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NBA commissioner Stern wants to avoid NFL-type mess
POSTED: April 22, 2011
By JOHN SMALLWOOD

NBA commissioner David Stern is a smart man, and he's been doing his job for too long to try and bull his way around issues - even if he'd prefer to.

So while Stern is quick to point out that the NBA playoffs are off to a successful start, he also knows he can't ignore the ominous cloud floating on horizon.

In 2 months, the NBA will crown its 2010-2011 champion. Shortly after that, the association could face a devastating work stoppage that will crush any good will it has gained this season.

"I say to people that we are working hard on a [collective bargaining agreement]," Stern said last night before the Sixers played the Miami Heat at the Wells Fargo Center. "We're working hard on a revenue-sharing formula. And, what do you know, the playoffs broke out. It's been one of our best seasons in years.

"We'd like to be rolling right along, but we're looking for a CBA that gives the owners a return on their investment.

"I think there is an opportunity to do that and make a deal with the players."

Stern sees what's happening with the NFL - a league in the midst of a lockout despite being the most profitable of American professional sports.

He knows how much damage the lockout that reduced the 1999 NBA season to 50 games did to the league.

Yet here is where the league and the National Basketball Players Association find themselves.

"The NFL is out there on display," Stern said. "They're profitable but their future is so involved in some combination of court cases and [National Labor Relations Board] proceedings.

"We, on behalf of the NBA, and [Players Association executive director Billy Hunter], on behalf of the union, understand that's a route that should be avoided.

"We've committed to each other to give it our best shot, and we will. We have over 2 months. I don't think it distracts from the playoffs, but it's there."

Stern addressed a number of things, such as historical franchises like the Sixers and New York Knicks returning to the playoffs, the human element of NBA referees and future use of technology.

Considering the Heat was in the building with its superstar trio of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, it was only natural to ask Stern whether he had a problem with the current trend of stars' manipulating the system to play together.

"No," Stern said. "I've grown up in this league with teams that had great players . . . You may call me a player's person, but the players made a deal that allows them to be free agents and decide where they want to go.

"[The press] is making it into a federal offense that they discuss where they want to go and play with other players. That doesn't warm my blood. Those are the rules. If the team that gets them is under the salary cap, this is the way the system was designed to work."

Stern envisions replay official, challenge flags
Posted on: April 21, 2011 8:55 pm


PHILADELPHIA – NBA commissioner David Stern defended the officiating through the first week of the playoffs Thursday night and said he envisions a time when the league will have a dedicated replay official and when coaches will be allowed to throw challenge flags in the final two minutes of games.

“The officiating has been how officiating is,” Stern said during a stop on his playoff tour at Game 3 between the Heat and 76ers. “We have this issue. We have humans that officiate our games and they don’t catch everything. But they’re the best at what they do.”

The opening week of the playoffs included several controversial calls, including one in which Oklahoma City’s Kendrick Perkins was incorrectly credited with a basket in the Thunder’s 102-101 victory over the Nuggets in Game 1 of their series due to a missed basket interference call. The league office issued a statement acknowledging the mistake, but a blatant trip by the Celtics’ Kevin Garnett against the Knicks’ Toney Douglas – helping to free Ray Allen for a deciding 3-pointer in Game 1 of that series – did not result in a mea culpa from Stern’s officiating department.

Stern stressed several times the need to strive for accuracy through replay enhancement without further slowing down the games.

“Eventually, you may have someone sitting at a desk rather than having a Talmudic discussion of three referees every time there’s a disputed play,” Stern said. “We might have one person whose job it is to keep the headphones on and always watch. And you might let a coach throw the flag in the last two minutes. We’re striving for accuracy. … We have to find a way to speed the game up, and to get it right. That’s the most important thing.”

With developments Thursday further enhancing Sacramento’s efforts to prevent the Kings from moving to Anaheim, Stern said Oklahoma City owner Clay Bennett – chairman of the relocation committee – and several league officials are in Sacramento “verifying” Mayor Kevin Johnson’s assertions to the Board of Governors last week about Sacramento’s renewed financial commitment to the team.

