakers, the most successful team in the league has been the San Antonio Spurs, who happen to be in the 37th-largest television market. A top-10 market has won the past four NBA titles, but only the Lakers (second-ranked market, shared with the Clippers), Mavericks (fifth), Nets (first, shared with the Knicks), Celtics (seventh) and 76ers (fourth) have reached the Finals since '00, while the Nets, 76ers, Clippers, Knicks, Wizards (ninth), Warriors (sixth), Bulls (third) and Hawks (eighth) have all had five or more losing seasons over the past 11 years. Neither the Sixers (four coaches in three years) nor Nets (36-128 over the past two seasons) have made the NBA Finals in nearly a decade.

Perhaps Stern is articulating a "Lakers" problem in the same sense that for years Bud Selig and baseball's owners wanted to curb the Yankees, even though the sport traditionally has been at its most profitable when its most legendary teams are performing well. The Lakers maintain financial, geographical and emotional advantages over virtually every other team in the NBA, the Celtics included. They can pay players and attract free agents. Yet the long-term advantage of restricting the league's greatest asset is unclear.

The most honesty from the owners and Stern came in their initial position last season. They are seeking "cost certainty" via a hard cap and they want greater profits. They want the NFL model because the system does virtually all the work in reeling in salaries and greatly reduces player leverage in contract negotiations.

The true point of a hard cap is to reduce the number of long-term, guaranteed contracts. Since a team would be foolish to guarantee a long-term contract knowing it only had a fixed amount to spend each season without exceptions (the Bird and mid-level, for example), fewer players would have these deals. The owners would not be stuck paying as many large sums to injured, benched or cut players years after they made significant contributions in a game.

This would more closely align the NBA with the NFL model and the myth that football's hard salary cap creates parity. But football's cap doesn't create championship-level parity. Since 2000, 44 teams have played in the conference championships, but just 10 of the league's 32 teams account for 68 percent of the games (30 of 44 appearances), while just three -- Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New England -- account for 34 percent (15 of 44) of appearances.

In the NBA during the same period, nine of the 30 teams account for 77 percent of conference finals appearances, with just three -- San Antonio, Detroit and the Lakers -- accounting 41 percent (18 of the 44) of appearances.

At first glance, it might appear the NBA lacks the parity of the NFL. In the NBA, 21 of those 44 conference finals appearances were made by teams located in top-10 television markets, suggesting that Stern's argument is correct: big-money, big-revenue teams are controlling the standings.

But in the NFL, the league of the vaunted hard salary cap and far less guaranteed money for its players, 19 of the 44 teams in the NFC of AFC title games came from top-10 TV markets -- and there isn't even a team in Los Angeles, the second-biggest market in the country.

Expand this analysis to the top 15 television markets (even though Stern vacated 15th-ranked Seattle for 45th-ranked Oklahoma City) and six different NBA teams have played in conference finals. In the vaunted NFL, where every team has a chance, the number is exactly the same: six.

The real differences, of course, are money and acumen. In football, two big markets and a small one -- New England, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh -- also happen to be the best-run organizations. The same is true in basketball with two big markets -- Detroit and Los Angeles -- being as well-run as San Antonio. The contracts that the Knicks and Hawks have given out, meanwhile, are entirely self-incriminating.

A hard cap doesn't influence the standings, it only makes it easier for undisciplined owners to keep the money. Ask the Detroit Lions, who play in the 11th-biggest TV market but haven't made the playoffs since 1999, or the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders, who play in the sixth-biggest market but haven't been over .500 or made the postseason since 2002. Stern knows this. And if he doesn't, there's always Google.

The real problem is not the players and the money they receive, but the owners and whether they care to share their future riches with one another. The league has a burgeoning revenue stream -- local cable fees -- that is widening the gap between franchises. A new revenue-sharing deal between the owners would create more equity.

There is also the long-lost deal the NBA cut with the old owners of the forgotten Spirit of St. Louis of the ABA, which as a buyout for the ABA-NBA merger agreed in 1976 to pay Ozzie and Dan Silna (the brothers who owned the franchise) one-seventh of all future NBA television revenue, in perpetuity, by the four surviving ABA teams. The NBA is haunted by this deal, and because of it, the Lakers and others receive more from the league's television contract than the Indiana Pacers (25th-ranked TV market), Denver Nuggets (18th), San Antonio (37th) and New Jersey.

Meanwhile, Stern and the owners focus more on the players than why the financial gap between the teams grows greater -- because it is easier for the paying public to be offended that a 23-year-old with a jump shot can earn so much than it is for those fans to understand revenue sharing and cap complexities. Just as in football over the past decade and baseball (where disparities led to the infamous 1994 strike), local television money will ensure a new wave of powerhouses.

Baseball, instead of confronting the gap cable money was creating between its teams, attacked the players and illegally imposed a hard salary cap. The cap was eventually overturned by now-Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. (But even with that precedent, it sure looks like this is the playbook Stern is reading.)

The Lakers' local television deal is immense, with the club reportedly standing to earn roughly $200 million annually. The Celtics have doubled their cable television fees, the Rockets have a strong cable television position, and the Knicks have raised ticket prices and are in the midst of a massive, two-year renovation of Madison Square Garden. There are five NBA teams -- the Knicks, Bulls, Raptors, Nuggets and 76ers -- that own their arenas and television networks.

