Billy Hunter blasts NBA owners over failed labour negotiations – NBA Update
Billy Hunter, the Executive Director of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), has come down hard on the owners after talks to resolve the NBA labour dispute were called off on Thursday. No more talks are scheduled
between the two parties at the moment and even the presence of a federal mediator failed to shorten the gulf that exists between players and owners.
Hunter put the blame for the failure of talks squarely on the shoulders of NBA owners. He had been voicing concerns for a long time that the owners appeared non-serious about the talks and that they had already decided to wipe
out the 2011-2012 NBA season.
Hunter said the union made "concession after concession after concession ... and it's just not enough."
According to Hunter, the owners wanted a new Collective Bargaining Agreement that gave them all the money and put the players at every disadvantage possible. In order to get their demands, the owners have decided to prolong the
NBA lockout even more.
Hunter was adamant that these tactics by the NBA owners and Commissioner David Stern would ultimately fail and only harm the game of basketball, because the players were never going to accept the unfair terms presented to them.
"We're not prepared to let them impose a system on us that eliminates guarantees, reduces contract lengths, diminishes all our increases," he said. "We're saying no way. We fought too long and made too many sacrifices to get where
we are."
George Cohen, who is head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, mediated between the two sides for three days of intense negotiations. Even though there was some hope at first, the talks collapsed in the end again
because the owners would not agree on a fair split of Basketball Related Income and salary cap structure.
Hunter revealed that Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert asked players to take the 50-50 split, and trust him to make headway in salary cap issues. The proposal didn’t fly with the players because they are not willing to come
down from 57 percent in the last CBA to 50 in this one. It would be irresponsible of Hunter anyway to have considered a proposal based on the word of just one owner.
"I can't trust your gut. I got to trust my own gut," he said. "There's no way in the world I'm going to trust your gut on whether or not you're going to be open and amenable to making the changes in the system that we think are
necessary and appropriate."
With no talks planned between the two sides and considerable bad blood clearly present, the NBA season is under a serious threat of being wiped out entirely.
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