Billy Hunter says progress was made last week before NBA owners messed it all up – NBA update
National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) Executive Director Billy Hunter has revealed that there was progress on some critical issues in the NBA labour negotiations last week. He however added that the shameful tactics of
NBA owners and their refusal to budge from a pre-planned stance ruined the talks in the end.
The NBA and NBPA have been trying to formulate a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) for ages. The old one expired on July 1st and players were consequently locked out. So far the lockout has cost NBA fans, pre-season
games as well as a whole month worth of NBA regular season action.
After federal mediator George Cohen failed to get the two sides to sign the dotted line in the week before, they met again without supervision last week. On Thursday, October 27, both sides appeared optimistic and NBA Commissioner
David Stern even said the whole season could still be played if a deal was done by Monday, but that just wasn’t to happen.
Talks broke down again on Friday and none are scheduled at the moment. Hunter has now revealed that the two sides made some headway with regards to the salary cap structure, something they focused on last week.
"During the marathon session last Wednesday and the two days that followed on Thursday and Friday, we made great progress in working through many of the system issues that must be resolved before a deal can be reached," Hunter
wrote in a letter sent to members of the players union.
Hunter admitted that the system that came under discussion last week was not exactly what the players had envisaged, but it had some advantages for them. He believed that if talks had gone on and some final details had been thrashed
on, he could have sold the system to the 400 plus members of the union.
"While the soft cap/luxury tax system we are negotiating is far from perfect and contains positives and negatives for both sides, I believe that if the last few system issues are resolved in our favour, it will be one that we can
recommend to you."
However that just wasn’t going to happen, at least not last week. The NBA owners once again stuck to their proposal of a 50-50 split of the Basketball Related Income, even though they had been expected to move after the players
had made concessions on system issues.
Hunter got fed up of the bad faith exhibited time and again by David Stern and decided to end the talks right then. Commissioner Stern tried to put the blame on the union after the meeting but it was soon revealed that it was the
owners who would not move an inch from their stance, something that has disillusioned the NBPA and shaken the belief of players in the benefit of negotiating with someone like Stern.
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