NBA Offseason / Summer 2011

[Special K]

I hope they do not drag it out denver style. That Melo drama was painful!

I'd love to see him shipped for a Noah and a bunch of 1sts style package. Won't happen though but D12 and Rose would be cool together

 

[Nth-Qld-Raider]

NBA players, owners end talks after 5 hours

NEW YORK (AP)—The breakdown of NBA labor talks Thursday likely will force more games to be canceled after negotiations failed to yield a deal to end the lockout.

After 30 hours of negotiations over three days, the two sides remained divided over two main issues—the division of revenues and the structure of the salary cap system.

“Ultimately we were unable to bridge the gap that separates the two parties,” NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said. “We understand the ramifications of where we are. We’re saddened on behalf of the game.”

Union president Derek Fisher(notes) also acknowledged the seriousness of the situation.

“This is not in any way about ego,” he said. “There are a lot of people’s livelihoods at stake separate from us.”

Without a deal, NBA Commissioner David Stern must decide soon on the next round of cancellations. The season was supposed to begin Nov. 1, but all games through Nov. 14—100 in total—have been scrapped, costing players about $170 million in salaries.

“Hopefully, we can get back to the table but certainly a tough day, a very tough day,” labor relations committee chair Peter Holt said.

Previously each side had proposed receiving 53 percent of basketball-related income after players were guaranteed 57 percent under the previous collective bargaining agreement.

Silver said the league formally proposed a 50-50 revenue split Wednesday, and the union moved from 53 percent to 52.5 percent Thursday.

Asked whether the players would drop to 50 percent, Holt said he didn’t think it was that big of a jump but that obviously the union did.

Holt said the league would not go above 50 percent “as of today, but never say never on anything.”

Union executive director Billy Hunter said players essentially were given an ultimatum—take the 50-50, or there was no reason to further discuss the system.

Stern has the flu and did not attend Thursday’s negotiating session.

Owners and players met with federal mediator George Cohen for 16 hours Tuesday, ending around 2 a.m. Wednesday, then returned just eight hours later and spent another 8 1/2 hours in discussions. The two sides then met for about 5 hours Thursday.

In a statement, Cohen said the two sides were not able to resolve the “strongly held, competing positions that separated them on core issues.”

“In these circumstances, after carefully reviewing all of the events that have transpired, it is the considered judgment of myself and Deputy Director Scot Beckenbaugh, who has been engaged with me throughout this process, that no useful purpose would be served by requesting the parties to continue the mediation process at this time,” Cohen said.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=ap-nbalabor

 

[Ridders]

Hopefully this doesn't become a recurring theme.

The NBA plans to cancel two more weeks of its regular season, a source told the New York Daily News.

This would be the third time commissioner David Stern has postponed games as the league's lockout of the players continues. The NBA had previously canceled the preseason and the first two weeks of its regular season, which was set to begin on Nov. 1.

According to the Daily News' source, this latest cancellation would total at least 102 games and run through Nov. 28.

The source told the Daily News that the NBA will announce the latest cancellation of games on Tuesday.

Sources with knowledge of the situation told ESPN The Magazine's Chris Broussard Tuesday that representatives for the NBA owners and players talked Monday. The sources did not say whether the parties met in person, but said the discussions were lengthy and related to collective bargaining.

No further meetings between the sides are scheduled, the sources said.

At present, the league's annual slate of Christmas Day games remain a possibility. But time is drawing short.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7...wo-more-weeks-regular-season-according-report

 

[Fast Eddie]

It's going to be canceled till at least mid Jan I'd say.

 

[BunniesMan]

There will not be a season until the players swallow their pride and give in on 50-50.

The most ridiculous thing is they're going to lose a billion dollars while arguing over 100 million.

The players are completely in the right, they've given more than enough already, it shouldn't be their responsibility to save owners from themselves BUT...they should just give in. They need to understand billionaires have deeper pockets than mere millionaires, half the teams profit from games being cancelled, and as long as the owners are united and don't want to negotiate in good faith, they will win every lockout every time.

Give up, live on a $4million dollar a year average contract, and hope the economy is much better in 6 years time when they negotiate again.

 

[Nth-Qld-Raider]

There we go, games canceled through to November 30th.

No NBA at Xmas, just cancel the whole season ffs and get it over and done with.

