Right on...the idea that the Spurs have always been a low payroll squad is just pure fallacy. We've consistently had a top 10 payroll since DRob retired.
Too bad this season is lost.
Very bad move by the players. Owners are not revising their offer just because there's a frivolous lawsuit filed over alleged anti-trust activity. The players are not restricted to pursuing their careers in Europe, Central America, South America, etc so the idea that the NBA is a monopoly carries a lot less weight when players are going overseas to play ball while at the same time argue anti-trust. The league is not stopping them from pursuing pro careers elsewhere. The last time there was a lockout there wasn't this many overseas options like today.
The Summary Judgment they are seeking has way too many fact issues that can only be resolved by a "trier of fact" i.e. a jury. The only way they can get a favorable ruling on a summary judgment is if there are purely legal issues to resolve. In this case, the NBA has alleged all along that the decertification/disclaimer action is a "sham" designed to try and gain negotiating leverage by using the threat of legal action. That is the key issue to be resolved and that is purely a factual question that can only be resolved by a jury. Before they can even get a judge to rule on the summary judgment they need to first resolve the venue question. Players want to file in Minny or Cali with more liberal leaning judges. NBA has already filed pre-emptive suit in southern NY in anticipation of this litigation. It will take at least a month just to resolve the venue issues if the players want to fight that. If they want to just get right to it in NY then it will take at least a month to get the case heard. Even in the unlikely event that the players prevail, you still then have another month for the owners to pursue their appeal. That's best case scenario. That puts us in mid-January then if it gets resolved at that point you have another month for training camps and free agency. That puts it well into February which is way too late to have a meaningful season.
At that point, the league will go full bore on defending their case and will not only forgo this season but also next season to take the matter to trial and end this anti-trust crap once and for all. That will create valuable precedence for all major sports. The league will not only destroy the players in court but they will make sure that this crap never happens again in any major sport. That will generate incredible leverage for the league moving forward.
The stupidity of the players is beyond reason. The human brain cannot conceive how stupid this move is by the players.
The main reason the marginal players are in the room is so Billy Hunter and Derek Fisher can control the room instead of a bunch of superstars with egos as big as all outdoors. That's not hard to figure out if you just apply the tiniest bit of critical thinking skills.
It's not even worth the effort to mock Birn, much less point out all the factual inaccuracies and logical inconsistencies in his posts.
Great. I've been wondering what Birn's been thinking about all this.
Anyways...
WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski
Some agents are discussing the separate filing of an anti-trust suit against NBA on behalf of league's rookie players, sources tell Y!
Sweet. How cool would that be to see Kyrie Irving bolt Cleveland to join the Heat?
I thought this was another good read from this morning. This was before the player's decision.
The NBA’s terrible offer, and the Players Association’s response
I don't see the contradiction.
From that article above, related:
Remember when LeBron James led a terrible Cleveland Cavaliers team to the 2007 NBA Finals while making just a few hundred thousand dollars above what Brian Cardinal (sorry, Brian …) made that season? Remember when Derrick Rose led the Chicago Bulls to the NBA's best record last season and won the NBA MVP? Remember when Kevin Durant led the Oklahoma City Thunder to the conference finals last year, or when Tim Duncan led the San Antonio Spurs to the NBA championship in 1999? Recall Dwyane Wade's Finals brilliance in 2006?
Those were performances compensated with rookie scale contracts. The NBA would like to cut those by 12 percent. Because the untold millions in playoff, All-Star weekend, exposure and ratings revenue of these deals somehow don't offset the million dollars the Orlando Magic had to pay Daniel Orton last year, the NBA would like to cut down.
Well, it's on now.
I just hope that the owners wake up and address the true compe ive problems. A 12% paycut for the players and the last proposal would have done nothing to stop situations like Rashard, Arenas, Eddy Curry, or sad scenarios like the Pacers where they were stuck for years just waiting out the contracts of guys like Tinsley, Murphy and to a lesser extent Dunleavy.
All that said, I kind of hope the players get what they were fearmongering about for years, the supposed hardline victory-or-death NBA edicts that were on HP a year ago that was linked to earlier in this thread. They can't live with a 12% cut and the other restrictions put on them, I understand that. Principle is truth, practical is just conjecture, I get it . . . but if a season is lost and court cases bogged down and they have to crawl back and accept a nightmare deal . . . then they really won't enjoy what the NBA backed off of from before a single practice was cancelled. And they'll deserve it.
Likewise the owners based on their garbage. They deserve a bad deal after folding so early on guarantees. They already threw out their chances at a better, more compe ive league. If that's not important enough, just give the players their system issues and enjoy the 12% in givebacks.
Just a quote from wikipedia
"Modern compe ion law has historically evolved on a country level to promote and maintain compe ion in markets principally within the territorial boundaries of nation-states."
Perhaps the courts won't take into account that the players have options to play elsewhere.
This isn't Congress. Judges are there to interpret current law, not to write new one. You can't have a union-like system without an union.
That doesn't mean that the union will prevail in their case. But it does mean that you can't have a system with teams colluding (draft), salary-caps, etc without exceptions from anti-trust laws. And judges don't grant those. Congress/laws do.
