Official CBA/Labour Talks Discussion Thread II

[ATLTimekeeper]

Tweets:

Woj:

Veteran player who has long been on side of decertification just texted me: "Time to blow this (bleep) to the moon."

DeronWilliams:

I've been ready to sign a decertification petition since July? Can't believe we are just now going this route! SMH

This seems more relevant.

Several agents believe there’s enough support to get the needed 30 percent of players (about 130) to sign a petition for a formal decertification vote, but agents and players are dubious about the ability to get more than the 50 percent of the union’s 450 members needed to eventually disband the union.

We need to start hearing it from the small-time earners before it can be taken seriously, I think. It's a nice war cry, though. Blowing it to the moon over what now amounts to roughly 1% of BRI seems a little much.

[Indeed]

The owners are serious and the players should realize this. Many hardliners are more than willing to blow up the season to get what they really want a hard cap and BRI at 47% and a more more sharing from the have teams.e of you that think this is just about money are crazy. If I was the owner of OKC I would want the hard cap and all of the exemptions gone or face losing a competitive team.

Think 90% of the owners want to win a title while making a profit is important ego of being a winner is more important.

Its quite obvious Stern no longer has control just like Hunter.

You are crazy, it is clear that they only care about money.
1) You have no proof saying it is not about money
2) Evidence says they only care about money, RBI is the major priority, and system comes after (September)

Think 10% of the owners want to win a title.
Besides, improve on RBI won't help parity, hard cap won't help parity. Wade/Rose/Howard won't sign in Toronto in hard cap, that's the fact!

[carlosey]

Fisher and Hunter need to be fired. You cant tell me this has been the only possible way to negociate a deal.

This doesn't even make sense.

maybe its because you are willingly refusing to use common sense. Fisher and Hunter have allowed a multimillion dollar negotiation to turn into a circus.

He's right! Their excuse every time is that "we don't have anything to take to the players", "the NBA and Stern are lying", "We won't be pushed around", yada yada yada. They never have a real excuse apart from wanting more money (52%+). They have been terrible with their negotiations. If they hate the offers so much, how come we hardly hear of any offers going the other way. It's always just "NO" from them, I want to see them come back with a counter offer every time they refuse one from the NBA and not just "we want more money". They do not appear to be trying to make anything work.

Exactly. Not only that but you also have seen players negotiating directly with the owners, the kg situation, fishers backdoor deal, hunter vs fisher, decertification threats at this stage where I doubt they can get the majority of the players to sign on etc. They have been horrible through this entire process and deserve to be fired.

[ATLTimekeeper]

My other thought on the decert movement have a lot to do with this:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysT8RA6JQks[/youtube]

We're looking at a movement led by the biggest actors in the league. It's a tactic to squeeze a better deal out of the owners.

[40 Guzzle]

back tracking to the MJ article, the reports earlier this week note that Jordan is reppin' a group of small market owners who are leveraging their hard stance on the BRI in order to get more desirable profit sharing from the big market teams

based on that dynamic, his actions are more "owners versus owners" than they are "owners versus players"

[YogiStewart]

Let the players decertify.
If they vote to consider decertification, they lose so much bloody money during the 45 day wait time....such fools.
And if they decertify, things will be tied up for months/years.
We may actually be talking about lost seasonS, not just one season.


Players have to realize that no matter what the owners want, they kind of have to give in. They will lose much more by not doing so. Screw pride.

[40 Guzzle]

new york post: the latest offer from the league with a take-it-or-leave-it wednesday ultimatum:

The NBA’s proposal last night called for the taxpayers to have a “mini-midlevel exception’’ at $2.5M and have it available just once every two years. The taxpayers also would not be allowed to acquire free agents through sign-and-trades. Both items were considered deal-breakers to the union.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/more_spo ... z1cvcp9UUD

[40 Guzzle]

I'm actually perfectly fine with those restrictions on tax payers

[Headliner]

Those are great rules.

NBA players need to wake up. That's nothing to lose another month of pay over.