“Our preference was to understand that better, and the verification is under way,” Stern said.

Asked if the recently agreed upon sale of the Pistons to Tom Gores and the expression of interest from Ron Burkle to buy the Kings and keep them in Sacramento was proof that the NBA’s financial state isn’t as dire as owners say, Stern said, “No. It just means they know we’re going to get a good (labor) deal and they’re already factoring it into their decisions to buy. And they know we’re not only going to get a good deal, but a deal that really makes it sustainable to buy a team.”

Among the other topics addressed by Stern Thursday night:

• Asked if the league needs provisions in a new collective bargaining agreement to prevent “player-made teams” like Miami’s, Stern said, “No, because I have grown up in this league with teams that had great players.” Referencing the Celtics and Lakers of the 1980s, Stern said, “To me, you may call me a players’ person, but the players made a deal that says they’re allowed to become free agents and decide where they want to go. And you’re making it into a federal offense to discuss where they might want to play with another player. It doesn’t warm my blood. In fact, if the team that can get those players is under the cap, that’s the way the system was designed to work. I don’t get too boiled for that.”

• However, when asked about a Yahoo! Sports report from December that Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert – a key member of the NBA’s labor relations committee – had retained counsel to investigate tampering allegations against the Heat for signing LeBron James, Stern said, “I’m aware of the issue, but there’s been no formal complaint of tampering or anything like that filed. … If there was tampering that someone could prove, that would make my blood boil.”

• Reiterating comments he made earlier Thursday in New York to the Associated Press Sports Editors, Stern said he and players’ association chief Billy Hunter are in agreement that a court battle such as the one consuming the NFL in its labor dispute “should be avoided. … We’re going to do our best (to get a deal). And we’ve got more than two months.”

• After maximum contract lengths were reduced by one year in each of the past two CBAs, Stern said he favored ratcheting them down again. “Shorter and less guaranteed,” he said. “I have no idea what they’ll agree to and I’m not going to negotiate with them here.”

• On whether the Heat have met expectations, Stern said, “They met my expectations, but they didn’t meet everybody else’s. Before the season, everyone thought they were going to win 75 games and we should just mail the trophy. In fact, it takes a while for a team. This is a team game, and they’ve done pretty well. They’re pretty darn good and they’re playing awfully well, but it hasn’t been the walk in the park that they expected.”

David Stern: NBA talks must intensify

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- With time running out and business beginning to suffer, the NBA is eager to intensify talks with its union.

And commissioner David Stern says the NFL's problems show why.

Stern believes football's labor situation, which he called a "mess," was worsened by a lack of urgency to get a deal done well before its collective bargaining agreement expired, something he wants to avoid as his league tries to negotiate a new deal with its players.

"It seemed that at the end of the bargaining between the NFL and the players, one got the sense that in the last day or two they had closed the gap," Stern said Thursday. "I don't know if that's accurate or not, but that's what I read. And you wonder as an outsider whether it would have been a good thing to close that gap a few days earlier, a couple of weeks earlier so that you had the opportunity and the plan to do that."

The NBA plans to soon send the union a revised proposal for a new collective bargaining agreement, hoping it will trigger meaningful negotiations ahead of the June 30 expiration date.

But Stern made it clear in his meeting with Associated Press Sports Editors that he will lock the players out if a deal can't be reached to give owners the financial relief they seek, even if it comes at the expense of his reputation.

"The league is my client, not my vehicle to a legacy," Stern said.

Stern said someone on the players' side challenged him on that before the 1998 work stoppage, telling Stern he wouldn't dare shut down the league that he'd spent more than two decades growing.

"You're going to learn the hard way. That's not the way we operate this league. We operate in the best interest of the league," Stern said of his response at the time.

But Stern doesn't believe it has to come to that point, with more than two months of bargaining time available. And he warned the players that the deal offered to them before the current CBA expires may be more favorable than one they could be presented after games have already been lost.