El, gettin' his naive on.
Yer cute as a button.
I'm curious to see owners reaction. They clearly had the feeling to be in the driver seat with Stern leading them to get the deal they want. They are now powerless and they can only wait to see what judges will decide.
Owners best interest should be to re-open negotiations with players. A 50/50 split even with a player friendly system would be a great deal for owners. They should settle for that and enjoy all the money they have taken away from players.
A pox on both the NBA's labor houses!
Sympathy is in short supply for either side in this "nuclear winter" of a dispute
Wilbon By Michael Wilbon
ESPN.com
http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/s...onable-economy
Kobe's a trend setter.
He sets trends.
You do know that the owners proposed substantial bonuses for high-performing rookies, don't you? Or does that just not fit your narrative? The fact is, giving the entire first round of rookies guaranteed multi-year contracts is a problem. The owners were looking for a way to keep from having to keep paying the busts, and compensate the rookies who perform exceptionally well. If you have a better way of doing that, I'm sure they'd love to hear from you. But don't act like the proposal was just another way of screwing the great players. That's bull .
As recently as 2005, the Spurs payroll was 22nd or 23rd in the league. Even you must know that was well after DRob's time. And, yes, Tim carried a budget-payroll team.
After that, the Spurs went through what all non-lux-tax teams go through. Struggling to stay under the tax threshold, while at the same time struggling to hold onto the nucleus of their team. Getting Finley at a bargain basement price (at least for the first couple of years) helped that effort a lot. But then they finally got into salary - struggling to try and stay under the tax, and not really able to bring in the one or two extra pieces that would let them go all the way. It's the worst of both worlds, and the Spurs' management walked the tightrope about as well as anyone could.
The answer would be to say "screw profitability" and just spend the lux tax money on free agents. That's the world the players want to live in (of course). But outside of a few big markets, it's financial suicide for an owner. Unfortunatly, there are a lot of dumb fans who think it's somehow reasonable for an owner to continue to lose money, in order to put a winning team on their menu.
New York, L.A., and a few others can spend into the tax without losing money. The other teams can't. That makes for a pretty boring league, if you aren't from those cities. The exception has been the Spurs, and that is 100% because of Tim Duncan. Anything else you say about it is some kind of Fantasy Island wish. It doesn't exist in the real world.
Tree of Woj:
NEW YORK – All weekend, Billy Hunter had an eye on the owners’ proposal and an ear on the angry mob of agents and players chasing him with fistfuls of decertification pe ions. These were designed to wrest away his power, his influence, his money as the Players Association’s executive director. He had left one of the biggest negotiating sessions of his life on Thursday, and let his players watch him live on television bemoaning that the air inside the five-star hotel conference room was too hot and too cold, too stuffy.
The owners had Hunter beat, had him prepared to take a bad deal and have the players go back to work. Only, David Stern couldn’t stop himself. The owners wouldn’t pull back the press, wouldn’t let themselves be satisfied with emptying the bench and running out the clock on the most lopsided labor victory in the history of major professional sports. The NBA kept pushing and pushing, never truly expecting the players to respond with such ferocity.
As much as anything, the NBA has started down this dark, uncertain path because leadership has been so deplorable. From union officials to agents, from star players to the commissioner’s office to hard-line owners, they’ve all conspired to take a doable deal and push it to a catastrophic brink that will cause irreparable damage to the industry.
Ultimately, Stern has failed to finesse those hard-liners, instead inspiring as much loathing with some owners as he has with players. He can’t sell a fair deal to his hardline owners, which left him unable to sell a one-sided agreement to his players.
After Hunter played the part of the beaten man on Thursday night, he had the sense to realize that the Players Association had slowly, surely become united over the NBA’s bully tactics. Stern and his deputy, Adam Silver, showed an inability to artfully sell the players on why the league believed it could so easily take back $3 billion and so much of their free agency movement. The players weren’t rallying for Hunter, but against Stern and the owners. Threats stacked upon threats, ultimatums on top of ultimatums, and Stern underestimated how much of this fight was truly about those final few small gaps on system issues, and how much more was about a resistance to those strong-arm tactics.
[ Video: After union dissolves, is the NBA season lost? ]
And so Monday afternoon, there was Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant(notes) inside the Ambassador Ballroom of the Westin Times Square. He had been a proponent of fighting through the final issues and reaching a deal, and the momentum was gone to make that happen. Bryant didn’t love this option, and he wasn’t alone.
A source briefed on the meeting said Bryant essentially told those player reps: If we’re going to give up our salaries for a year, you better be in this for the long run. You better be prepared to fight.
Make no mistake: Hunter didn’t sell those players on a long court battle, a possible victory with millions and millions of dollars paid for damages. He sold it as a way to lure the owners back to the table, to do something he had been unwilling to do out of self-interest for the longest time: Create leverage and take the fight to the NBA. He’ll never admit it, but those players didn’t walk out of the room completely believing they had forfeited a year’s salary.
