NBA Labour dispute takes a turn for the worst – Basketball News
The National Basketball Players Association and the owners of the NBA teams are becoming increasingly harsh in their assessment of each other with regards to the ongoing NBA labour dispute and it seems that a lockout is almost
guaranteed.
The two sides need to come to terms on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, or CBA before the current one expires on June 30. However, the owners have ruled out just extending the old one as they believe it heavily favours the
players.
With 22 of the 30 teams in the NBA reporting operating losses in the last season, the league is determined to make significant changes in the system in order to offset the current losses. The way they envision doing that is by
cutting down the player’s share of the money generated by the NBA. The players obviously don’t agree.
There were reports after Tuesday’s meeting that some progress might have been made, the owners and NBA Commissioner David Stern particularly were adamant that their side had made significant concessions to the players and they
should now reciprocate.
Among the proposals the owners withdrew was the idea of non-guaranteed contracts for the players. Also, they said they had proposed a flex cap as opposed to the hard cap they wanted earlier.
The players however were much less upbeat about the situation. Players Union’s vice president Billy Hunter immediately dismissed the notion that headways had been made in the talks.
National Basketball Players Association President Derek Fisher, point guard at the Los Angeles Lakers, said the flex cap was still a hard cap and the owners just changed the terminology.
And things just seemed to have gotten worse since then. Derek Fisher was asked by reporters in New York about what the players were saying in response to the latest proposals by the league and his reply was extremely negative,
to say the least,
“They’ve asked us point-blank why we are even talking.”
The players say they stand to lose around $7 Billion over the next ten years if the current proposals of the owners are agreed upon. Billy Hunter said the players current earnings of 2.1 billion will only be matched again in the
tenth year of the proposed new CBA, which was simply not acceptable.
Hunter also said that the league wanted to keep part of the player’s wages of the past season. The league holds onto 8 percent of the player’s salaries as escrow money, in order to guarantee that the BRI (Basketball related income)
is split exactly 57-43 as agreed in the current CBA. Again a non starter for the players.
David Stern on the other hand dismissed the player’s resentment of the new proposals,
“Players have benefited from the current system more than the teams. For them it has been a much better partnership,” Stern said in a statement. “We are sorry that the players’ union feels that way since it doesn’t seem designed
to get us to the agreement that is so important to the teams, and we had hoped, the players.”
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