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Great article by Ken Berger that gives some reasons to be hopeful the full season will be saved:
http://ken-berger.blogs.cbssports.co...38893/32511287
Basically owners are offering a 50/50 split, players want a 52/48 split.
^^
Great article by Ken Berger that gives some reasons to be hopeful the full season will be saved:
http://ken-berger.blogs.cbssports.co...38893/32511287
Basically owners are offering a 50/50 split, players want a 52/48 split.
Make it 51/49 and call it a deal, people! Jeeez
At least both sides are eeking closer to each other as far as the split is concern, but my optimism is quickly waning. (As if that wasn't blatantly apparent in this post).
Players: But we want the fairest deal possible. We are unified.Make it 51/49 and call it a deal, people! Jeeez
At least both sides are eeking closer to each other as far as the split is concern, but my optimism is quickly waning. (As if that wasn't blatantly apparent in this post).
Either way, dropping from 57 to 51 would be a huge win for the owners.
If the owners were really secretly making huge money in the league and not losing millions because they're such awesome minds in the business of Sports, I think they would have snapped up that 53% offer from the players already and we'd have a season.
The players offer them up to a billion dollars in give backs on top of these secret profits that every team is bathing in and they don't take it? They risk a unified union or an agent provoked mutiny and risk decreased revenue for years due to fan backlash just to get extra points?
I doubt it. If the owners really were making profits outside the big markets like LA or NY, there would be enough of them to get Stern to accept the player proposal before any pre-season games were missed.
OK , Here is what i think , not that it means anything. I can not believe the people that are talking about the players getting screwed ect. These owners have made their millions in some other forums and would not own an NBA team because they were dumb business men. I have always said that that these athletes should be required to teach school for a month or work at the corner grocery or whatever regular job at the prevailing wage rate to appreciate what they have . It is the working schmuck that is paying their salary anyway..
If I were an owner and paying the multi million dollar salaries, I think that I would at least want 50% revenues no matter what the numbers say and more if needed to make the numbers match. Because if I sign the checks I think 50% is not unreasonable. If the players can not get by on these millions then let them get a regular job or go play in Russia or wherever. Just the way I see it.
stern aparently trying one last ditch effort to wrap it up. except the jews have their holidays coming so its going to be tough. lot of spin going around. is it 50 50? or whats been reported 49 with 50 tops players i think asked for 51 to start 53 tops. i probably got the numbers wrong but the thign remains they are 2 percentages apart. except that thats still hundreds of millions lost. the players have never had 53% or below ever in its history. now they are asked to go lower. sure hope stern can work his magic and get people in a room but players seem to be sticking to 53.
This guy gets it.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-...4527585.column
NBA players should accept pay cut, get back to work
BILL PLASCHKE
With many fans ambivalent about anything that happens before the All-Star game, and few teams having a chance to win a le, players should make a deal that ends lockout and strengthens the sport.
So the NBA announces it is on the verge of canceling the first weeks of the regular season, and my first thought is a fear.
Oh no! We might miss watching the Minnesota Timberwolves lose by 30 points to the Lakers on a Tuesday night in the middle of November!
The unspoken secret about the NBA lockout is that, because of the economic and talent disparity the owners are trying to fix, the average fan's attention is locked out until after the Super Bowl.
The league might be missing games, but we're not. Opening night is cool, the Christmas Day spectacle is neat, but does anybody really pay close attention until after the All-Star game? The NBA playoffs are the best in sports, but that's only two months in a season that lasts eight months, and that only works for the handful of teams that have a chance to win it all.
One of those teams plays in my town, which is also home to one of the best players in NBA history and the league's most exciting young player. In the last two years, my town has hosted an NBA championship game, an NBA All-Star game, and one memorable moment when that exciting young player executed a slam dunk over a car.
Nobody loves the NBA like Los Angeles, yet do you know how many people I have heard openly worrying about the lockout? One, and even my crazy Lakers fan neighbor just shook his head, said he hoped they would return for the playoffs, and kept watering his lawn.
The NBA is not the NFL. Heck, right now, amid the major leagues' thrilling late-season rush, the NBA is not even baseball. Yet the NBA's average player salary of about $5.1 million equals the average salary of those two sports combined.
The NBA players need to do the math, listen to the yawns, and look in the mirror.
The NBA players need to take a pay cut and go back to work in a sport that will be healthier because of it.
Under the old agreement, the players were making 57% of basketball-related income. After Tuesday's negotiating session, the owners were talking about giving the players 50%.
What happens if the players take that horrible pay cut? They will still be the highest-paid team athletes in American pro sports. Some of them will still make millions to spend their lives on a bench. The only thing that might radically change is that more owners might have more money to field better teams, increasing parity and popularity while ensuring survival.
The players are thus far refusing to take anything less than 53% because they say that, in the NBA, more than in any other sport, the stars are bigger than the league.
