NBA owners and players to meet on Thursday in an attempt to avert lockout–NBA Labour Dispute Update
It looks like the NBA is headed towards a lockout. However, the players and owners have agreed to meet one more time before the lockout effectively starts, on Thursday.
The owners and players have been negotiating the terms of a new CBA, a Collective Bargaining Agreement, for over a year now. The two sides however remain apart on most if not all key issues.
At the centre of the argument is the BRI. The Basketball Related Income is split 57-43 currently with the larger chunk going to the players. The owners say they have suffered losses the past season and require a bigger chunk of
the BRI to offset them. They have proposed a 50-50 split which the players do not agree upon.
The situation has been under the microscope since the NBA season 2010-2011 ended and there has been a little progress, but nothing substantial. The owners want to introduce a flex cap, which the players call a hard cap and have
thus rejected.
The players proposed $500 million in salary roll backs over 4 years but David Stern termed it “modest”. Both parties believe they have made concessions but the other side has not reciprocated. It all came to a head in the last
meeting when around 40 players participated in the talks.
They won matching grey T-shirts with the word “STAND” written in bold print. And they refused to make another proposal. The players declared that they would not be making further concessions to the owners, which in effect meant
they are ready for the lockout.
The league held a Board of Governors meeting on Tuesday in Dallas, where the owners were briefed on the labour talks. Before the meeting had taken place there was widespread speculation that the owners could vote to authorize the
lockout. But because no details of the meeting were made public, it is not yet known if the vote took place.
The lockout will begin anyway if the sides have not come to an agreement by 1st July, which is almost certain to be the case. The players and owners meeting on the eve of the lockout on Thursday is not expected to produce
any meaningful progress either.
In theory, they could decide to postpone the lockout and continue negotiations for a while, but the differences between the two sides are too wide. The resolution of this dispute now looks unachievable without the lockout.
Still the meeting on Thursday in New York might give us an indication as to what direction the two sides are going to take once we do enter the lockout. The stances of the players union and the owners after Thursday’s meeting could
also help in estimating the length of the coming lockout.
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