Kevin Durant: We’re going to stand up for what we have to do - NBA Update
As the last negotiations on the new Collective Bargaining Agreement or CBA ended without any conclusion on Thursday, All-Star Kevin Durant, who was also representing the players showed his solidarity to the union. In a emotionally
charged statement he said. “We’re going to stand up for what we have to do, no matter how long it’s going to take.”
The negotiations which lasted from about three hours failed to provide even a scintilla of a progress and the NBA officials declared that the players will be locked out at 12:01 EDT Friday. Durant confirmed the fact that the process
had been very slow and hinted that with this pace, the disagreement may linger on till November or December.
“All we can do is continue to just keep praying that we get things done quickly and we just move on with what we have to do, and not let the fans suffer more than they have to as far as not watching us play. I think as players
we’re really hurting, too, if we can’t play basketball. It’s already hurting me that I can’t be able to talk to my coaches, GMs and the guys that work for the team. It’s going to be tough, but it’s something that we’ve got to try to work through and hopefully
we stick together through the process.”
Durant, who has paced the league in scoring for the last two years, also disagreed with the NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver, who said that old CBA was not in the best interest of the league, as several franchises bear heavy
losses because of it.
The league is claiming that 22 of the 30 franchises have faced financial losses this year, because the lion share of the basketball related income or BRI is going to the players. This issue has been a major bone of contention between
the two parties. Although the player’s union dismissed the notion to start with and asserted that the losses that the franchises are incurring are due to the interests payments on their loans, in the last four meeting, players have actually offered to lower
their percentage of share from 57 percent to 53.7 percent. However, the owners maintain that is not enough and want the players to relax their limit further.
Durant said that the players were satisfied with the expired CBA and vowed that the players union will stand by their stance until they get a good deal out of this. Durant also urged the owners to reconsider their point of view
as the players have always represented their franchises in the best way they can and they deserve to get listened.
Kevin, who led the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Western Conference Finals in the 2011 playoffs, was not able to attend the meetings that occurred before Tuesday due to offseason commitments. During his absence OKC’s forward Nick
Collison filled in for him and kept him up to date about the issue through emails.
The players and owners are still far apart over the new CBA and the worst part is that fans would miss a huge chunk of the season if this issues continues to linger.
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