The league has the stars, the rivalries and the interest. It has over the past several years reduced the amount of future guaranteed money teams are responsible for by imposing greater discipline in the form of better contracts. It has many of its best markets on the upswing and has been able to tap public money for renovating (or relocating) franchises. And instead of taking advantage of what is looking to be a special moment in time, the commissioner and his owners have decided it isn't enough.
Link

 

[pmatic]

David Stern's flawed NBA lockout logic

After dueling displays of solidarity, NBA owners and players reportedly planned to meet Wednesday even as regular-season games are being threatened by David Stern's lockout.

The NBA commissioner has adopted a tactic perfectly suited for today's age of shrinking media, anger toward labor and multimillion-dollar athletes: Use the authority to repeat his position until misinformation becomes truth.

Stern has benefited from a disturbing lack of accountability, a familiar blueprint the powerful have used throughout history to justify incorrect political positions, unnecessary wars, greed and corruption with the often-successful hope that the public will lack the interest and stamina to call them out.

Saying it doesn't make it so, and little to none of Stern's rhetoric holds up to scrutiny. He justified the lockout by stating the dominance of big-market teams threatened competitive balance. To curb this dominance, ownership is demanding a hard salary cap and a cap on the length of guaranteed contracts. Stern said NBA teams have lost as much as $300 million because the league's financial system is fatally flawed, and the only remedy to ensure the league's future is to reduce the percentage of money -- 57 percent in the expired deal -- allocated to player salaries.

It all sounds reasonable enough, except that player salaries and big-money teams aren't the primary threats to the NBA. Instead, the real threats are the revenue disparity between owners and the discipline or a lack thereof (the ultimate salary cap) to control spending.

Publicly, the league is tapping into that special vein of the fan psyche to turn them against the players. Many Americans maintain a love-hate relationship with themselves when it comes to being an employee -- they would gladly trade salaries with the lowest-paid athlete yet resent players who stand up for themselves. Most fans would probably consider themselves underpaid yet tend to align themselves with management when players assert themselves, an offshoot of the shut-up-and-play mentality." ("The players are getting 57 percent! They're just employees. That's just wrong!")

If anything, the NBA has many reasons to be optimistic about its future even without reform. For the first time in its history, it has inherited a perfect storm of positive developments that only Stern's bullying and the owners' greed in the form of a protracted work stoppage can destroy:

1. The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers are not only good at the same time but also have played one another for a title twice in the past four years. The Lakers are the one true dynasty in the NBA, flush with cash, well-run, with an enormous pedigree and, most importantly, the greatest advantage: geography. Virtually everyone young and rich would love to live and play in L.A. -- especially during the age of celebrity when athletes seem to make records and movies nearly as often as jump shots. The Celtics, meanwhile, are the NBA's version of the Green Bay Packers. They are the link to the historical roots of the game, tying together the glorious past and ambitious future. Free agents have shunned Boston, but the trade market is robust. When the NBA's greatest rivalry is strong, the league is at its very best.

2. The teams in big television markets are in powerful positions. The Chicago Bulls won 62 games last season and landed a spot in the Eastern Conference finals. The third-biggest media market in the country behind Los Angeles and New York, Chicago has the league's 2008-09 rookie of the year and now most valuable player in Derrick Rose, suggesting a bright future with championship potential for years to come. With the addition of Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire and a playoff appearance, there is more energy around New York basketball than at any time since Pat Riley gave way to Jeff Van Gundy. The Knicks have star power and high energy, and for the first time in years began believing they could beat anyone.

3. In addition to having the game's signature rivalry revived and the league's top television markets all enjoying an upswing, the game's best, most marketable young player, LeBron James, has played in the NBA Finals twice. Through orchestrating his way to the Miami Heat, James increased the level of interest in him and his new team. (Who would have thought that was possible?) The league not only has rivalries flourishing, but also its best individual talent has played at a championship level every season rather than languishing on a bad team. The Heat and James move the ratings needle.

4. Television ratings are up. Interest in the game is up. The league expected a double-digit drop in revenue as the economy crashed two years ago, but that anticipated shortfall never occurred. In fact, revenues did not decrease but remained flat.

Yet Stern and the owners are blaming the players, without proving loss, while shutting the game down.

"Competitive balance" is a term to which Stern refers frequently, suggesting that the top teams in the biggest markets are controlling the game, both in the standings and on the balance sheets. Where the NBA is concerned, however, "competitive balance" is nothing more than a buzzword to justify its greed.

Since 2000, teams in the country's top 10 television markets have not dominated the NBA. Along with the Lakers, the most successful team in the league has been the San Antonio Spurs, who happen to be in the 37th-largest television market. A top-10 market has won the past four NBA titles, but only the Lakers (second-ranked market, shared with the Clippers), Mavericks (fifth), Nets (first, shared with the Knicks), Celtics (seventh) and 76ers (fourth) have reached the Finals since '00, while the Nets, 76ers, Clippers, Knicks, Wizards (ninth), Warriors (sixth), Bulls (third) and Hawks (eighth) have all had five or more losing seasons over the past 11 years. Neither the Sixers (four coaches in three years) nor Nets (36-128 over the past two seasons) have made the NBA Finals in nearly a decade.