"If there's a work stoppage that changes our financial picture even more negatively ... it would seem to indicate that the offer that was there has to recalibrated to what the new realities economically are," Stern said.

Stern also defended the right of his owners to profit off their investments. Though the league is projecting $300 million in losses this season, the league's initial proposal in February 2010 for a new CBA sought to reduce player salary costs by about $750 million annually.

The players quickly rejected that proposal, which also called for a hard salary cap to replace the current system that allows for certain exceptions. The players sent a counterproposal that summer, but the league wasn't interested in it and there has been no progress.

But deputy commissioner Adam Silver said the uncertainty of whether there will be games next season will start to hurt the league when it comes to various ticket and sponsorship renewals.

"Frankly, we're running out of time," Silver said. "We have roughly two months and a week to get a deal done before the expiration of this collective bargaining agreement. And I think on that point, Billy Hunter and the union are in full agreement with us that we need to intensify these discussions."

Stern downplayed other comparisons to the NFL's situation, saying his league is losing money and has openly shared its financial data with the union. He also seemed to question the NFLPA's decertification process, but said having two leagues with labor problems would only further anger the public.

He believes his league would bounce back if games are lost, but with a cost.

"The damage that would be done to both sides would be intense," he said.

David Stern sounds serious — which means threat to next season must be serious

The commissioner suggests it's time for 'very intense' collective bargaining to avoid 'terrible mess' the NFL is experiencing. Players' union says it's just waiting for proposal it can take seriously.
By Mark Heisler

April 23, 2011, 4:14 p.m.

A funny thing happened on the way to the apocalypse.

No, it wasn't Carmelo Anthony's saying "I had fun," after scoring 42 points in the game of his life at Boston . . . as the Knicks went down, 0-2, on their way to 0-3.

This involves labor, where, as everyone knows, doom waits just over the horizon.

In the first good news for you holdouts who think there's a chance they'll play 70 games next season . . .

Oh, no one thinks that?

Actually, I do, or did, until some GM types, who thought they'd be back playing by Dec. 1, began saying it might be more like Dec. 1, 2012.

At Friday's Game 3 in Madison Square Garden, Commissioner David Stern dropped all posturing and made a plea to start talking in earnest.

Until then, Stern's demands — 40% giveback, cutting existing contracts — looked less like a proposal and more like Attila the Hun sending a rider to tell the townspeople he was coming.

In reply, union head Billy Hunter rolled his eyes and waited for Stern to get serious.

NBA people railed that the union was ignoring the crisis, detailed in the owners' IRS statements provided to it . . . while acknowledging this season's projected $4-billion revenue will surpass last season's record $3.6 billion.

Said a league official, incredulously:

"They keep asking us, 'What do you really want?' "

Actually, both sides understood it was a game, even agreeing not to call each other names over All-Star weekend.

What Stern, or, more to the point, his owners, want is half . . . which is still a monumental 20% giveback, requiring monumental fall-back room.

So we got hints of contraction . . . as Stern docked 29 teams $7 million apiece to buy the New Orleans franchise, knowing he'll sell it after this unpleasantness and give them $8 million-$9 million back.

Not that Stern wasn't going to get real — but it looked as if it would be closer to Sept. 15 than July 15.

By then the media would have written off the season and pronounced the NBA dead . . . the environment Stern hoped to create from the get-go.

Then came Friday in the Garden with Lisa Salters of ESPN.

Asked about the lessons of the ongoing NFL lockout, Stern said, forthrightly:
"What I have learned is you should make a deal. You get the courts involved, you get the union involved, as going out of business, supposedly. The players argue with each other.

"It's a terrible mess. We've got to try the best we can to avoid that. . . .

"I would guess we're going to go into very intense meetings and negotiations now."

The NBA is unveiling a new proposal, although I have the over/under on the giveback at 30%.

Stern's words still represent a change in tone, as the NFL union's decertification sobered up the football owners from arrogance that reached the point of buffoonery.

