Lockout

[Left*My*Heart]

I'm talking about injuries and the like that make a player unable to play, but the team is still shelling dollars out.

Such protections already exists both financially and competitively.

Player contracts are routinely insured against non-prohibited activities related injury with the exception of preexisting conditions at the time of physical exam (like Amare's inability to get his eye insured.)

As far as competitively, there are injury exceptions and if a player suffers a career ending injury, retirement takes them off of the salary cap in a year.


The Celtics just inked a new TV deal. In addition to the fee increase, they get a 20% ownership in new england comcast sports which doesn't count towards BRI. More new revenue which comes at ZERO additional player contract or overhead costs and the carved out a big chunk of this deal not to count towards the cap calculations either.

Maybe three or possible four franchises have suffered actual total return losses over the holding period of this most recent CBA. Only Charlotte actually lost more money than was generated in net savings from the roster depreciation allowance (which can pass through to offset other income.) The problem is not that the current system is not financially sound. The current system is not financially IDIOT PROOF.

Ticket sales are not down and TV ratings are up. The NBA is going to be ROLLING in money throughout this next CBA with zero changes. This is about grabbing more cash while they have the leverage of one overhyped bad economic year and a couple of REALLY POORLY OPERATED franchises in the rear view mirror.

Once they do idiot proof this thing, how do you all think that will benefit fans? Donald Sterling has operated in a financially idiot proof market for 20 years. He has been among the worst owners in all of sports history, but because the demand for NBA tickets in LA exceeds the supply of competent NBA basketball games/seats (Lakers) he has enjoyed profits and increasing asset values on an organization run strictly for his financial amusement. All that a more owner-finance friendly CBA is going to do is help more guys like Donald Sterling and Chris Cohan pick NBA fans pockets and maintain the overexpanded and watered down league.

I want a hard cap as much as anybody, but a hard cap that would have guaranteed the Charlotte Hornets a profit despite Jordan's absenteeism and bungling would be TERRIBLE for fans. How do people not see this?

I don't want the new CBA idiot proof and I think that just isn't realistic. I want a hard cap that keeps teams on the same level of spending. I sort of like the idiot moves and in my mind, a hard cap would magnify stupid contracts.

I don't have an answer for the guaranteed contract issues. Yes, teams are insulated to a degree from injuries etc, but their contract is still counted against the cap. It wouldn't bother me to see contract length shortened to a maximum of 3 years and still have them guaranteed.

I would love to see the Clippers contracted and we sign Blake Griffin in the contraction draft.

[floppymoose]

The Clippers will never be contracted. Sterling is raking in the dough. By the real league standard ($$$) for success, the Clippers are a powerhouse.

[Left*My*Heart]

Yeah Sterling is a golden child among the NBA owners.

[JimmyTD3]

By all accounts, we're probably going to miss at least part of, if not the whole, NBA season.

I know I'm pointing out the obvious but that could potentially mean waiting 2 years before we see a second of NBA action.

From now 'till I hear something positive, I don't really care about the NBA. Why argue about Monta/Steph when we may not even see them for another year and a half?

[Twinkie defense]

Does anyone know what will happen to contracts for players if we miss the entire season - if someone has only this season remaining on their contract, and we skip this season, is their contract over? Or does it just push out a year?

[floppymoose]

It's just over.

[Twinkie defense]

Well that's a great benefit to teams with players who have bad salaries - that's $10 mil off Biedrins' salary.

[floppymoose]

It's only a benefit if the team would have lost money this coming season. I'll gladly pay Biedrins $10 mil if you give me $11 mil to do it.

[Coxy]

How much worse will Biedrins be with a year and a half off NBA basketball.....,

Party at Beanbags yawl!

[turk3d]

Won't the owners be on the hook for any contracts that still have remaining years on them? They are still under contract to pay them are they not unless that is, there's some clause in their existing deals which states that they aren't required to in the case of a lockout. It would be different (under normal circumstances) if it were the players going on strike which is not the case here. I'm sure that if there's no stipulation in the contract which allows it to be voided, the players (with a bunch of drooling lawyers) will go after that money from the Owners and the NBA.

[Left*My*Heart]

My understanding, no one gets paid until they go back to work...

[turk3d]

My understanding, no one gets paid until they go back to work...

Yeah, but if they won't let them come to work? It must be in the contract. otherwise I think they'd have a pretty good legal case (although it would probably take many years and many lawyers) to eventually get something.

[floppymoose]

Yeah, lockouts are cute. Players don't get paid. It's basically the owners way to opt out.

But they can't do it just any time. The 2005 cba had a no strike, no lockout clause. In other words, while that cba was in effect, both sides promised to carry out the business of nba basketball.

But once the 2005 cba expired a little while ago, it was ok for the owners to lockout or the players to strike.