Perhaps Stern is articulating a "Lakers" problem in the same sense that for years Bud Selig and baseball's owners wanted to curb the Yankees, even though the sport traditionally has been at its most profitable when its most legendary teams are performing well. The Lakers maintain financial, geographical and emotional advantages over virtually every other team in the NBA, the Celtics included. They can pay players and attract free agents. Yet the long-term advantage of restricting the league's greatest asset is unclear.

The most honesty from the owners and Stern came in their initial position last season. They are seeking "cost certainty" via a hard cap and they want greater profits. They want the NFL model because the system does virtually all the work in reeling in salaries and greatly reduces player leverage in contract negotiations.

The true point of a hard cap is to reduce the number of long-term, guaranteed contracts. Since a team would be foolish to guarantee a long-term contract knowing it only had a fixed amount to spend each season without exceptions (the Bird and mid-level, for example), fewer players would have these deals. The owners would not be stuck paying as many large sums to injured, benched or cut players years after they made significant contributions in a game.

This would more closely align the NBA with the NFL model and the myth that football's hard salary cap creates parity. But football's cap doesn't create championship-level parity. Since 2000, 44 teams have played in the conference championships, but just 10 of the league's 32 teams account for 68 percent of the games (30 of 44 appearances), while just three -- Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New England -- account for 34 percent (15 of 44) of appearances.

In the NBA during the same period, nine of the 30 teams account for 77 percent of conference finals appearances, with just three -- San Antonio, Detroit and the Lakers -- accounting 41 percent (18 of the 44) of appearances.

At first glance, it might appear the NBA lacks the parity of the NFL. In the NBA, 21 of those 44 conference finals appearances were made by teams located in top-10 television markets, suggesting that Stern's argument is correct: big-money, big-revenue teams are controlling the standings.

But in the NFL, the league of the vaunted hard salary cap and far less guaranteed money for its players, 19 of the 44 teams in the NFC of AFC title games came from top-10 TV markets -- and there isn't even a team in Los Angeles, the second-biggest market in the country.

Expand this analysis to the top 15 television markets (even though Stern vacated 15th-ranked Seattle for 45th-ranked Oklahoma City) and six different NBA teams have played in conference finals. In the vaunted NFL, where every team has a chance, the number is exactly the same: six.

The real differences, of course, are money and acumen. In football, two big markets and a small one -- New England, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh -- also happen to be the best-run organizations. The same is true in basketball with two big markets -- Detroit and Los Angeles -- being as well-run as San Antonio. The contracts that the Knicks and Hawks have given out, meanwhile, are entirely self-incriminating.

A hard cap doesn't influence the standings, it only makes it easier for undisciplined owners to keep the money. Ask the Detroit Lions, who play in the 11th-biggest TV market but haven't made the playoffs since 1999, or the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders, who play in the sixth-biggest market but haven't been over .500 or made the postseason since 2002. Stern knows this. And if he doesn't, there's always Google.

The real problem is not the players and the money they receive, but the owners and whether they care to share their future riches with one another. The league has a burgeoning revenue stream -- local cable fees -- that is widening the gap between franchises. A new revenue-sharing deal between the owners would create more equity.

There is also the long-lost deal the NBA cut with the old owners of the forgotten Spirit of St. Louis of the ABA, which as a buyout for the ABA-NBA merger agreed in 1976 to pay Ozzie and Dan Silna (the brothers who owned the franchise) one-seventh of all future NBA television revenue, in perpetuity, by the four surviving ABA teams. The NBA is haunted by this deal, and because of it, the Lakers and others receive more from the league's television contract than the Indiana Pacers (25th-ranked TV market), Denver Nuggets (18th), San Antonio (37th) and New Jersey.

Meanwhile, Stern and the owners focus more on the players than why the financial gap between the teams grows greater -- because it is easier for the paying public to be offended that a 23-year-old with a jump shot can earn so much than it is for those fans to understand revenue sharing and cap complexities. Just as in football over the past decade and baseball (where disparities led to the infamous 1994 strike), local television money will ensure a new wave of powerhouses.

Baseball, instead of confronting the gap cable money was creating between its teams, attacked the players and illegally imposed a hard salary cap. The cap was eventually overturned by now-Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. (But even with that precedent, it sure looks like this is the playbook Stern is reading.)

The Lakers' local television deal is immense, with the club reportedly standing to earn roughly $200 million annually. The Celtics have doubled their cable television fees, the Rockets have a strong cable television position, and the Knicks have raised ticket prices and are in the midst of a massive, two-year renovation of Madison Square Garden. There are five NBA teams -- the Knicks, Bulls, Raptors, Nuggets and 76ers -- that own their arenas and television networks.

The league has the stars, the rivalries and the interest. It has over the past several years reduced the amount of future guaranteed money teams are responsible for by imposing greater discipline in the form of better contracts. It has many of its best markets on the upswing and has been able to tap public money for renovating (or relocating) franchises. And instead of taking advantage of what is looking to be a special moment in time, the commissioner and his owners have decided it isn't enough.
Link

 

[pmatic]

Another day, another meeting scheduled.

