Matt Bonner says time pressure might force a solution on lockout – NBA Update
The NBA lockout is about to complete its third month and still, no significant progress has been made whatsoever to resolve the labour issues.
The league locked out its players on 1st July upon the expiration of the previous collective Bargaining Agreement. Since then, a number of negotiations have taken place between the NBA owners and players union, however
no productive development has yet been made. In fact, as a result of the unsuccessful meetings, the possibility of a complete season wipe out has started to become a reality.
The Vice President of the NBPA, Matt Bonner recently discussed the current scenario and timeline of the NBA lockout while giving a radio interview to The Fan 590 in Toronto. According to Matt Bonner, ever since the lockout took
its first breath, there wasn’t any kind of pressure from the calendar for both the parties until this day.
However, the situation is different now as the cut-off dates for the training camps, preseason and regular season are looming and this will definitely add to the pressure on both the players and the NBA owners.
“No, I mean obviously up until Tuesday everything has been posturing. I can’t really blame one side or another for the reason a deal hasn’t been reached because the calendar was on both sides’ side. There wasn’t really any pressure
from the calendar on either side. Now with the recent drop dead date for training camp and preseason and approaching regular season stuff, there’s definitely a lot more pressure on each side.” Bonner said.
Bonner however re-iterated that the onus was on the owners to make some concessions and stop being rigid on their demands, which the players have flatly refused to accept.
“Through that natural pressure we saw a window, based on what we thought was indicated a week before, we saw a window to possibly get a deal done. We did everything we could to prepare ourselves for that.” Matt said.
Many analysts have been predicting the same for quite some time now. The crunch time on the labour negotiations and if the players, their union and the NBA owners are really serious about reaching a win-win solution, the time to
act is now. There cannot be dragging business anymore.
The league has already lost a lot of hype, one which was created after a sensational 2010-11 season and if the people responsible do not stop the posturing and delaying tactics, it might take NBA years to re-establish its fan base
and that will be everybody’s loss.
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