I assumed there would be something in the 2005 cba that made it clear that contracts after that cba expired did not have to be paid in a lockout, but I can't find it. If anyone else wants to look, it's here:

http://www.nbpa.org/cba/2005

[turk3d]

Yeah, lockouts are cute. Players don't get paid. It's basically the owners way to opt out.

But they can't do it just any time. The 2005 cba had a no strike, no lockout clause. In other words, while that cba was in effect, both sides promised to carry out the business of nba basketball.

But once the 2005 cba expired a little while ago, it was ok for the owners to lockout or the players to strike.

I assumed there would be something in the 2005 cba that made it clear that contracts after that cba expired did not have to be paid in a lockout, but I can't find it. If anyone else wants to look, it's here:

http://www.nbpa.org/cba/2005

There must be. Thanks flop/

[Twinkie defense]

Yeah again, these aren't contracts in the normal sense of the world - they are contracts that are dependent upon the terms and conditions of the collective bargaining agreement under which they exist. Players can't sue for breach of contract when their contract is part of a larger agreement which is no longer in effect (what they could try to sue for is antitrust, but that opens a whole 'nother can of worms). This is why the League has talked about rolling back existing salaries, across the board, by some percentage, which is really not much different that just chopping a year off a players contract for a season that never happened.

I mean, if the players were going to continue to get paid their full salaries, but not have to practice, travel, play, wear suits, take drug tests... that would be a pretty sweet deal huh? Which is why I was wondering if they would just tack a year onto every contract to account for the one that was missed.

[turk3d]

Yeah Twinkie, but if you already supposedly have a contract in place, what's the point? Then I guess the contract isn't worth the paper it's written on. OTOH, at least if under a CBA agreement, if the players strike and don't go to work, it should be pretty cut and dried, the owners certainly don't have to pay them unless they manage to use up their sick leave or something on that order.

In any job, situation you're expected to come to work in order to get paid (except on a limited basis). There must be some sort of an "out" clause in order for the owners to be able to get away with this (lock the players out assuming the players are willing to come in and go to work). But like you said, professional sports is not like the real world, in many ways.

[Twinkie defense]

The point is to get a new CBA agreement in place

[Twinkie defense]

NBA agents pushing union decertification... hahaha of course they are! Their profits have been hamstrung by rookie scale. They want a piece of $70 mil rookie deals again! And they can bite me.

[turk3d]

Agents want to decertify ^^^

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=A ... ion_072311

This was the reason the agents came to New York for a meeting on Friday, and why they left an unmistakable impression on Hunter: Sooner than later, we want to decertify, file an antitrust suit and throw some fear into the owners.

Looks like the players will continue to get paid until November and then things will get sticky

Most of the agents see a union with no strategy, and NBA owners simply waiting until the players’ checks stop arriving in November so they can hammer the most one-sided collective bargaining agreement in history down the players’ throats.

Although it does appear they will lose this years pay if they wait that long.

The owners are counting on panic to take over the union once the players start missing checks. That’s when the owners want to cut a deal, when the players are most vulnerable and fearful of losing a full season’s salary. The players risk getting the same lousy deal next year after already losing a year’s salary.

“Until now,” one prominent agent told Yahoo! Sports, “the union’s strategy has been basically hoping [NBA commissioner] David Stern wakes up one morning in a good mood, and decides he wants to cut a fair deal for the players.”

Essentially, it’s come down to this: Hunter is still selling diplomacy, but the agents want to commence fighting. No one expects the league to seriously negotiate issues until they fear the courts could rule against them. The owners want what they want – hard cap, rollback on salaries and guaranteed profits – and they aren’t interested in compromises. The longer the union waits to decertify and file an antitrust suit, the less chance there is of getting a reasonable agreement and saving the season.

Interesting:

After the meeting with agents on Friday, an email went out from Hunter to the players on the basketball-related income (BRI) windfall due them. Each player will get an extra 8 percent of his 2010-11 salary this summer based on the revenue the league generated a season ago, adding a little more to the lockout war chest.

Even more interesting:

“Beyond issues relating to the escrow and the guarantee, the audit results confirm the larger point that we have stressed with the owners since we began the collective bargaining process two years ago,” Hunter wrote in the email. “Quite simply, if the owners believe they need harsher restrictions on player salaries, they need only look to themselves, not to the players. On their own, operating under our longtime soft cap system, the owners have brought their player compensation costs down below 57 percent for the first time since the 1990s. …The owners accomplished this result by making tougher individual decisions and by exercising their own independent business judgment. This trend can continue for the owners, and it can be done without the radical overhaul of our current soft cap system they continue to seek in collective bargaining.

I thought that this article was quite good.

[Twinkie defense]

That last part is disingenous - they're fine making less money and it's the MECHANISM in a new CBA that's a problem for them, not the money? BS. They know that the system is rigged so that there cannot be regular, longterm saving on salary expenses without a mechanism, a mechanism that they tried to install last time but didn't work, because it was too soft.