Battle lines drawn for NBA, players, agents

Privately, the most influential player agents in the business swear they won’t let Billy Hunter cut a crippling collective bargaining deal. They won’t let his parting gift to the union membership be deeper concessions, givebacks to the owners. They can’t storm the negotiating room in New York this week, but they believe they can ultimately stop the ratifying of a deal. They can deliver the percentage of players needed to decertify the union. They believe they still can unleash holy hell on this sure, steady capitulation to the NBA.

“The players don’t want to make these kinds of concessions, yet the union keeps giving them,

 

[pmatic]

Another day, another meeting scheduled.

Battle lines drawn for NBA, players, agents

Privately, the most influential player agents in the business swear they won’t let Billy Hunter cut a crippling collective bargaining deal. They won’t let his parting gift to the union membership be deeper concessions, givebacks to the owners. They can’t storm the negotiating room in New York this week, but they believe they can ultimately stop the ratifying of a deal. They can deliver the percentage of players needed to decertify the union. They believe they still can unleash holy hell on this sure, steady capitulation to the NBA.

“The players don’t want to make these kinds of concessions, yet the union keeps giving them,

 

[CP1708]

1. The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers are not only good at the same time but also have played one another for a title twice in the past four years. The Lakers are the one true dynasty in the NBA, flush with cash, well-run, with an enormous pedigree and, most importantly, the greatest advantage: geography. Virtually everyone young and rich would love to live and play in L.A. -- especially during the age of celebrity when athletes seem to make records and movies nearly as often as jump shots.
 

Perhaps Stern is articulating a "Lakers" problem in the same sense that for years Bud Selig and baseball's owners wanted to curb the Yankees, even though the sport traditionally has been at its most profitable when its most legendary teams are performing well. The Lakers maintain financial, geographical and emotional advantages over virtually every other team in the NBA, the Celtics included.

These quotes right here make Do Be Doo look like the dumbest human being alive.  All his anti Laker garbage, and can't even see the big picture.  Get a clue dude. 

Love the Anti Stern articles P, keep em coming. 

 

[CP1708]

1. The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers are not only good at the same time but also have played one another for a title twice in the past four years. The Lakers are the one true dynasty in the NBA, flush with cash, well-run, with an enormous pedigree and, most importantly, the greatest advantage: geography. Virtually everyone young and rich would love to live and play in L.A. -- especially during the age of celebrity when athletes seem to make records and movies nearly as often as jump shots.
 

Perhaps Stern is articulating a "Lakers" problem in the same sense that for years Bud Selig and baseball's owners wanted to curb the Yankees, even though the sport traditionally has been at its most profitable when its most legendary teams are performing well. The Lakers maintain financial, geographical and emotional advantages over virtually every other team in the NBA, the Celtics included.

These quotes right here make Do Be Doo look like the dumbest human being alive.  All his anti Laker garbage, and can't even see the big picture.  Get a clue dude. 

Love the Anti Stern articles P, keep em coming. 

 

[cosmiccanon]

P dropping the knowledge

 

[cosmiccanon]

P dropping the knowledge

 

[pmatic]

A

back to all of you reading the articles.

Another article:

Lockout must end to avoid hoops nightmare

As Henry Abbott notes at ESPN.com, we’re about a week from the point at which the league and the players union must agree to the general parameters of a deal in order for the regular season to start on time, or close to it. And even in that best-case scenario, training camps and the preseason will be cut or reduced, and free agency will be even crazier than usual.

Everyone wants the lockout to end, obviously. But it’s important that it ends in a relatively timely fashion, because a compressed 50-game season like the one we got in 1998-99 is nearly as bad a basketball outcome as a canceled season. It’s not nearly as bad a business outcome, since the NBA would fill arenas, make its TV partners happy, begin the healing process with fans and avoid the stigma of joining the NHL in scuttling an entire year. That’s important.

But if you want the best basketball possible, if you want each team in the theoretical 2011-12 NBA to reach its full potential, then the season has to begin soon.


This is not to say the 1998-99 champion San Antonio Spurs deserve some sort of asterisk, or that the season was a total bust. I watched the games and enjoyed them. The quality of overall play just wasn’t the same, and though you can’t blame that all on the lockout or the compressed schedule, just about anyone you talk to in NBA circles thinks those factors had a lot to do with the general decline in play. Teams in the NBA don’t practice all that much in a normal season, but they at least have a normal training camp and a full 82-game schedule to get familiar with each other. Cut that camp and play a schedule of near-permanent five-games-in-seven-nights stretches, and you’re going to find that players are tired and new teammates don’t know each other well enough in June.

You saw all of this if you watched EuroBasket and FIBA Americas, with their grueling stretches of five games in six nights and general lack of prep time. Star players, including Manu Ginobili and Pau Gasol, looked exhausted and slow by the end of those stretches and really could only summon their A-games when they got at least a day of rest. Boris Diaw and Joakim Noah miscommunicated more on basic defensive concepts in single quarters of games for France than Noah and Carlos Boozer would during a full week in Chicago.

In that 1998-99 season, the NBA squeezed 50 games into three months. Teams played nearly as many back-to-backs (about 15 or 16 on average) as they do during a normal 82-game season, and each club played about two back-to-back-to-backs — killer stretches that don’t exist in the regular schedule.

