Kori Ellis
05-15-2005, 12:08 AM
Mike Monroe: Stern's view of new agreement clouded
Web Posted: 05/15/2005 12:00 AM CDT
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/basketball/nba/spurs/stories/MYSA051505.10C.COL.BKNmonroe.2757ab25f.html
SEATTLE — There is no more prominent player about to become a free agent than Seattle's Ray Allen, an All-Star considered by most to be the NBA's best pure shooter.
By all accounts, Allen isn't demanding a maximum contract from anybody, including the SuperSonics, but there seems little question he will get a seven-year deal approaching, if not exceeding, $80 million.
So Allen could not have been happy to hear the mood shift, relative to the prospects for a new collective bargaining agreement between the league and its players' union, declared by NBA commissioner David Stern about 20 minutes before tipoff of Game 3 of the Sonics' Western Conference semifinals series against the Spurs on Thursday night.
Like many of us, Allen was taken in by Stern's rose-colored glasses view of the negotiations he expressed at the All-Star Game less than three months ago.
Then, with the disaster that was the NHL lockout still making headlines, Stern and union executive director Billy Hunter all but promised to avoid another pro basketball lockout, like the one that cost NBA teams 32 regular season games in 1998-99.
And most of us believed them, fools that we are.
But there Stern was Thursday, saying he no longer was as optimistic about labor peace as he was Feb. 20, and raising the specter of an NBA lockout that would begin July 1.
Few NBA players would be less enthusiastic about a lockout than Allen, but he seems to accept the prospect with his typical equanimity.
"I've said before that when we get a deal, that's when we can move forward (in free agency)," Allen said Saturday afternoon. "Anything can happen. Until we get something on the dotted line, who knows?"
Allen has been through this before. He was in his first free-agent summer last time the collective bargaining agreement expired.
"We've had a lockout before and a moratorium (on free-agent signings)," he said. "My first contract, I couldn't sign on July 1 because of a similar situation."
What Allen doesn't want to see is the kind of posturing that took place in 1998, when weeks, then months, went by with little or no hard bargaining by the league and the union.
"I just hope they don't think it's a July-August-September-October sort of thing, where they think you've got three months to do it," Allen said. "The urgency has to be set. When you think you have time, you have to do it, use that time."
I thought both sides understood the urgency back on Feb. 20, when a lot of us actually believed there might be an announcement on a new agreement before the end of the regular season.
What could have happened to change the mood so dramatically between then and now?
We hear whispers that the agents' council, a group made up of some of the most influential player-agents in the business, has been holding Hunter's feet to the fire to take a hard-line stance on the diminution of contract lengths and the maximum allowable annual increases in long-term deals.
There continues to be speculation the league's desire for an increase in the age limit for NBA players is a major sticking point, but players now in the union aren't going to let themselves be locked out for potential union members who just graduated from high school.
Stern insists a new deal could be done "in five minutes" because there is no cataclysmic change sought by either side this go-round; merely "tweaks" in the agreement in place.
But both sides, back in February, also promised not to "posture" in the press. I don't know what you call it when the lead negotiator for one side announces he is about to go from "optimistic to hopeful" a deal can get done.
Preparing to posture, perhaps?
Allen and his fellow free agents should begin to fret a bit, it appears.
Web Posted: 05/15/2005 12:00 AM CDT
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/basketball/nba/spurs/stories/MYSA051505.10C.COL.BKNmonroe.2757ab25f.html
SEATTLE — There is no more prominent player about to become a free agent than Seattle's Ray Allen, an All-Star considered by most to be the NBA's best pure shooter.
By all accounts, Allen isn't demanding a maximum contract from anybody, including the SuperSonics, but there seems little question he will get a seven-year deal approaching, if not exceeding, $80 million.
So Allen could not have been happy to hear the mood shift, relative to the prospects for a new collective bargaining agreement between the league and its players' union, declared by NBA commissioner David Stern about 20 minutes before tipoff of Game 3 of the Sonics' Western Conference semifinals series against the Spurs on Thursday night.
Like many of us, Allen was taken in by Stern's rose-colored glasses view of the negotiations he expressed at the All-Star Game less than three months ago.
Then, with the disaster that was the NHL lockout still making headlines, Stern and union executive director Billy Hunter all but promised to avoid another pro basketball lockout, like the one that cost NBA teams 32 regular season games in 1998-99.
And most of us believed them, fools that we are.
But there Stern was Thursday, saying he no longer was as optimistic about labor peace as he was Feb. 20, and raising the specter of an NBA lockout that would begin July 1.
Few NBA players would be less enthusiastic about a lockout than Allen, but he seems to accept the prospect with his typical equanimity.
"I've said before that when we get a deal, that's when we can move forward (in free agency)," Allen said Saturday afternoon. "Anything can happen. Until we get something on the dotted line, who knows?"
Allen has been through this before. He was in his first free-agent summer last time the collective bargaining agreement expired.
"We've had a lockout before and a moratorium (on free-agent signings)," he said. "My first contract, I couldn't sign on July 1 because of a similar situation."
What Allen doesn't want to see is the kind of posturing that took place in 1998, when weeks, then months, went by with little or no hard bargaining by the league and the union.
"I just hope they don't think it's a July-August-September-October sort of thing, where they think you've got three months to do it," Allen said. "The urgency has to be set. When you think you have time, you have to do it, use that time."
I thought both sides understood the urgency back on Feb. 20, when a lot of us actually believed there might be an announcement on a new agreement before the end of the regular season.
What could have happened to change the mood so dramatically between then and now?
We hear whispers that the agents' council, a group made up of some of the most influential player-agents in the business, has been holding Hunter's feet to the fire to take a hard-line stance on the diminution of contract lengths and the maximum allowable annual increases in long-term deals.
There continues to be speculation the league's desire for an increase in the age limit for NBA players is a major sticking point, but players now in the union aren't going to let themselves be locked out for potential union members who just graduated from high school.
Stern insists a new deal could be done "in five minutes" because there is no cataclysmic change sought by either side this go-round; merely "tweaks" in the agreement in place.
But both sides, back in February, also promised not to "posture" in the press. I don't know what you call it when the lead negotiator for one side announces he is about to go from "optimistic to hopeful" a deal can get done.
Preparing to posture, perhaps?
Allen and his fellow free agents should begin to fret a bit, it appears.