NBA labour talks end with a deadlock on Tuesday – NBA Labour Dispute Report
The NBA owners and players met for yet another round of talks for the formulation of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, but the meeting ended in a deadlock that could further jeopardize the start of the season. The session
lasted around four hours but the two sides disengaged when they could not bridge the gap on principle differences of a BRI split.
The Basketball Related Income is roughly the total revenue generated by the NBA as a whole. Under the previous CBA, the players got a guaranteed 57 percent of BRI. The owners, allegedly, suffered losses in the same period and have
demanded drastic changes to the system, in particular some hefty cuts of the players share.
That is the main point of contention between the two sides, as both want as big a share of the pie as they can get.
Tuesday’s meeting failed to produce any headway in this regard and the sides came out with a gloomy outlook, after the meeting had been billed as a “make or break” session.
"Today was not the day to get this done," said Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers, who is the president of the National Basketball Players Association. "We were not able to get close enough to close the gap for what would be
the future [CBA] to be something that's fair and amenable to all of our players, not just today but going forward."
The breaking point in the talks turned out to be a refusal by the players to consider a compromise system, proposed by the owners. The owners, who had been holding out demanding a 53 percent share of the BRI, proposed a 50/50 split
to the players, which they rejected.
NBA deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said after the meeting that they hadn’t expected the players to reject, what they thought was, a very generous offer, and did not wish to continue talks after that.
"We went back to our group to, in essence, discuss and try to sell that concept in or see if it was acceptable," Silver said. "While we were in the process of doing that, they came back to us and said that was unacceptable. A 50/50
split of all BRI was unacceptable to the players."
The players’ legal counsel Jeffery Kessler labelled it a false compromise, saying the players would only have to give back and take nothing away in the owners’ proposal. There were also clarifications on the 50/50 scheme devised
by the owners.
Reports suggest that the owners offered the players 49 percent of BRI, which would amount to 51 percent after incentives. The players countered the suggestion by demanding 51 percent, which would increase to 53 percent with incentives.
It was then the owners who rejected the proposal and ended talks.
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