In the last bargaining session Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson was allowed to attend, he reportedly asked Peyton Manning, "What do you know about player safety?" and "Do I have to help you read a revenue chart, son?"

Now, it's a de-certifiable mess as they await Judge Susan Richard Nelson's decision that could lift the lockout, with players confident they'll prevail, as they have over and over in U.S. District Court in Minnesota.

Stern, the sharpest lawyer working in sports, may see more than a mess here . . . like NFL owners about to get it between the eyes.

Happily for the NFL, it has no real economic issues, as the respected Sal Galatioto, a financial consultant for pro teams, said recently on CNBC.

Any time NFL owners wish to, they can declare peace and probably will before too long.

The NBA and its players, on the other hand, have real issues and important gaps to close.

They're as much about major market domination (see: LeBron James to Miami, Anthony to New York, et al.), uneven distribution of profits, and losses suffered in other businesses by owners like Phoenix's Bob Sarver, a banker, and Sacramento's Maloof brothers, who own a casino.

Nevertheless, Forbes' projections — which the NBA disputes — had 17 of 30 teams losing money last season and an overall $153-million operating profit . . . a 4.25% return on $3.6 billion.

With businesses typically insistent on 10%, at least, the painful truth for players is the owners are entitled to a giveback.

The painful truth for the big owners is that everyone else can't exist to groom stars for them, so a hard cap and/or a franchise-player system is needed.

(Contraction, as espoused by Lakers people, is exponential arrogance.)

No one can see down the line farther or faster than Stern, who is often frustrated, waiting for the world to catch up.

Talking to the silver-tongued devil last week on the Sacramento story, I fumbled around posing a question.

Figuring out where I was going by about word two, Stern answered and wished me a nice weekend before I got it out.

The guy may actually be a genius, but we'll know more by Dec. 1.

NBA players, owners remain far apart in labor dispute

By Amy Shipley, Sunday, April 24, 6:40 PM

LeBron James just couldn’t keep quiet during a negotiating session between the NBA players and team owners early in 2010. As the owners discussed their latest proposal to the two dozen or so players who showed up to the meeting in Dallas, James spoke up, two people who were in the room recalled.

“You just want to turn us into the NFL!” James said.

NBA officials were quick to respond.

“Yeah, we do,” one league official said, according to those in the room. “It’s the most successful sports league in the history of the world.”

And therein lies the crux of the latest labor dispute between NBA players and owners, which could erupt into the second U.S. professional sports work stoppage of the year if the two sides cannot reach agreement by July 1 — just a couple of weeks after a new league champion is crowned. NBA Commissioner David Stern said on April 15 that ownership would deliver a new proposal to the players’ union — the first from either side in nearly a year — when the sides next meet, which could be as early as this week.

Sources familiar with the owners’ thinking say they aren’t willing to make major concessions as they seek to reshape their league using principles employed by the NFL, a $9 billion a year industry that dominates the U.S. sports landscape in fan interest and revenue generation. Philosophically, the NBA owners and players seem to be at opposite ends of the court. Depending on one’s perspective, the NFL offers either the ideal blueprint to develop a robust sports business or an oppressive financial system for players.

Owners seem prepared to follow the lead of NFL’s ownership — which locked its players out in mid-March — if the players won’t accept at least some elements of a revamped, not merely smoothed out, economic system.

“We need a new system,” Adam Silver, the league’s deputy commissioner and chief operating officer said after the NBA’s board of governors meeting last week. “The current system is broken and is unsustainable.”

Deciphering the numbers
National Basketball Players Association Chief Billy Hunter said the fact that television ratings, ticket sales and licensing revenue increased this season demonstrates the exact opposite: the league is thriving and requires no major fixes, other than, perhaps, some self-control on the part of certain team owners.

