NBPA president Derek Fisher says players expected to be in current situation – NBA Lockout News
The drastic downturn in the NBA labour negotiations after there seemed to be some light at the end of the tunnel has taken most people by surprise. The prospects of an NBA season starting on time now look increasingly bleak, but
Derek Fisher has said the players always expected things to get this worse.
The Los Angeles Lakers point guard is the President of the NBPA. The representative body of the players has been locked in negotiations with the NBA owners for over a year, and Fisher says they knew even before negotiations began
that things would go down this path.
He said in a recent interview given after the meeting between players and owners on Tuesday, that the owners always looked like they were prepared to go this far. The union believes that at least some owners have already made up
their mind to get their way and are prepared to sacrifice an NBA season for this cause.
"I don't think we've minced our words in terms of our guys understanding that this was a moment that we expected to find ourselves in starting over two years ago," Fisher said. "We expected to be here, we anticipated that, we felt
like our owners were strong enough in their position ... that they'd be possibly willing to risk time lost in the season to get the things they needed in this particular round of collective bargaining."
The players union has reportedly taken a firm stand on the issue of hard salary caps. That is something that the players will not agree to as a matter of principle. They set it as a precondition for negotiating on the BRI, something
that the owners really want a bigger chunk of, but the owners wouldn’t bite.
Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver’s tone was pretty aggressive when he blasted the players after Tuesday’s meeting for sticking to their stance. So, we can expect not much progress to be made in the negotiations and the start of
the season is almost certain to be delayed.
One course of action open to the players is decertification. Many agents have been crying out for the union to decertify and sue the league in federal court.
Although executive director Billy Hunter admitted that pressure is growing on the union to decertify, he also emphasized the determination of the body to avoid that course of action.
"As you're aware, we've obviously been experiencing some pressure, at least in the media, from some of the agents about decertification. But that's not a message that's crossed our lips."
It is now to be seen whether the agents, who have started renewed efforts to get a decertification, take a more drastic step or whether Billy Hunter and Fisher be able to hold out longer.
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