Too many of the player reps didn’t know the difference between a disclaimer of interest, decertification and “Dancing with the Stars” when they walked into that meeting. As it usually goes in these labor talks, whoever gets the players’ ears last can talk them in and out of almost any directive. The agents were locked out, cell phones confiscated at the door, and Hunter had a captive audience with some big fancy an rust lawyers to make his case. Too many of those player reps are young kids who were given the task as a locker-room punishment, or older guys looking for the free annual meeting in the Caribbean.
Hunter should’ve been out recruiting the best of the best for this labor fight, but why would he want Shane Battier(notes) in that room, challenging him, asking him like he did in June: Why are you still taking a salary when the NFL’s DeMaurice Smith gave up his during the lockout?
Hunter sold a plan that – surprise, surprise – keeps him on his $2.5 million salary, keeps him in charge of the court battle. But most of all, this move gives the NBA a much better chance of selling a judge on Stern’s charges that this was a charade, a phony negotiating tactic.
On a lot of levels, it was a gutsy move for the players. Yet, they wouldn’t have been here so late in November, risking the entire season, had they been fully engaged in this fight for months and had a game plan. Because the star players, the smartest, most capable guys, are not inclined to be active in the union. This is why Hunter could get those player reps in the room on Monday, get an executive committee of too many hand-picked loyalists, and convince them that a disclaimer of interest was a shrewder, swifter way to leveraging the owners into a deal than a hostile decertification by the agents.
[ Related: NBA players react to union’s decision to disband ]
It preserved Hunter’s power, his standing with the attorneys, Jeffrey Kessler and David Boies. No one does self-preservation like Hunter. When I asked executive committee member Keyon Dooling(notes) why the union hadn’t done this in July, when it was already known the NBA would never negotiate a favorable deal with the union, he couldn’t answer the question.
These were the same player reps Hunter convinced to spend hundreds of thousands of the union’s dollars – who knows, maybe more – on legal fees to chase an unfair labor practice case against the NBA. Forget decertification, Hunter told the agents and players. They could file that expensive, time-consuming grievance with the National Labor Relations Board and get back on the floor. The NLRB hasn’t ruled on the case, and never will because Hunter’s disclaimer means the filing has to be dropped.
Lots of billable hours on the backs of the players, and no results. That case was one more decoy to hold off decertification, something that should’ve been done long ago.
Players Association executive director Billy Hunter dissolved the union with the hope it would lure the owners back to the bargaining table.
(Getty Images)
The agents, the players, they deserve the union they have. They needed everything to fight the machinery of the NBA, and they’re still scattered, vulnerable and unsure about what they did. The owners were hoping the Players Association would take this to a general vote on Monday, and half-expected the players would come back to them with amendments on the system issues that could get the deal done.
With the Boston Celtics’ Paul Pierce(notes) as the front man, the agents had planned a hostile decertification with a case filed in San Francisco federal court, sources said. They still expect to go through with it to balance Hunter’s disclaimer of interest.
What’s more, the agents are also considering a lawsuit filed on behalf of the league’s rookies, sources said, citing that the rookies are not yet part of the union, and that they’re ready, willing and able to play in the NBA and have been denied the opportunity. The agents are going to keep filing suits to create chaos and uncertainty in the minds of the NBA owners and hope the threat of potential legal damages will coax them back to the bargaining table. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll go to court, get a lucky bounce and decimate the owners with damages.
[ Yahoo! Sports Radio: Players union takes risky gamble in NBA labor battle ]
So congratulations, Commissioner Stern. Three weeks ago, you were on the cusp of a victory, a full season schedule and a fool-proof economic system to ensure even the league’s biggest buffoons would make money. And now, out of hubris, out of desperation and miscalculation, Stern and the owners have done the unthinkable: Stirred the “Bleep You” gene within the players, and inspired cooperation with the agents .
“These calls have turned into a mutual love-fest,” said one source who was on a conference call with 25 agents on Monday. “The players have somehow inspired a sense of camaraderie among a group of people that hate each other more than Israel and Palestine.”
That’s what happens in these labor disputes: improbable partnerships, agendas blurred and the greater good forever scorned. The players did the right thing on Monday – fighting back against a deal they didn’t believe fair, responding to an ultimatum from Stern that this was the end of negotiations.
History may show that the right thing was done the wrong way, but the consequences are still uncertain.
The season isn’t lost, but, right now, the owners and players are.
“Bluff called,” Milwaukee Bucks center Andrew Bogut(notes) said on Twitter late Monday. “Nobody wins. Reshuffle the deck. Let’s try again.”
Bluff called, but the biggest bluffers – Billy Hunter and David Stern – are still fighting to hold onto power, to control this train careening down the side of a mountain. There are owners and superstar players on the clock now, too. These are supposed to be the guardians of this game, and they’d best start acting on those responsibilities. For now, there’s still a phone call to be made from Stern to Hunter, a deal to be done, before the lawyers file that an rust suit. Sometime soon, there needs to be real leadership here, someone to rise above the agendas, the acrimony, the personal disdain and do the most noble thing of all: Save the NBA season.
And just maybe, save the sport from itself.
FakeCoachPop Gregory Popovich
How did that direct deposit look this morning players?
24 minutes ago
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