And the numbers were ugly. Teams scored just 102.2 points per 100 possessions in that season, the worst collective offensive performance since the league instituted the three-point line in 1979-80, according to Basketball-Reference. They played at the slowest pace in league history, averaging just 89 possessions per game. Dig a bit deeper, and you see the decline in scoring was almost entirely linked to bricktastic shooting; teams turned the ball over, earned free throws and grabbed offensive boards at around the same rate they usually did during the mid-1990s and early 2000s. They just missed more shots than usual.

Teams in 1998-99 shot just 33.9 percent on three-pointers, down from 34.6 percent the prior season, and they hit a disastrous 45.6 percent of two-point shots. That shooting percentage on twos is the lowest aggregate mark in the modern history of the league; shooting percentages jumped back up to 35.3 percent on threes and 46.7 percent on twos in the 1999-2000 season, and with the exception of a slight dip in shooting in the 2000-01 campaign, they have never really approached lockout levels.

As Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus has noted, you cannot blame the lockout for all of this. Scoring per possession dropped off pretty steeply starting in the mid-1990s, as teams emphasized defense and the league allowed hand-checking. The league stalled this decline a bit by bringing in the three-point line for three seasons starting in 1994-95, but average scoring dipped all the way to 105.0 points per 100 possessions in 1997-98, the year before the lockout season. It jumped from the lockout low (102.2 points per 100 possessions) back up to 104.1 in the first post-lockout season, but it dropped again to 103.1 in 2000-01 and stayed around that level until the league killed hand-checking after the 2004 season.

In other words, the lockout-shortened season is an outlier, but it’s an outlier within a general trend of poor scoring. Still, scoring, shooting percentages and pace all reached their nadir during that season, and that isn’t a coincidence. Play will decline if you give players less rest and less time to get to know their teammates’ on-court tendencies and preferences.

And this doesn’t even get into issues of increased randomness in playoff outcomes and the larger potential impact of any injury. The 1998-99 season was, after all, one of the few in which an eighth-seeded team (the Knicks) upset a top seed (the Heat) in the first round. The more games you play, the better chance you have of seeing the true greats of the league rise to the top. This is why the NFL playoffs are unpredictable (what can 16 games really tell us?), and why Major League Baseball’s 162-game marathon guarantees only the very best will reach the postseason. (What happens in October is a different matter.)

This is not an argument that an 82-game season should be set in stone, or that a 50-game season is a bad idea on its own. Lots of international leagues play far shorter seasons than the NBA, and people like them just fine. There is a discussion to be had about reducing the length of the NBA season, though it’s a discussion that belongs in a fake world in which the league and its owners will actually entertain the idea. It is an argument against squeezing 50 games into three months. It might not be as bad as missing an entire season, but it’s bad enough that each side (and the fans) should view it as its own separate nightmarish scenario.


Link

Meeting just ended...sounds like Stern is keeping it lowkey.
Follow @WojYahooNBA and @KBergCBS for updates.

 

[pmatic]

A

back to all of you reading the articles.

Another article:

Lockout must end to avoid hoops nightmare

As Henry Abbott notes at ESPN.com, we’re about a week from the point at which the league and the players union must agree to the general parameters of a deal in order for the regular season to start on time, or close to it. And even in that best-case scenario, training camps and the preseason will be cut or reduced, and free agency will be even crazier than usual.

Everyone wants the lockout to end, obviously. But it’s important that it ends in a relatively timely fashion, because a compressed 50-game season like the one we got in 1998-99 is nearly as bad a basketball outcome as a canceled season. It’s not nearly as bad a business outcome, since the NBA would fill arenas, make its TV partners happy, begin the healing process with fans and avoid the stigma of joining the NHL in scuttling an entire year. That’s important.

But if you want the best basketball possible, if you want each team in the theoretical 2011-12 NBA to reach its full potential, then the season has to begin soon.


This is not to say the 1998-99 champion San Antonio Spurs deserve some sort of asterisk, or that the season was a total bust. I watched the games and enjoyed them. The quality of overall play just wasn’t the same, and though you can’t blame that all on the lockout or the compressed schedule, just about anyone you talk to in NBA circles thinks those factors had a lot to do with the general decline in play. Teams in the NBA don’t practice all that much in a normal season, but they at least have a normal training camp and a full 82-game schedule to get familiar with each other. Cut that camp and play a schedule of near-permanent five-games-in-seven-nights stretches, and you’re going to find that players are tired and new teammates don’t know each other well enough in June.

You saw all of this if you watched EuroBasket and FIBA Americas, with their grueling stretches of five games in six nights and general lack of prep time. Star players, including Manu Ginobili and Pau Gasol, looked exhausted and slow by the end of those stretches and really could only summon their A-games when they got at least a day of rest. Boris Diaw and Joakim Noah miscommunicated more on basic defensive concepts in single quarters of games for France than Noah and Carlos Boozer would during a full week in Chicago.

In that 1998-99 season, the NBA squeezed 50 games into three months. Teams played nearly as many back-to-backs (about 15 or 16 on average) as they do during a normal 82-game season, and each club played about two back-to-back-to-backs — killer stretches that don’t exist in the regular schedule.

