Significant progress in NBA labour dispute as the talks enter into the third day – NBA Report
After 111 uncertain days, the NBA labour dispute finally seems to be heading in the right direction.
Tuesday’s meeting between Player’s Union and NBA, in the presence of federal mediator George Cohen, was being considered as pivotal in the lockout scenario and it certainly lived up to the hype.
After spending more than 15 hours on the negotiation table on Tuesday, the two sides met again for hours on Wednesday. Although, in a little over 24 hours of discussion spanning these two days, an understanding over the new Collective
Bargaining Agreement (CBA) has still not been reached, but according to sources close to the process, a significant progress on the issue of Basketball Related Income (BRI) has occurred.
Talking to media after the conference, George Cohen although did not brief the particulars of meeting, but said something which is enough to create optimism in the minds of fans.
“Everyone is extremely focused on the core issues, the difficult issues that confront them. The discussions have been direct and constructive, and as far as we are concerned, we are here to continue to help assist the parties to
endeavour to reach an agreement,”
On Wednesday, the meeting carried on for nearly 8 hours and continued despite the departure of NBA Commissioner David Stern, Boston Celtics owner Danny Ainge, the NBA president of basketball operations and the planning committee
chairman. Although Cohen has barred both the players and the owners from divulging any information regarding the matter, rumours are that there has been a lot of ground covered.
Although it is naive to consider that the issues which have not been the bone of contention for more than one year are going to be solved in just days, but what Cohen has successfully managed to do is that he controlled the temperature.
No rash emotions were displayed by any of the attendants and no harsh declarations were made after the meetings.
The biggest issue on the table is still BRI, which is the money that league gets from tickets, deals, television, food and beverages sale at the arenas. The player used to get 57 percent of that income under the previous system,
but the owners now want the players to take 10 percent less. There are other critical factors too with hard salary caps and guaranteed contracts at the forefront.
However, there has been some headway and it will be interesting to see what advancements are made in the third day of negotiations.
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