NBPA President Derek Fisher believes NBA owners will blink; Urges players to stay united: NBA Update
Derek Fisher, the President of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), has said that he doesn’t believe, it makes sense for the NBA owners to cancel the entire season and therefore he still retains hope in the ongoing
NBA labour dispute.
Derek attended a players meeting alongside NBPA Director Billy Hunter on Friday, October 14, in Los Angeles. The meeting was attended by around 30 NBA players and reportedly stressed on the importance of standing their ground.
Despite Fisher’s optimistic views, the NBA has already cancelled the first two weeks of the season. However Derek says that financially, it would be a wrong decision to cancel the season.
"My gut tells me that there's no way Commissioner Stern and the NBA would damage their business by making us miss a whole season," Fisher said according to ESPN.
The NBA owners have said that the old Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) was imbalanced and the league suffered losses for the last few seasons under the system. They reported losses of $300 million just in the last season,
saying around 22 teams out of 30 were in the red.
Those figures are contested by a number of people and the fact remains that a number of NBA teams continue to turn a healthy profit. That, along with the fact, that the league generates around $4 billion in revenue per season,
means that a whole lot of money will have to be sacrificed it the owners decide to sit out.
So far though, they are not blinking.
NBA Commissioner David Stern cancelled the first two weeks of the season last Monday, just as he had warned, and he has given another informal warning already. The Commissioner said Thursday that if by Tuesday, a deal was not reached;
he could not guarantee NBA games at Christmas.
Although it was an alarming threat, Fisher is remaining calm.
"That's an arbitrary deadline just to throw out on Commissioner Stern's part," Fisher said Friday. "We don't see it that way. That's just arbitrary, with no other purpose than to sway player sentiment."
Billy Hunter also dismissed Stern’s remarks.
He said the negotiations have been long so far and the process cannot be speeded up just on the whims on one man. He hinted that the deadline was a bit unrealistic.
"My attitude is if they really want to get a deal, we've been negotiating for over two years, the probability or likelihood of getting it in one day [is scarce]," Hunter said.
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