Is a draft without a CBA collusion?

[killbuckner]

Exactly right. The owners are the ones that want the salary cap, draft, rookie scale contracts, and a host of things that aren't allowed unless the players are in a union and agree to them. Even with all those constraints the owners WANT to give the players more money and they want rules to prevent them from doing so. The players have finally called the owners bluff to say basically "if you want us to agree to all these restrictive rules you better give us a very good reason to do so".