Lockout

Post #381 » by **floppymoose** » Tue Aug 9, 2011 11:19 pm

stuff on the fan situation:

http://www.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=1089304
http://blogs.forbes.com/prishe/2011/08/ ... n-atlanta/
http://www.nba.com/2011/news/features/s ... ef:nbahpt1
http://www.examiner.com/pop-culture-in- ... attendance

Post #382 » by **Sleepy51** » Wed Aug 10, 2011 12:44 pm

floppymoose wrote:The Hawks have been a bottom 10 team in attendance for most years in the last decade. And I don't think Atlanta sells as many high end tix and lux suits as the bay area either. Nor is the tv market as lucrative. It seems like a juicy price to me, with a nice return for the prior owners.

Anywhere in the south is a tough market for NBA basketball. College & Pro football dominate in those markets and that conflicts with roughly half of basketball season, and specifically the half of the season that doesn't really count anyway. You have to win games that matter to draw attention away from America's game in the south and the Hawks just don't win meaningfully. Just making the playoffs in the east hasn't equated to winning meaningfully for a number of seasons.

Having basically failed competitively and from a marketing standpoint, near the bottom of the league in fan attendance, they still made their owners somewhere in the neighborhood of 7% per year return over the last CBA though.

turk3d · Post #383 » by **turk3d** » Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:22 am

NBAs "Fearless" Leader Speaks

http://www.boston.com/sports/basketball ... cts_n.html

Post #384 » by **floppymoose** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 6:52 am

There are two reporters on the nba that I consider must reads: David Aldridge and Adrian Wojnarowski.

Check out Adrian's latest piece on the lockout:

Players union bends under Stern’s rule

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-wojnarowski_nba_labor_talks_080111

The reason for the union finally scheduling a meeting with the owners on Monday in New York City is simple: Union officials are trying to convince the players they’re doing something, but it’s worthless. This is a show. There’s nothing to negotiate, nothing to discuss. The NBA commissioner has made sure of it. Stern promised a new crop of owners that should they buy into the NBA, he’d give them the most one-sided labor deal in the history of sports. No fan has sympathy for these two sides, nor should they. Just understand this, though: When the NBA goes silent for a full year following a most wildly successful season, Stern will deserve full blame for the sport’s shutdown.

He won’t stand up to these owners, and why should he? He has the greatest job in sports, and someday soon he’ll be the highest-paid player in the NBA. Stern doesn’t need to push his owners on revenue sharing – the most viable solution for long-term league solvency – when it’s so much easier to go after the players and shut the sport down. He’s taking the easy way out, but it’s understandable considering the staggering salary these owners pay him.

Check out the link for the rest.

turk3d · Post #385 » by **turk3d** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 6:24 pm

Interesting article floppy. Says that Stern is the real "enemy" of the players. Could be right about that. And Fisher, I knew that boy would go someplace some day. He is an excellent politician. All this while more and more players are signing (or negotiating) contracts to play overseas in the interim. Better than taking a long vacation.

turk3d · Post #386 » by **turk3d** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 2:54 pm

Owners want 45M Hard cap which is rejected by players:

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/68695 ... acceptable

Twinkie defense · Post #387 » by **Twinkie defense** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 1:06 am

As they sign tiny contracts to play overseas... does not compute.

Post #388 » by **FNQ** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 2:23 am

So I've been purposely ignoring this for a while - denial I guess - but can anyone give me a real short answer as to why the union hasn't decertified yet?

turk3d · Post #389 » by **turk3d** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 5:39 am

I think (and really no one knows for sure) that it may be to make themselves look good (or better than the owners) by showing a "good faith" effort in the negotiations which so far the owners are not by initiating the lockout. Decertifying basically puts them in the same vein as the owners which might possibly have some legal ramifications if and when they go to court.

In some way i think that may be the smart move. Most of them are still getting paid (will continue to receive paychecks until November according to the way I understand the NBA payroll works) and in addition a number of them will pick up some pocket change apparently playing overseas. It's the owners who ultimately are going to be ones losing big time, at least initially the way I see it.

Twinkie defense · Post #390 » by **Twinkie defense** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 6:00 am

If I am not mistaken the League has put two deals on the table and the Union has yet to put their own deal on the table or even seriously discuss the existing deals on the table, so I'm not sure you can cavalierly say the players have acted in good faith while the League has not.

Decertification is a sham, and I think that at the end of the day the courts would understand that. Also, there are big risks to both sides with decertification. And did it help the NFLPA? I'm not sure that it did.

The question of who is going to be losing if there is no season, that's the big question. If teams really are losing money season-over-season, they don't have incentive to have a season, so it's the players that would lose out.

turk3d · Post #391 » by **turk3d** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 6:06 am

I'm not saying that the players have acted in good faith, I'm saying that by decertifying it makes it more difficult for them to say that are. I think that decertifying is the equivalent of the owners locking the players out and if they wish to fight fire with fire, they'd have a reasonable case for doing it. The owners by locking the players out have essentially taken a hardball approach with the players.

The players thus far have tried to negotiate with the owners who have finally presented a very unreasonable offer which they have rejected but have always been willing to go to the bargaining table. There's essentially a lot of jockeying between the two as they both will try and get public opinion on their side (which at this point seems about equally split).