Despite the NBA owners’ unprecedented decision during these labor talks to open their books to the union, the sides can’t even agree on what the numbers say. Silver said last week 22 of the league’s 30 teams lost money this past year with collective losses at $300 million (better than the $340 million lost the previous year). Hunter maintained during an interview days later that not even a single team is in the red, saying the union disputes elements of the league’s accounting, such as including as losses depreciation figures and certain third-party transactions with team-owned companies.

“They want a guaranteed profit for each team,” Hunter said. “Nobody in business gets a guaranteed profit. If we implement the system they are talking about, franchise values will go through the roof. People will be lining up to buy teams, because it’s a guaranteed return.”

Hunter speculated the NBA ownership was being swayed in part by a half-dozen owners — including the Washington Wizards’ Ted Leonsis — who have experience in busting unions through their ownership stakes in NHL franchises. The NHL lost the entire 2004-05 season to a lockout but gained major financial concessions from players when a new agreement finally was reached.

“I think that’s part of the energy behind it,” Hunter said. “Some of the owners in the league . . . went through the lockout in 2005 that decimated the union.”

The NBA players’ union has demonstrated its solidarity by sending big-name players — and lots of them — to bargaining sessions at the last two all-star games. Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers has been heavily involved as the union president; James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and many others have also participated in talks. But little progress has been made over the past year.

The sides are split not only over how to divvy up money to the players, but how much of the total revenue the players should receive. Players, whose $5 million average salary is the highest in U.S. professional sports, want to maintain the 57 percent of the basketball revenues that they currently receive; the league wants to shrink that number to closer to 43 percent by taking more money off of the top to cover certain expenses and splitting the rest in half.

The owners also have argued since making their first and only proposal in January 2010, that the game would prosper — and everyone would benefit — if they adopted an NFL-style hard salary cap on individual teams. The NBA, like Major League Baseball, currently has a soft cap, which allows teams to exceed it in special cases but imposes a financial penalty called a luxury tax if they surpass a certain threshold; that money is redistributed to small-market teams.

The owners, who say large-market owners will always be willing to exceed a soft cap, claim a hard cap would increase competitiveness and allow small-market teams to compete for championships. The players say a hard cap would effectively eliminate the guaranteed contracts and longer-term contracts that currently populate the NBA, while suppressing salaries for marquee players, wiping out the NBA’s middle class and pushing everyone else to the bottom.

“We’re not receptive,” Hunter said, “to a hard cap.”

A move to share revenue
There is one area, Hunter said, in which the players would embrace an NFL-like system: In revenue sharing. Unlike in the NFL, NBA teams negotiate local television deals, which are not shared, on top of a national television deal that is shared. And unlike in the NFL, in which teams share 40 percent of gate revenue, NBA teams keep their gate receipts. “They want to move to an NFL model as it relates to a hard cap, but they do not want to adopt an NFL revenue sharing model,” Hunter said.

Stern and Silver said revenue sharing was indeed a major topic at the recent board of governors meetings and NBA owners are committed to developing and implementing a new plan. Hunter said the players want to know precisely what that plan is. In any case, Stern said, revenue sharing won’t eradicate all the league’s financial problems.

“You cannot revenue share your way to a sustainable business model,” Stern said. “Our issues are not solved by revenue sharing.”

Silver said “several” NBA franchises are so deeply in the red they would lose less money this season during a lockout than by playing under the current system. Three sports business experts told The Post they consider the NBA’s general claims of overall financial losses legitimate. But they also said the NBA already had a relatively restrictive system of free agency.

“The chances for a work stoppage are at least 50-50,” said Andrew Zimbalist, a noted author on sports economics who is also a professor of economics at Smith College. “They do have real losses in the aggregate, so it’s a more difficult situation than the NFL.”

It is not, however, on par with the financial disarray the NHL found itself in before its last labor dispute. About a third of NHL owners lost less money during the lockout than they would have had games gone on, according to NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly. Daly said that, despite the public-relations hit the league absorbed when it canceled the season, the lockout proved to be a valuable tool.

“Ultimately, we did it for the right reasons, I think, to be able to achieve our objectives in those negotiations,” he said during a recent interview. “Our league and our sport is in a much better place today than it was seven years ago. . . We were in a position where we really had no choice.”

The NBA players and ownership seem to agree they do have a choice. Both sides say a lengthy lockout would be disastrous for a business that, while facing some financial challenges, has seen catapulting fan interest in the last year.

“Even those teams that in the short term would do better on a [profit and loss measure] by not playing. I’m sure they would still prefer to be playing and building their business,” Silver said. “And there’s no doubt, from a league-wide standpoint, we would do enormous damage to ourselves if we are not playing.”

Said Hunter: “You’re going to destroy the league because one or two teams might do better? . . . When we had the lockout in ’98, it took until about 2005 for the boat to get righted again . . . and come out of the abyss.”

Hunter vowed to enter the next round of negotiations with an open mind. Howard Ganz, a prominent sports law attorney who has represented ownership in talks, said he, too, hadn’t given up on a deal.

“A lockout is by no means inevitable,” Ganz said. “There’s plenty of time left to reach an agreement.”

The NFL labor situation took a step toward resolution Monday when a federal judge granted the players' request for an injunction halting the management-imposed lockout.

The NBA is facing a lockout of its own after this season and hasn't had any progress in talks between players and owners.

"I anticipate a lot happening between now and July 1 on our side," said Lakers guard Derek Fisher, president of the National Basketball Players Assn. "And because of what is playing out on the NFL side, I think you'll see both sides in the NBA watching it closely, making adjustments and adapting to things based on what is going on.

"Our goal is to get a deal done, not to have to decertify or go into a court situation to drag the process out. NBA basketball has never been better. There's no reason for us to do anything to take that away from the most important people — our fans."

NFL ruling a victory for NBA players
By Ken Berger
The ruling Monday by U.S. District Judge Susan Nelson putting a temporary end to the NFL lockout also was, by extension, a victory for the National Basketball Players Association in its ongoing labor negotiation with the NBA.

In legitimizing the NFL players' move to dissolve their union in the face of the owners' lockout, and granting an injunction to end the lockout pending appeal, Nelson dealt a legal blow to both sports leagues in their efforts to use a lockout as a weapon in collective bargaining.

"This is a victory for all professional sports unions," said Gabe Feldman, head of the Sports Law Center at Tulane University.

Top officials with the NBA and NBPA were reading every word of Nelson's opinion Monday, but the upshot for the NBA's labor negotiation was clear and resounding: If the NBPA elects to decertify -- in effect, dissolving the union and forfeiting the ability to collectively bargain contracts and work rules -- then Nelson's ruling will stand as federal precedent rendering moot the NBA's presumed tactic of imposing a lockout. The NBA's collective bargaining agreement expires at 12:01 a.m. on July 1.

Anticipating a lockout, the NBPA already has collected enough signatures to approve a vote for decertification, sources told CBSSports.com. Both sides in the NBA labor negotiation have been closely monitoring the NFL labor case, and top NBA negotiators for more than a year have been holding out hope that a decertification by the players would be ruled a "sham" by federal courts.

But Nelson, the U.S. District Court Judge in Minneapolis, recognized the NFL players' decertification and created a precedent that has conclusive implications for a similar anti-trust lawsuit in the NBA. The NFL quickly announced that it will seek an immediate stay of Nelson's ruling and appeal to a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which will render final judgment.

Thus, the victory for NFL and NBA players "could be short-lived," Feldman said. "If the case stands up on appeal, it gives player unions a significant, though costly, weapon to use as leverage in labor negotiations."

Billy Hunter, executive director of the NBPA, told SI.com that the decision was "a great ruling for the players. But it's like the first round of a 15-round fight." Hunter expects a stay to be granted.

"What it does is put pressure on us to sit down and settle this," Hunter said. "We just want a fair deal."

