NBA Owners and Players Union officials to meet on Monday for the first talks in the post Lockout era
On Monday, the representatives of owners and players union will officially start negotiation for the first time since the National Basketball Association locked out its players upon the expiration of the previous Collective bargaining
Agreement (CBA). The day will also complete the first month of the work stoppage and it’s about time both the parties showed some progress to resolve the issue.
The president of players association Derek Fisher believes that Monday’s meeting is going to be a warm up session and no major improvements will be made.
"It's more about getting the process started again. Kind of rolling the sleeves back up and starting to do the hard work that it's going to take to try and get something done between now and October 1st or when the start of training
camp would be. I don't know if there's going to be any major movement on Monday." Fisher said.
The league, from the day one, has adopted a stance of imposing a hard salary cap in the new CBA to cover the losses; they claim to be around 340 million dollar last year. However, that number has been contentious. The implementation
of the hard salary cap will reduce the percentage of the revenue, length of the guaranteed contract and the salaries of the players which has increased phenomenally in recent years. The session on Monday is expected to discuss the feasibility of the plan so
both the parties can move further to initiate a new agreement.
Fisher stated that the union knows the sensitivity of the situation and is ready to accept a cutback however the players will only agree under a fair system.
"If, as players, we feel we can operate under a fair system, then we can maybe work towards a fair number. We want to make sure we keep a fair system in place for all players now and coming in later and I think the numbers will
kind of take care of themselves."
In the previous Collective Bargaining Agreement, the players were receiving 57 percent of the Basketball Related Income (BRI). According to the new economic proposal that was offered by the players union before the lockout officially
took place, the NBA players agreed to reduce their take to 54.3 percent. This would have given up 500 million dollars in over five years; however the owners wanted to lower the share to 45 percent for the player and receive 55 percent.
On Monday, both the parties will start the negotiation process from scratch. The only good thing going into the meeting is that, this time the process is starting after 30 days as compared to 45 days in the 1998 lockout. However,
to expect that the whole list of the issues, including for how long the new CBA should be implemented is fanciful to say the least.
Tags: