NBA owners and players set to resume labour talks on Sunday – NBA Report
The NBA owners and players have agreed to meet on Sunday, November 6, in a bid to hold further talks and bring the current NBA lockout to an end. The lockout that began on 1st July is now in its 5th month and a whole
month of regular season games have been cancelled as a consequence.
The two sides have been negotiating to formulate a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) for over a year and a half, but have not been able to come to terms so far. The main bone of contention continues to be the split of Basketball
Related Income (BRI), although the salary cap structure has also been a very difficult one to get around.
With NBA fans continuously becoming alienated by the behaviour of both players and owners, the two sides contend that they have no other option but to continue to meet.
"It's not wise or prudent for us to not meet or let huge gaps of time go by and let the clock run and not meet, because then we just become more entrenched in our respective positions," Billy Hunter said, who is the Executive Director
of the National Basketball Players Association. "At least if we're around the table something might happen; I can't predict if anything will."
The players will be represented by the Hunter and union President Derek Fisher. The Los Angeles Lakers point guard revealed that the players want to get back onto an NBA court as soon as possible. They were fed up with sitting
around but also wanted a deal that was fair and not based on the whims of NBA owners.
"Our guys are in a position of they still want us to negotiate a fair deal," Fisher said. "They've given us that power. They've given us that support.”
There have been reports over the last week, ever since negotiations collapsed last Friday, that there was growing discontent among the players. While most of it was obviously directed at the NBA owners for their perceived greed,
some players were reported to be considering taking whatever deal they could get and get back on court immediately.
"Obviously we're going to have individual members in individual sets of circumstances that want to get back to play. We want to get back to play. But we realize the ramifications of agreeing to a bad deal at this moment." Fisher
said remarking on those reports.
Indeed even though there have been some noises and slipups by NBA players saying they should perhaps take the 50-50 BRI split currently offered, the majority remain committed to holding out until a fair deal is presented to them.
The ball now, is in the owners’ court.
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