And the numbers were ugly. Teams scored just 102.2 points per 100 possessions in that season, the worst collective offensive performance since the league instituted the three-point line in 1979-80, according to Basketball-Reference. They played at the slowest pace in league history, averaging just 89 possessions per game. Dig a bit deeper, and you see the decline in scoring was almost entirely linked to bricktastic shooting; teams turned the ball over, earned free throws and grabbed offensive boards at around the same rate they usually did during the mid-1990s and early 2000s. They just missed more shots than usual.

Teams in 1998-99 shot just 33.9 percent on three-pointers, down from 34.6 percent the prior season, and they hit a disastrous 45.6 percent of two-point shots. That shooting percentage on twos is the lowest aggregate mark in the modern history of the league; shooting percentages jumped back up to 35.3 percent on threes and 46.7 percent on twos in the 1999-2000 season, and with the exception of a slight dip in shooting in the 2000-01 campaign, they have never really approached lockout levels.

As Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus has noted, you cannot blame the lockout for all of this. Scoring per possession dropped off pretty steeply starting in the mid-1990s, as teams emphasized defense and the league allowed hand-checking. The league stalled this decline a bit by bringing in the three-point line for three seasons starting in 1994-95, but average scoring dipped all the way to 105.0 points per 100 possessions in 1997-98, the year before the lockout season. It jumped from the lockout low (102.2 points per 100 possessions) back up to 104.1 in the first post-lockout season, but it dropped again to 103.1 in 2000-01 and stayed around that level until the league killed hand-checking after the 2004 season.

In other words, the lockout-shortened season is an outlier, but it’s an outlier within a general trend of poor scoring. Still, scoring, shooting percentages and pace all reached their nadir during that season, and that isn’t a coincidence. Play will decline if you give players less rest and less time to get to know their teammates’ on-court tendencies and preferences.

And this doesn’t even get into issues of increased randomness in playoff outcomes and the larger potential impact of any injury. The 1998-99 season was, after all, one of the few in which an eighth-seeded team (the Knicks) upset a top seed (the Heat) in the first round. The more games you play, the better chance you have of seeing the true greats of the league rise to the top. This is why the NFL playoffs are unpredictable (what can 16 games really tell us?), and why Major League Baseball’s 162-game marathon guarantees only the very best will reach the postseason. (What happens in October is a different matter.)

This is not an argument that an 82-game season should be set in stone, or that a 50-game season is a bad idea on its own. Lots of international leagues play far shorter seasons than the NBA, and people like them just fine. There is a discussion to be had about reducing the length of the NBA season, though it’s a discussion that belongs in a fake world in which the league and its owners will actually entertain the idea. It is an argument against squeezing 50 games into three months. It might not be as bad as missing an entire season, but it’s bad enough that each side (and the fans) should view it as its own separate nightmarish scenario.


Link

Meeting just ended...sounds like Stern is keeping it lowkey.
Follow @WojYahooNBA and @KBergCBS for updates.

 

[you big dummy]

I appreciate the articles

reading the tweets, its not looking good right now..

KBergCBS Ken Berger

Stern, who turns 69 today, received a birthday cake during the bargaining session.
1 hour ago


http://twitter.com/#!/WojYahooNBA

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

Stern is saying little to nothing. Dour. Bad body language on how this went today.
1 hour ago

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

Stern and Silver bailed, offered nothing. You can expect the next step today or tomorrow will be to cancel 1st two weeks of training camp.
1 hour ago

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

There's always the chance the two sides will meet secretly over weekend, but who knows? It's happened in past.
1 hour ago

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

As one GM just texted: "How can you meet for six hours and have nothing to report?"

58 minutes ago http://twitter.com/#

»

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

Both sides looked and sounded as glum as ever, far from any solutions. (In case that wasn't clear in the past several tweets).

1 hour agohttp://twitter.com/#

»

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

Clearly, the season isn't starting on time. Any lingering chance of that passed today.

1 hour agohttp://twitter.com/#

»

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

Fisher on season starting on time: "The calender is obviously not our friend."
1 hour ago

 

[you big dummy]

I appreciate the articles

reading the tweets, its not looking good right now..

KBergCBS Ken Berger

Stern, who turns 69 today, received a birthday cake during the bargaining session.
1 hour ago


http://twitter.com/#!/WojYahooNBA

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

Stern is saying little to nothing. Dour. Bad body language on how this went today.
1 hour ago

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

Stern and Silver bailed, offered nothing. You can expect the next step today or tomorrow will be to cancel 1st two weeks of training camp.
1 hour ago

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

There's always the chance the two sides will meet secretly over weekend, but who knows? It's happened in past.
1 hour ago

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

As one GM just texted: "How can you meet for six hours and have nothing to report?"

58 minutes ago http://twitter.com/#

»

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

Both sides looked and sounded as glum as ever, far from any solutions. (In case that wasn't clear in the past several tweets).

1 hour agohttp://twitter.com/#

»

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

Clearly, the season isn't starting on time. Any lingering chance of that passed today.