If NBA owners and players are not able to reach a new collective bargaining agreement by July 1, owners could still impose a lockout. But Nelson's ruling, if upheld on appeal, would make the tactic a moot point. After decertifying, NBA players could file an anti-trust lawsuit in any federal jurisdiction where the NBA does business, but almost certainly would seek out the same court that ruled in the NFL players' favor.

If you're a lawyer or have too much time on your hands, you can read Nelson's 89-page opinion here.

Over the past week, NBA commissioner David Stern has substantially ratcheted down his rhetoric, saying at a Board of Governors meeting in New York and during a playoff media appearance in Philadelphia that a federal court case and potential National Labor Relations Board dispute "should be avoided." Stern said he and Hunter are in agreement that having their sport's future taken out of their hands and placed under the authority of the NLRB and/or federal courts would not be desirable.

"The NFL is sort of out there on display," Stern said last Thursday night in Philadelphia. "Here they are, they're profitable, but their future somehow is involved in some combination of court cases and NLRB proceedings. On behalf of the NBA -- and I believe, Billy, on behalf of the union -- (we) understand that's a route that should be avoided."

The NBA and NBPA now will wait potentially several weeks for the Eighth Circuit to rule on the NFL's appeal. In the meantime, Stern said after the most recent Board of Governors meeting in New York that owners intend to submit a second proposal to the players within the next two weeks. As of Monday, sources said that proposal has yet to be submitted.

The two sides in the NBA negotiation remain miles apart on key issues ranging from contract lengths and guarantees to a proposal by owners to scrap the soft-cap/luxury tax system and replace it with a hard cap with no exceptions. Owners have internally discussed a willingness to phase in their changes over several years, but that has yet to soften the players' opposition. Owners and players also continue to disagree strongly on the issue of how much money NBA teams are losing. Stern said recently that 22 of the league's 30 teams are expected to lose money this season, to the tune of $300 million.

NBA owners also seek to change the formula used to determine how much revenue is paid to the players as salary -- known as basketball-relate income, or BRI. Players currently receive 57 percent of BRI, net some expenses, but owners want to net out significantly more expenses before dividing up what's left between players and teams. In their counterproposal to the owners, the NBPA expressed a willingness to discuss a reduction in the players' share of BRI -- an offer that has been met with resistance from the owners, who say it costs too much to generate the revenue players receive.

8 Mile Ilic wrote:Unless they revolutionize the CBA, which I have a feeling they won't, the cap is going to go up.

8 Mile Ilic wrote:Seems reasonable, I could see a super luxury tax or shorter contract lengths being a partial "solution".

But I use that word loosely... Because I don't know if there is a real solution to the NBA's "problem". The owner's want to be protected from their own stupidity (handing out Travis Outlaw / Drew Gooden contracts), AND they feel they are entitled to make a profit.

But when you step back and think about it... Each team functions as its own business. Some businesses are successful (win / make a profit) and others fail (lose / lose money). It's just the way things are.

In my opinion the problem the NBA is having right now isn't about how much players are making but is about revenue distribution.

Maurice Evans optimistic NBA can avoid lengthy lockout
By Michael Lee

When the season began, the Wizards were so desperate for a player representative for the union that veteran Kirk Hinrich reluctantly assumed -- okay, he was practically forced into -- the responsibility. But when the season ended, they had Maurice Evans, a vice president of the National Basketball Players’ Association who will represent them in negotiations for what is expected to be a critical collective bargaining agreement.


Evans, who joined the Wizards in a trade deadline deal with Atlanta involving Hinrich, said two weeks ago that his primary objective this offseason is making sure that owners and players can reach a deal, “so we can have a season next year. I’m very optimistic.”

He conceded that a lockout would occur, but only because he doesn’t expect an agreement to be reached before the current CBA expires on July 1. The sides are extremely far apart, though the owners are expected to deliver a new proposal to the players’ union, possibly by Friday.