Post #392 » by **floppymoose** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:04 am

Twinkie defense wrote:If I am not mistaken the League has put two deals on the table and the Union has yet to put their own deal on the table or even seriously discuss the existing deals on the table, so I'm not sure you can cavalierly say the players have acted in good faith while the League has not.

The number of "deals" offered by a side has zero to do with who is acting in good faith.

The players union has:
1) not decertified, despite being pushed to do so by player agents
2) not sued the owners
3) been fine with the deal the two sides negotiated last time
4) treated the owners respectfully in the press

The owners have:
1) locked out the players
2) sued to prevent the players union from decertifying, even though it hasn't attempted to decertify.
3) only proposed deals where they get hundreds of millions of dollars more of the pie.
4) lied about their financial situation
5) demonized the union at every opportunity

Twinkie defense · Post #393 » by **Twinkie defense** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:45 am

I don't think that decertifying is the equivalent of a lockout... A strike would be the equivalent.

If a decertification was successful, that could mean - no minimum player salary, no benefits, no salary guarantees, no draft, no rookie scale, no minimum team salary, unlimited ability for rich teams to stockpile talent and buy championships, some teams going out of business, no maximum player salary, no roster minimums... On the whole, a very dangerous place for the majority of players and teams... And a great opportunity for the LeBron Jameses and NY Knicks of the world.

And floppy I think you're being a little overdramatic there... Unfortnately lockouts and strikes are a part of pro sports in America. I don't think either side has been egregious in their handling of the other and their handling of the situation. Whether it's true or not, or whether you like it or not, many teams feel like they are operating under a system that doesn't work for them, so they are trying to change it, as is their right.

Post #394 » by **floppymoose** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 2:58 am

I don't think anyone seriously expects that decertification would lead to a long term situation where there was no union.

Rather, it would involve the FTC and DOJ in enforcing anti-trust regulations on the owners. The owners don't want that. So they would come back to the bargaining table and make a better offer. The players would reform the union and accept the offer.

That's how it played out in the NFL.

http://offsidesportsblog.blogspot.com/2 ... trust.html

Twinkie defense · Post #395 » by **Twinkie defense** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 8:25 pm

Yeah but the NFLPA gave up quite a bit, and the NFL is a much more profitable League. So I'm not sure that decertification gave the players some great leverage... but it did open up some Pandora's boxes - in fact the upper courts pretty much concluded that decertification was fake and were not going to force the League to end the lockout (a lockout is an antitrust violation if there is no union and collective bargaining agreement).

In related matters... Asia was supposed to be the big second option for players. That seems to have gone out the window now that China has said they will only sign free agents, and any free agents they sign will have to play their full season - they can't leave early in the event that the lockout ends.

Twinkie defense · Post #396 » by **Twinkie defense** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:25 pm

And here is an interesting angle on decertification... you remember discussions of across-the-board rollbacks on existing player contracts in a new CBA, and how that was permissible because those contracts are a product, are part and parcel, of the negotiated collective bargaining agreements under which those contracts were signed? Well if the union were to successfully decertify, that could void all existing player contracts made under prior CBAs. And while that might be good for Steph Curry and other players making less than they otherwise could because of the CBA, it would wreak havoc on highly-paid players - especially those many highly-paid players who are not "living up" to their contracts - and on existing team rosters.

Decertification is truly the nuclear option of collective bargaining here, and it would only be in a small minority of players' (and teams') interests to decertify. Which is why there would be a presumption in the courts that the players union isn't really decertifying, but just fake-decertifying in order to try to pressure teams to end the lockout.

And that's exactly what happened with the NFLPA's decertification and the courts' refusal to end the League's lockout (except for a day or two under a lower court, when everyone grabbed up their playbooks).

Post #397 » by **floppymoose** » Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:59 pm

Twinkie defense wrote:Yeah but the NFLPA gave up quite a bit

Absolutely. The question is did they give up less than they would have if they couldn't decertify. Clearly they believed decertifying helped them, else they would not have done it.

And regardless of whether they ended up with a better deal than they would have had otherwise, the original point stands: no one was thinking that decertification was where things were going to end up. It was just a step in the process towards getting the next labor deal.

Post #398 » by **floppymoose** » Sat Aug 20, 2011 12:03 am

Twinkie defense wrote:Decertification is truly the nuclear option of collective bargaining here, and it would only be in a small minority of players' (and teams') interests to decertify. Which is why there would be a presumption in the courts that the players union isn't really decertifying, but just fake-decertifying in order to try to pressure teams to end the lockout.

Whether it's fake or not is up to the owners, not the players. If the owners make a better offer than what the players can get from anti-trust enforcement in an open market, then the players would reform the union and accept the deal. Otherwise, they would stay decertified.

The common wisdom is that dealing with anti-trust enforcement would be so painful for the owners that they would rather just give the players a better deal.

Post #399 » by **FNQ** » Sat Aug 20, 2011 12:06 am

So why didn't the NFL contracts become null and void when their union decertified? Why are we still paying DHB, Tommy Kelly, and Routt insane-o money still?

Post #400 » by **floppymoose** » Sat Aug 20, 2011 12:21 am

First, IANAL.

With that said, here is my guess. If the union had stayed decertified, honoring the contracts would have gone to court. I do not know who would win that fight.

Once the union recertified to accept an offer from the owners, there was basically zero chance that the offer wasn't going to include honoring prior contracts.