Mark Bartelstein fires back at David Stern; Are the players finally showing a backbone? NBA Feature
David Stern is on a mission these days to insult anyone who doesn’t think that the NBA owners are saints and their take it or leave it proposal is as fair as it gets.
The NBA Commissioner is ready to take on NBA players, player agents and he doesn’t even shy from putting some fans in their place when need be.
Among his many gems to the media are the claims that the players, who have come down from a 57 percent share of the Basketball Related Income to around 50 percent , are greedy and that his latest ultimatum to the players was not
an ultimatum.
Stern told players to accept the offer he made on the behalf of owners’, he did not accept their demands, ruled out further negotiations and said if they don’t accept the deal the owners would make a much worse one.
Not an ultimatum indeed.
Recently, he even had another go at player agents, calling them untruthful and questioning their loyalty to their clients. Mr. Stern was not pleased that agents were putting absurd ideas into the heads of NBA players, such as,
not to lay down for the commish and let him take as much of the money as he wanted.
Surprisingly, one player agent has shot back.
Mark Bartelstein, who represents a number of NBA stars and is one of the more influential agents in the league, came down hard on Stern in a phone interview with CBSSports.
"The greed that's being exhibited in this negotiation is strictly on the part of the NBA owners and nowhere else," Bartelstein said. "When the union has shifted well in excess of $3 billion over the course of this deal from players
to owners and that's not good enough for the owners, that's the definition of greed."
That indeed is greed. That’s $3 billion worth of greed, and to think that the owners have built up their whole campaign at the back of supposed losses, of $300 million, which have been contested by various financial analysts and
institutes.
And Bartelstein did not stop there; he proceeded to set the record straight on the state of the negotiations as well. The talks between Stern and the players have hit a dead end recently. The players have made significant concessions
by all accounts, but a deal still doesn’t seem anywhere close to being agreed.
So what’s the hold up one might ask?
"If the players are going to make the concessions to address over $300 million a year in a shift in revenue from the players to the owners, the one thing the players should get back is flexibility, freedom, freedom of choice and
a more vibrant and free-market system, because it's a zero-sum game," Bartelstein explained.
That’s the issue; the players want a little leeway in return for the $3 billion they are giving to the owners. That however doesn’t fly with Stern, who wasn’t told that the other party also has to be accommodated in a “negotiation”.
Well, finally it seems like someone has decided to broaden the horizons of David Stern and his saintly group of owners. If they can be properly educated on the mechanism of a negotiation and the idea of what is fair, things might
start to head in the right direction.
The players, headed by Derek Fisher and Billy Hunter, have shown over the last 5 months or so that they clearly don’t have the guts to speak up against head honcho of the NBA. The fact that now their agents are starting to hit
back, coupled with a long overdue decision to decertify the players union, could mean they have finally decided to make a stand.
Stern probably wouldn’t believe it yet, but if the players do have a backbone, he could be in for quite a fight.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article do not represent Bettor.com’s editorial policy.
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