1 hour agohttp://twitter.com/#

»

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski

Fisher on season starting on time: "The calender is obviously not our friend."
1 hour ago

 

[cosmiccanon]

Honestly, I get pissed reading the stupidity posted on RealGM. It seems no one knows the situation, and just sides w/ the owners despite the facts. Whenever a poster challenges their(board majority) way of thinking, the simply dismiss it. SMH @ average people

 

[cosmiccanon]

Honestly, I get pissed reading the stupidity posted on RealGM. It seems no one knows the situation, and just sides w/ the owners despite the facts. Whenever a poster challenges their(board majority) way of thinking, the simply dismiss it. SMH @ average people

 

[pmatic]

I hate to get some of you optimistic again...

Owners' revised proposal means there's hope for full season

Last we left our negotiating heroes, Billy Hunter had drawn a line in the sand: The players were prepared to make a significant economic move, but only if the owners dropped their insistence on a hard cap.
The NBA said, "Nope." Each side retreated to a neutral corner. The brains of both operations got together Wednesday, followed by the heavy hitters on Thursday at a snobby boutique hotel on Manhattan's Upper East Side. And guess what?

After more than two years of negotiations, it's finally time to negotiate.

Following a series of small compromises by both sides, it was the owners' turn to move the needle in a significant way. And they did: According to a person briefed on the negotiations, the league put forth a new number on the split of revenues, or basketball-related income, on Thursday, a step that could help propel the talks forward even as the start of training camps were set to be delayed and preseason games canceled -- with such gloomy but fully expected and insignificant announcements expected Friday.

"It's moving," said another person with knowledge of the talks. "Not as fast as some people would want, but it's moving."

According to one of the people familiar with the bargaining, here is some of what transpired Thursday: After signaling last week that the players' offer to move lower than the 54.3 percent share of BRI was a starting point that could lead to a deal on economics, league negotiators came back with their own number. Unsurprisingly, the number was lower than what the players had last proposed, though multiple people involved in the talks refused to specify by how much.

The owners' proposed BRI split was made without specific system details tied to it, and the number itself was "unacceptable" to the union leadership, one of the sources said. Thus, the faces of both sides emerged from the Manhattan hotel after five hours of bargaining and delivered the same vague non-answers with strikingly similar flatlined demeanors and monotone voices.

"I'm sorry, but the most important thing is to see whether we can't have negotiations conducive to ultimately getting a deal, which is what our committee and our board will like," commissioner David Stern said on his 69th birthday. "And having these conversations with you doesn't add anything to that. And that's the dilemma."

But despite hand wringing over the imminent delay of training camps and the cancellation of preseason games -- an announcement is expected Friday, according to sources -- what happened here actually had the potential to be productive. For the first time since their initial proposal in January 2010 -- when they offered a $45 million hard cap that would deliver the players well below 50 percent of BRI -- the owners proposed a revised BRI split that was closer to, but still below what the players have indicated they would be willing to accept. In this impossibly slow negotiating dance, that qualifies as progress.

The owners' number, one of the people familiar with the details said, represented a willingness to move off their most recent formal proposal to cap player salaries at $2 billion a year for the bulk of a 10-year proposal. So, do the math: Assuming 4 percent revenue growth next season to $3.95 billion, the owners' $2 billion proposal represented roughly 50.5 percent of BRI for the players. If the players were willing to go down to, say, 53 percent with assurances that a soft cap would remain in place, that would be $2.094 billion -- leaving the two sides only $94 million apart in the first year of the deal.

Given that the owners moved off their $2 billion to somewhere between that and the players' number, we're talking about perhaps as little as $75 million per year holding up the future of the NBA. That's why, as one person familiar with the talks said Thursday, a deal is "there for the taking."

When will each side be ready to take it? Not yet. Not Thursday, and maybe not next week, either. The drop-dead date to preserve the season intact -- Oct. 13 or 14 -- is still three weeks away.

So what happens next? Stern reports by phone to the labor relations committee Friday, cancels preseason games and postpones the start of camps -- as we knew back on July 1 would happen -- and the two sides get back together early next week and negotiate the split further.

Now that each side is on record with a number that isn't wildly out of line with the other, that shouldn't take long. That's why both sides left Thursday's bargaining session expecting next week's meeting to mark the beginning of the real dirty work -- negotiating the system that will deliver the money to the players.

The BRI split is tied to the cap; the harder the cap, the higher the players believe their share needs to be. But as one of the people familiar with the talks said, once a compromise is reached on the split, figuring out a system to go with it shouldn't be a deal-killer.

"There's willingness to deal on both points," said the person, referring to the split and the system. "It's been said from the beginning: If there's agreement on the money, the system should not cause us to lose games."

From now until Oct. 14 -- the date I've marked on my calendar when regular-season games will be canceled without a deal -- the most dangerous days of these negotiations are not when the two sides are speaking with each other. It's the days in between, when they talk internally to their constituents.

After the two sides felt they were on the verge of agreeing on the economics last Tuesday, they went to their neutral corners and things changed. Agents mobilized players and got them in revolt mode, and owners who aren't on the negotiating committee evidently weren't as prepared to move forward with the economic model that the small groups of negotiators were growing comfortable discussing.

A lot can go wrong, and probably will, between now and Oct. 14. But that still leaves three weeks to get a deal, and about half of it's done, as far as I can tell. How hard will each side be willing to push to get what it wants? That we don't know. When will they be ready to take a deal that's there for the taking?

They'll be ready when they're ready. They'll be ready when they have to be. If not, shame on all of them.


Link

 

[pmatic]

I hate to get some of you optimistic again...

