Players make a stand in the NBA Labour Dispute, refuse to make further proposals – NBA Update
The NBA Labour dispute took another turn for the worst when the players decided they had gone far enough in their concessions and did not make any new proposals on Friday.
The two sides have met quite a few times now but a solution to the dispute doesn’t seem to be on the horizon. The player’s believe that the owner’s demands are too excessive and there cannot be much headway made if the owners don’t
back down.
On the other hand, the owners say that they have already backed down from the demand of non-guaranteed contracts. They also proposed a so called “flex” cap as opposed to the hard cap, with the players still terming it as a hard
cap.
The negotiations seem to have hit a roadblock and the National Basketball Players Association President Derek Fisher did not have encouraging words about the last meeting,
"There's still such a large gap, we feel that any move for us is real dollars we'd be giving back from where we currently stand, as opposed to where our owners have proposed numbers that in our estimation don't exist right now,"
Fisher said. "They're asking us to go to a place where they want us to go, so we've expressed our reasons why we don't want to continue to move economically."
Still to try and find a solution, and in part to send a message to the NBA owners that the players are together, 40 NBA players showed up for the last meeting wearing matching grey t-shirts that had the word “STAND” printed across
the front.
The players included Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce of the Boston Celtics as well as Jason Terry of the NBA World Champions Dallas Mavericks. The players took part in a healthy and frank discussion with the owners and the players
unions executive director Billy Hunter said that might convince the owners to come to the table again before announcing a lockout,
"Even though we didn't make any progress, maybe they felt that the energy and the attitude in the room was such that it might necessitate further discussion." Hunter said.
The player’s have made it clear that they will not make any further concessions to the last proposal they made. In it the player’s agreed to give $500 million in rollbacks to the league over 5 years. However the owners did not
deem it sufficient and David Stern, the NBA Commissioner, labelled it “modest”.
Now the owners have to decide what to do next in the face of the stand by the players. The Board of Governors of the NBA coming up in Dallas could see a vote being taken on the lockout.
The owners have so far refused to speculate on it however.
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