[ATLTimekeeper]

Let the players decertify.
If they vote to consider decertification, they lose so much bloody money during the 45 day wait time....such fools.
And if they decertify, things will be tied up for months/years.
We may actually be talking about lost seasonS, not just one season.


Players have to realize that no matter what the owners want, they kind of have to give in. They will lose much more by not doing so. Screw pride.

They can still negotiate during that 45 day wait time. It basically gives the players a card to play. Although, it would likely lead to a 45th day settlement.

[OAKLEY_2]

The owners can all afford to lose a season. The players? Not so sure. The "stars" and their agents are throwing the rest of the union under the bus or at least trying to. Let's call it Big 3 syndrome and Paul Pierce. The most important thing here is not the BRI but the other issues. Getting caught up in the BRI plays to the owners hands. The focus should be on issues that make for longer and more sustainable basket ball careers. What is better playing 5 years and coming out at the end of it with more money or playing 2 years but having a bigger per cent of BRI? Clearly the union and players not named the stars have to align with issues that prolong careers. Better pensions. Larger rosters, Revenue sharing. Hard cap. The real solution to all of this is the stars and the agents taking the hit on the BRI.

[Laowai]

The owners are serious and the players should realize this. Many hardliners are more than willing to blow up the season to get what they really want a hard cap and BRI at 47% and a more more sharing from the have teams.e of you that think this is just about money are crazy. If I was the owner of OKC I would want the hard cap and all of the exemptions gone or face losing a competitive team.

Think 90% of the owners want to win a title while making a profit is important ego of being a winner is more important.

Its quite obvious Stern no longer has control just like Hunter.

You are crazy, it is clear that they only care about money.
1) You have no proof saying it is not about money
2) Evidence says they only care about money, RBI is the major priority, and system comes after (September)


When have you ever made a intelligent statement NEVER

Think 10% of the owners want to win a title.
Besides, improve on RBI won't help parity, hard cap won't help parity. Wade/Rose/Howard won't sign in Toronto in hard cap, that's the fact!

[RapTelligence]

Honestly the sad part of the decertification strategy is that if it goes through 80-90% of the union will make less money in the long run.

[anj]

Let the players decertify.
If they vote to consider decertification, they lose so much bloody money during the 45 day wait time....such fools.
And if they decertify, things will be tied up for months/years.
We may actually be talking about lost seasonS, not just one season.


Players have to realize that no matter what the owners want, they kind of have to give in. They will lose much more by not doing so. Screw pride.

I guess the NBA finally has enough intelligent owners to realize that they're a cartel. There really doesn't appear to be anything the players can do other than play this decertification card and I'm sure the bulk of the NBAPA knows that won't end well.

based on info at hand, my guesstimate is NBA revs would need to jump by roughly 22% for players to reach 51% BRI Given those numbers, I can understand "fraud" calls from Kessler/Fisher regarding the band issue

[dacrusha]

Honestly the sad part of the decertification strategy is that if it goes through 80-90% of the union will make less money in the long run.

Considering 10-20% of the players represent 95% of the NBA's' popularity, I'd say this is fine.

Better than complete nobodies like Linus Kleiza making $5 million per year.

[BorisDK1]

He's right! Their excuse every time is that "we don't have anything to take to the players", "the NBA and Stern are lying", "We won't be pushed around", yada yada yada. They never have a real excuse apart from wanting more money (52%+). They have been terrible with their negotiations. If they hate the offers so much, how come we hardly hear of any offers going the other way. It's always just "NO" from them, I want to see them come back with a counter offer every time they refuse one from the NBA and not just "we want more money". They do not appear to be trying to make anything work.

The reason you don't hear of proposals going back the other way is because the NBPA is in a defensive position in this negotiation. This isn't a negotiation involving a concern that's barely showing any profits and they're just trying to escape their negotiations without being put into the red, where both the union and the management are treading on eggshells to reach a really reasonable agreement. What we have here is a going concern that is hemorrhaging cash at breathtaking rates who is balls to the wall trying to make itself profitable at the expense of labour costs. The union is not in a position where it can really propose much becaue the aggressor in these cases is the ownership: the only thing the union is trying to do is not give away too much. Now, if this were a position where the ownership was wildly profitable, the tone of these negotiations would be entirely different: the players would be on the offensive.