Owners' revised proposal means there's hope for full season

Last we left our negotiating heroes, Billy Hunter had drawn a line in the sand: The players were prepared to make a significant economic move, but only if the owners dropped their insistence on a hard cap.
The NBA said, "Nope." Each side retreated to a neutral corner. The brains of both operations got together Wednesday, followed by the heavy hitters on Thursday at a snobby boutique hotel on Manhattan's Upper East Side. And guess what?

After more than two years of negotiations, it's finally time to negotiate.

Following a series of small compromises by both sides, it was the owners' turn to move the needle in a significant way. And they did: According to a person briefed on the negotiations, the league put forth a new number on the split of revenues, or basketball-related income, on Thursday, a step that could help propel the talks forward even as the start of training camps were set to be delayed and preseason games canceled -- with such gloomy but fully expected and insignificant announcements expected Friday.

"It's moving," said another person with knowledge of the talks. "Not as fast as some people would want, but it's moving."

According to one of the people familiar with the bargaining, here is some of what transpired Thursday: After signaling last week that the players' offer to move lower than the 54.3 percent share of BRI was a starting point that could lead to a deal on economics, league negotiators came back with their own number. Unsurprisingly, the number was lower than what the players had last proposed, though multiple people involved in the talks refused to specify by how much.

The owners' proposed BRI split was made without specific system details tied to it, and the number itself was "unacceptable" to the union leadership, one of the sources said. Thus, the faces of both sides emerged from the Manhattan hotel after five hours of bargaining and delivered the same vague non-answers with strikingly similar flatlined demeanors and monotone voices.

"I'm sorry, but the most important thing is to see whether we can't have negotiations conducive to ultimately getting a deal, which is what our committee and our board will like," commissioner David Stern said on his 69th birthday. "And having these conversations with you doesn't add anything to that. And that's the dilemma."

But despite hand wringing over the imminent delay of training camps and the cancellation of preseason games -- an announcement is expected Friday, according to sources -- what happened here actually had the potential to be productive. For the first time since their initial proposal in January 2010 -- when they offered a $45 million hard cap that would deliver the players well below 50 percent of BRI -- the owners proposed a revised BRI split that was closer to, but still below what the players have indicated they would be willing to accept. In this impossibly slow negotiating dance, that qualifies as progress.

The owners' number, one of the people familiar with the details said, represented a willingness to move off their most recent formal proposal to cap player salaries at $2 billion a year for the bulk of a 10-year proposal. So, do the math: Assuming 4 percent revenue growth next season to $3.95 billion, the owners' $2 billion proposal represented roughly 50.5 percent of BRI for the players. If the players were willing to go down to, say, 53 percent with assurances that a soft cap would remain in place, that would be $2.094 billion -- leaving the two sides only $94 million apart in the first year of the deal.

Given that the owners moved off their $2 billion to somewhere between that and the players' number, we're talking about perhaps as little as $75 million per year holding up the future of the NBA. That's why, as one person familiar with the talks said Thursday, a deal is "there for the taking."

When will each side be ready to take it? Not yet. Not Thursday, and maybe not next week, either. The drop-dead date to preserve the season intact -- Oct. 13 or 14 -- is still three weeks away.

So what happens next? Stern reports by phone to the labor relations committee Friday, cancels preseason games and postpones the start of camps -- as we knew back on July 1 would happen -- and the two sides get back together early next week and negotiate the split further.

Now that each side is on record with a number that isn't wildly out of line with the other, that shouldn't take long. That's why both sides left Thursday's bargaining session expecting next week's meeting to mark the beginning of the real dirty work -- negotiating the system that will deliver the money to the players.

The BRI split is tied to the cap; the harder the cap, the higher the players believe their share needs to be. But as one of the people familiar with the talks said, once a compromise is reached on the split, figuring out a system to go with it shouldn't be a deal-killer.

"There's willingness to deal on both points," said the person, referring to the split and the system. "It's been said from the beginning: If there's agreement on the money, the system should not cause us to lose games."

From now until Oct. 14 -- the date I've marked on my calendar when regular-season games will be canceled without a deal -- the most dangerous days of these negotiations are not when the two sides are speaking with each other. It's the days in between, when they talk internally to their constituents.

After the two sides felt they were on the verge of agreeing on the economics last Tuesday, they went to their neutral corners and things changed. Agents mobilized players and got them in revolt mode, and owners who aren't on the negotiating committee evidently weren't as prepared to move forward with the economic model that the small groups of negotiators were growing comfortable discussing.

A lot can go wrong, and probably will, between now and Oct. 14. But that still leaves three weeks to get a deal, and about half of it's done, as far as I can tell. How hard will each side be willing to push to get what it wants? That we don't know. When will they be ready to take a deal that's there for the taking?

They'll be ready when they're ready. They'll be ready when they have to be. If not, shame on all of them.


Link

 

[big j 33]

After the optimism for the big meeting last week (or whenever it was), that resulted in no new proposals, I've accepted that we're losing games this season, just a matter of how many.

 

[big j 33]

After the optimism for the big meeting last week (or whenever it was), that resulted in no new proposals, I've accepted that we're losing games this season, just a matter of how many.

 

[airjordan jb23]

6 hours & no progress.