It's true that no sport generates glitter like the NBA. It's true that only in the NBA can one single player on one single night — Kevin Durant on a February Friday in Phoenix — convince thousands of fans to buy tickets to that game.
But the stars bigger than the league? Not even close. The stars can't exist without the league, which not only pays them the money to ensure the security of their families' future generations, but also provides them with the stage to make even more money in endorsements and business ventures.
If the stars are bigger than the league, then how come the likes of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony don't just spend the rest of their careers playing in those barnstorming playground games that have become so trendy? How come no major television network has paid for the rights to televise those games? How come no major sponsors have rushed to be associated with those games?
If the players are bigger than the league, then how come Kobe Bryant has to go all the way to Italy to find a place that can pay him to play basketball during the lockout? Why can't he make $3 million playing pickup games on a court somewhere in Newport Beach?
As a journalist who hangs out in all sorts of locker rooms and clubhouses, I enjoy dealing with NBA players more than any other athletes. They are often accommodating, sophisticated and surprisingly unaffected for being some of the richest folks on the planet.
However, in this case, they are wrong. For all their high-flying brilliance, the NBA players need to come back to earth and get back to work.
I don't get why you guys think they should accept a big ass pay cut just to make YOU happy. Well, I get it, I just don't agree with it. Most of the players aren't making Kobe money, and this is a substantial paycut. If they're together then I'm not going to begrudge them for trying to get the best deal possible.
The owners on the other hand are here because they're incapable of being responsible and need to be saved from themselves. Thats pretty god damn sad.
Even with a 50/50 split NBA players average salary well still be the highest among all pro sports by quite a bit. Its not about making me happy, its about making those who cut the checks happy.
Because they're highly unlikely to get a better offer in the future, which is why they should realize they have to be in a damage control mode by now and accept this deal, because if they don't when they cave in, and they will, the deal would be worse for them.
That said, I can't sympathise with either side.
If I am the players I offer a 51/49 split and hope it is accepted. I am with you that it goes down hill in a hurry for players if they do not get the season started on time..
Being the highest paid doesn't really matter much if you can get more. Do you work for less than you can get? I know I don't.
What makes you think they're unlikely to get a better deal in the future? Obviously thats not what they believe and they're the ones doing the negotiating. Not saying that they're right no matter what, but I don't think anyone outside of the situation can say who's more likely to get a good deal in the end.
The players have a lot of money to lose, but so do the owners. Especially smaller market teams.
Math and history.
You have history of the future deal? Nice.
No, the past deal.
1999 negotiations come to mind - the players got a worse deal because of their dithering.
The players have a lot more to lose than the owners, IMO. Very few of them will get good deals to play in Europe. Teams won't jump on 2nd and 3rd fiddle players and offer them a lot of money, only the superstars would get that. Look at Deron Williams' performances - he's not justifying the money he's being paid, he's out of shape, looks disinterested and he's certainly not brought the success he was expected to. Teams will look at his situation and think twice before offering such deals to other NBA players ( other than the likes of Kobe, LeBron, Dirk, etc. ).
Bottomline is a lot of the NBA players would have to play for much less than they would be making in the NBA by accepting the current offer and this will give the owners even more leverage in the negotiations, which they will ruthlessly use to their advantage, make no mistake.
But this isn't 1999. Too many things are different to draw many conclusions from that deal and if I remember correctly the players union had awful representation then.
We'll see, but I don't think 1999 applies very much and I think the players know the owners are FOS.
Players have far more options now than in 99. Its not even close.
We'll see - like I said no one outside knows more than a guess - but my hunch is that the owners will eventually give in.
Taking the helm in 1996, Billy Hunter is the Executive Director of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA)
http://www.nbpa.org/executive-director
i would really like to know the terms of the 1999 deal and the one they passed up because for such a horrible deficient deal the owners sure wanted to opt out of it quick.
Manny, they read the characterizations of the deal making process from NBA executives and then turn around and act as if it has any basis in reality. The players still have options and there is no indication that they will capitulate especially seeing that they have been down this road before.
They live in a world where they think the owners take an appreciably lesser risk despite other leagues losing 20% of gross in similar cir stances. They also live in a world where they see nothing reprehensible with the owners lowballing and wait routine.
Its political entirely. These debates are and I can guarantee yo how they vote just as your political inclinations are apparent as well.
Math, my ass.
Out of curiosity, what percentage split do you think the players union will eventually get?
I have no idea. I really do not. One thing that I have noticed is that the NBA owners seem to do a lot more of their negotiation through the media than the players do.
I know that if i were the players that I would remain firm at about 53% which is a concession of 4 points and inform the NBA that if they started cancelling games for the season that we were going to decertify, encourage my cons uents to seek emplyment overseas and file an rust in federal court beginning with a request for an injunction.
But i am not going to pull numbers out of my ass or from a quote from an NBA executive.
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