NBA Commissioner David Stern says Labour negotiations going nowhere – Lockout Update
NBA Commissioner David Stern has admitted to an impasse in the NBA labour negotiations and says things do not look like improving in the near future unless there are some radical changes.
The NBA and the National Basketball Players association have met since once to continue negotiations over a new CBA since the old one expired. The NBA officially entered lockout on July 1st and reports suggest things
have deteriorated further since then.
David Stern is heading the talks as the representative of the league and the owners. His role has been criticized by many players and analysts and it is believed Stern has time and again given just one side of the story to the
press.
The league and NBPA’s failure to reach an agreement, after a year and a half of formal negotiations, does not bode well for the coming season. Now Stern has come out to accept that the situation is not showing any signs of getting
better for the moment.
"We're all going to understand that when we lose [the exhibition season], that's when the NBA's offer is likely to change because there are going to be economic consequences that we're tiptoeing through right now," Stern admitted.
"I would say that I remain optimistic that we're going to make a deal," he added, "and I think that the urgency is set in a certain way by the rejection of our underlying premise. That is, this is the time to have a reset. This
is the time to try to hold for the players most of what they have, and grow our way out of the situation we find ourselves in," he said.
"The players very strongly disagree and to this point don't even want to discuss it."
The hope is that as the threat of a lost season draws nearer, the two sides would get more serious and hopefully show some flexibility in their stances. Although the differences are wide ranging, including issues pertaining to
contract lengths and the salary cap, the main sticking point is believed to be the BRI.
The players want what they are getting now, although in their last proposal they accepted to reduce their share from 57 to 54 percent. The league however wants to limit the players share to a number and not a percentage, which
the players believe will set them down to around 40 percent of the BRI for the next decade.
The NBPA thus demanded of the owners to put forward a new proposal at the last scheduled meeting. When the owners didn’t show any willingness to do so, the players reportedly cancelled the session.
The two sides have not met since.
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