The NBA hasn’t had a work stoppage since 1998, when the season was reduced to just 50 games. But NBA Commissioner David Stern has repeatedly said that the current system is broken and needs to be fixed, with 22 out of the league’s 30 teams losing money, amd with collective losses of $300 million last season. Owners are pushing for a hard cap and an increase in basketball-related income, with players currently guaranteed to get 57 percent. Evans said players might be willing to relent on BRI, but do not intend to budge on a hard cap.

“In my opinion, the current deal we have now is actually working,” Evans said. “So if we can just work from there and try and figure out something that works for everybody… Again, we want to bargain with them. We don’t want to throw darts and say who is right and who is wrong. We just want to get a deal. There has to be some model that says this is how we do business and it’s consistent from here out. Tweak this, and work from there. Honestly, I don’t think there is anything more we can give and a hard cap is definitely not going to happen.”

The owners are also expected to push for reducing the length of guaranteed contracts, and limiting the guarantees on some deals, which Evans felt is unnecessary. “I don’t think there is nowhere to go from here,” he said. “Everything has gone down. We can’t continue to diminish the years of contracts. GMs and owners don’t have to sign players for those allotted number of years. We don’t need to self-govern them. Doesn’t make any sense.”

Evans is paying close attention to the NFL labor situation, which was made more complicated when its players decertified the union and filed an antitrust lawsuit the day before team owners locked them out. This week, a federal judge in Minnesota ruled the league must lift its lockout, but the NFL is seeking a stay at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The NFL players’ victory has raised optimism that something could get done without the NBA destroying the momentum of an exciting regular season and playoffs by having a prolonged lockout.

But until the NFL situation is completely resolved, Evans said in a text message this week, he would only classify it as a “step in the right direction.”

“It was a drastic measure,” Evans said at Verizon Center recently about the NFL players decertifying the union. “They took a chance. That means they are serious about trying to have football. We’re serious about trying to have basketball. So hopefully, we won’t have to go through those measures and we can sit down and hammer out a deal.”

Evans said the NBA players couldn’t surrender the progress of previous generations with the next collective bargaining agreement. The union is ready for a lengthy fight. “We’re prepared and we’ve prepared for this for a long while. So are the owners. I hope no one has been preparing with malicious intent, to try and prove a point and be spiteful. We’re just trying to get a deal. We want basketball and we want football and we want all sports to be, because it’s a part of our culture and it’s a part of the values.”

Sources: NBA, players execs meeting

The existing CBA expires June 30, after which, absent a new deal, NBA owner have promised to lock out the players.

Hunter and Stern negotiated deals in 1999 and 2005. In past negotiations between the two, face-to-face talks have not always led to significant progress, but there has never been big progress without such high-level meetings.

Against a backdrop of labor strife and ongoing legal action in the NFL, representatives of the NBA and the players' association have recently softened their public rhetoric.

Union officials have called the NFL players' tactic of taking the argument to the courts a last resort, while the league has made clear they are open to input from the union.

Stern's deputy, Adam Silver, said on April 15 that the league's goal is "a system in which all 30 teams can compete, and, if they are well-managed, to make a profit. We have never suggested to the union that there's only one way to accomplish that end."

The league delivered the players an updated proposal last week, but the deal was declined.

"Unfortunately, the proposal is very similar to the proposal the league submitted over a year ago," union president Derek Fisher told ESPN.com's Chris Sheridan and Chris Broussard. "This last proposal doesn't look close to what we were expecting."

The league has been seeking $800 million in additional annual revenue from the players, as well as a hard salary cap.

The union has argued for a revenue deal similar to the current one, while rejecting the idea of a hard cap. Hunter says a hard salary cap would effectively end guaranteed contracts which he calls "the lifeblood" of professional basketball.

"We've had that right for years, and it's not something we're trying to give up," Hunter told ESPN.com on May 21.

Both sides agree that TV ratings have been strong this season, and the league recently announced that 2010-2011 ticket sales were up roughly one percent. The players' association says the league's recent surge in popularity may have wiped out the losses that came with the recession. The league says the strong season has improved the bottom line, to a $300 million loss compared to $340 million a year ago, adding that 22 of 30 teams are losing money.