NBA loses pre-season: Monday deadline given to save regular season games – Labour Dispute News
After an unsuccessful Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) meeting in New York on Tuesday, October 4, 2011, the NBA has confirmed that it will have to cancel regular season games if a deal is not reached by Monday. NBA Commissioner announced the deadline saying the first two weeks will have to be cancelled, while the remainder of the pre-season was also officially written off.
"By Monday, we will have no choice but to cancel the first two weeks of the season," Stern said.
About the meeting, which ended in a deadlock after the two sides failed to devise an acceptable mechanism for revenue sharing, Stern was downbeat.
"We were not able to make the progress that we hoped we could make and we were not able to continue the negotiations," Stern said.
The players received 57 percent of the BRI under the previous CBA. Ideally, they wanted to retain that in the next one, but the financial situation of the NBA deteriorated last season, with the league announcing losses worth $300 million.
The players therefore had to make some financial sacrifice, and they did that. They have so far shown a willingness to come down to 53 percent, but the owners want more. David Stern offered them 47 percent again in the meeting on Tuesday, a move that drew this response from Billy Hunter, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA):
"That pretty much ended (the meeting),"
Owners put the same thing differently. They told the press that they offered NBPA a 50 percent stake, which was refused.
"While we were in the process of doing that ... we were advised by the players that that would not be acceptable to them," Stern said Tuesday. "At that point it didn't seem to make a lot of sense to continue."
It is believed that Stern, as is his style, has put some spin on the matter with his statements. Various reports suggest that a complex deal was offered to the players ranging from 49-to-51 percent of BRI, which was rejected by the players.
Whatever the details, the fact most obvious to NBA fans is that the pre-season is already lost and regular season games will be cancelled if a deal is not reached by Monday. It is hard to see that happening, not only because of the rigidity displayed by the two sides, but also the fact that no new meetings are planned as of now.
The NBA and the players are both set to lost hundreds of millions of dollars if the first 2 weeks are cancelled on Monday, yet the loss incurred in terms of the image of the game could be much more devastating to both sides.
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