I think it's easy to point the finger of blame at the players, but we have to be careful. If we don't want to have another extended lockout at the end of this CBA and make these labour wars sextennual events, this outcome has to work well enough for both sides. We don't want a situation of going to polar extremes every CBA with extended lockouts/strikes. So we don't want the players giving up too much in this negotiation. The franchises need to be profitable, but the players should be fairly compensated.

[Trilogy]

Players really should be having an informal vote on the last offer.

I think if they had the chance the union could very well vote to accept the offer.

I don't think decertification goes well for the players. It's hard to argue now that the owner aren't bargaining in good faith, especially with them reportedly agreeing to 5 of 6 mediator concepts. Anti-trust action would have been the strongest at the beginning of the lockout, when the NBA proposed some absurd demands in comparison to the old CBA.

[Ponchos]

Fisher and Hunter need to be fired. You cant tell me this has been the only possible way to negociate a deal.

This doesn't even make sense.

maybe its because you are willingly refusing to use common sense. Fisher and Hunter have allowed a multimillion dollar negotiation to turn into a circus.

He's right! Their excuse every time is that "we don't have anything to take to the players", "the NBA and Stern are lying", "We won't be pushed around", yada yada yada. They never have a real excuse apart from wanting more money (52%+). They have been terrible with their negotiations. If they hate the offers so much, how come we hardly hear of any offers going the other way. It's always just "NO" from them, I want to see them come back with a counter offer every time they refuse one from the NBA and not just "we want more money". They do not appear to be trying to make anything work.

Exactly. Not only that but you also have seen players negotiating directly with the owners, the kg situation, fishers backdoor deal, hunter vs fisher, decertification threats at this stage where I doubt they can get the majority of the players to sign on etc. They have been horrible through this entire process and deserve to be fired.

You still believe KG single-handedly killed the deal a few weeks ago?

The reason it appears to be a circus to you is because of the new Twitter age. Also there's the fact that you seem to believe every single piece of information you read regardless of whether it is rhetoric for the purpose of leverage or genuine.

These negotiations have been handled decently by Fish/Hunter. They're at a natural disadvantage due to the wealth differences between owners and players and the fact that 450 cats are harder to herd than 30.

[Ponchos]

It's hard to argue now that the owner aren't bargaining in good faith, especially with them reportedly agreeing to 5 of 6 mediator concepts.

That isn't what good faith means.

And if they are negotiating in good faith, it's only now after the players have started to feel financial pain from the lockout. Which, is not negotiating in good faith.

[BorisDK1]

You still believe KG single-handedly killed the deal a few weeks ago?

The reason it appears to be a circus to you is because of the new Twitter age. Also there's the fact that you seem to believe every single piece of information you read regardless of whether it is rhetoric for the purpose of leverage or genuine.

These negotiations have been handled decently by Fish/Hunter. They're at a natural disadvantage due to the wealth differences between owners and players and the fact that 450 cats are harder to herd than 30.

I don't think it's the wealth difference that's resulted in the disadvantage, it's just that they're on the defensive in this case. The reason is because the NBA is losing a ton of money and the owners will not allow the status quo to continue. If the NBA were raking in piles of money, the players would have been on the offensive and the tone of these talks would have been entirely different. The context determines everything.

If the NBA would like to avoid this kind of acrimonious labour stoppage in the future, they're going to have to really watch themselves, that they create a fair and balanced deal. Somewhere around 51% of BRI seems right. The league should be, in and of itself, profitable - but with the option of bad teams losing a little money (just not so much to lose their shirts, like what's happening now). The ownership really needs to check itself to make sure there's no vindictiveness or "now-it's-my-turn-to-screw-you-guys" in how they're conducting business: yes, the last CBA was far, far too generous to the players and relied upon a picture-perfect economic climate to even come close to working, but they can't go trying to make up for past wrongs.