NBA owners – Players union meeting over CBA on the horizon: Lockout Report
The NBA owners and the players’ union (NBPA) officials are set to have a meeting on the labour dispute sometime next week, it has been learnt. Various sources have reported that the two sides will meet, most likely in New York.
The time is not set for the meeting just yet, but it would be only the second time the two sides would meet since the NBA lockout began on July 1st. A previous meeting was cancelled after players thought the owners were
not sincere with their proposals.
The National Basketball Players Association is still vary of placing too many hopes on the meeting coming up. The NBPA believes the owners have shown no flexibility at all in their stance and most of their demands are simply unreasonable.
To make matters worse, David Stern went on radio a while ago for an interview which has further angered the NBPA. Stern implied in the interview that most of the players were poorly informed, a hint that the NBPA could be misguiding
them. He also suggested the league’s economic proposal was, which Stern says requires an 8 percent cut in salaries, was not favourably presented to the players.
Maurice Evans, a member of NBPA’s executive board, breathed fire in response to Stern’s interview,
“It’s not true,” He added, “Blatantly, it’s just lying.”
The NBPA argues that the owners’ proposal reduces player salaries by 8 percent for next year, guaranteeing around $2 billion for the players. However it then locks the player’s out of any revenue growth for around 6 years, which
would mean that the players stand to lose somewhere in the region of $7.6 billion. This fine detail is time and again left out by David Stern when he talks about the deal on offer.
“Once you explain that to the guys, the guys understand more fully what’s separating us and why we don’t have a deal,” Evans said from Chicago, where the union is holding a membership meeting Thursday, one of many across the country.
These meetings are being held by the union in a bid to educate players on the NBA’s current proposal as well as to get feedback on the negotiating process.
The league for their part is sticking to its line, they responded with a prepared statement. Once again stating the part that makes them look good and leaving out how revenue growth will impact the player salaries,
“While we haven’t heard Maurice Evans’s remarks, I can confirm that we last proposed $2 billion in total player compensation for next season, an 8 percent reduction from last season,” the N.B.A. spokesman Mike Bass said.
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