 

[Nth-Qld-Raider]

NBA games canceled through Nov. 30

With talks between the NBA's locked-out players and owners breaking off Friday without a deal, commissioner David Stern has announced the cancellation of games through Nov. 30th and that the NBA will not play a full season "under any circumstances."

"It's not practical, possible or prudent to have a full season now," Stern said.

Stern made the announcement after a third consecutive day of meetings ended without a deal in sight. While the two sides made progress on system issues during talks on Friday, it screeched to a halt when the topic turned to revenues, he said.

Reiterating the league's offer to go as high as a 50-percent split of basketball-related income with the players, Stern said union executive director Billy Hunter "said that he was not willing to go a penny below 52 (percent)."

"He closed up his book and walked out of the room. And that's where we are," Stern said.

No further talks have been scheduled.

The players will not accept a 50-50 split, Hunter and union president Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers said.

"Derek and I made it clear that we could not sell the 50-50 deal to our membership. Not with all the concessions that we've granted," Hunter said. "We've got to have some dollars."

"We feel like we've made concessions," Fisher added. "Right now it's not enough."

After two days of making some progress on salary-cap issues, the two sides turned their attention back to the revenue split Friday, the 120th day of the lockout. Talks broke down last week over that issue, and they had not attempted to deal with it since.

The players last formally proposed getting 52.5 percent, leaving them about $100 million apart annually. Players were guaranteed 57 percent in the previous collective bargaining agreement.

Hunter said the league initially moved its target down to 47 percent during Friday's six-hour session, then returned to its previous proposal of 50 percent of revenues.

"We're not quite sure if they're at 50 or if they're really at 47," Fisher said.

But Stern challenged that characterization, saying the league's offer was 50 percent.

Either way, the league's financial losses will mount as games are lost.

"We've lost $200 million, we're going to lose several hundred (million) more," Stern said. "We're going to have to recalculate how bad the damage is. ... The next offer will reflect the extraordinary losses that are piling up now."

Discussions about the salary cap system also proved problematic, Hunter said.

"We've told them that we don't want a hard cap. We don't want a hard cap any kind of way, either an obvious hard cap or a hard cap that may not be as obvious to most people but we know it works like a hard cap," Hunter said. "And so you get there, and then all of a sudden they say, 'Well, we also have to have our number.' And you say, 'Well wait a minute, you're not negotiating in good faith."

Though they will miss a paycheck on Nov. 15, Hunter said each player would have received a minimum of $100,000 from the escrow money that was returned to them to make up the difference after salaries fell short of the guaranteed 57 percent of revenues last season.

The sides met for 7½ hours Thursday following a 15-hour marathon the previous day.

"We're not sure when we're going to meet again, but we're hopeful that soon enough we can get back at this and try and close this out," Fisher added. "Today wasn't the day."

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7153136/nba-lockout-david-stern-announces-more-game-cancellations

 

[ceagle]

FFS arguing over 2%. How greedy can you get?

 

[BunniesMan]

f**kwits. On both sides. I spend a bit of time reading sports articles from american sources because obviously their opinion is more important on this sort of thing. And the mainstream sports fan in America doesn't give a shit about the NBA at this point. On the back of the most succesful season in history, in a golden era interms of the number of talented superstars in the game, f**kwit owners and players are bitching about 2 percent.

NBA players can't deal with having an average salary of 4 million ANNUALLY in the middle of the worst economy in years. NBA owners can't deal with being slightly less filthy rich when the '99%' is struggling so badly.

Throw in the fact that it's the middle of the NFL season and most non diehard fans don't care about the NBA until January, throw in one of the most exciting World series ever happening right now, and the NBA is committing mass suicide.

It's letting MLB have a rebirth and keep the #2 spot in American sports, if it keeps going it's going to give #3 to Hockey.

All this harm to the sport for the sake of such a small amount of money in the grand scheme of things, an amount that has already been lost forever.

It makes you wonder how these people get so rich while being so stupid.

 

[Ridders]

Tbf to the players, their willingness to go down from 57% to possibly 52% is a pretty big concession.

 

[ceagle]

But they must realise they will be losing more money if they continue to fight over the agreement, the players need to compromise, the owners don't give a f**k if the whole season is wiped out.

 

[BunniesMan]

I totally agree that the players are in the right. That they have given major concessions while the owners have given virtually nothing. In a perfect world we'd have got a deal months ago when they agreed to go down to 53. But we're not living in a perfect world, the owners are not negotiating in good faith. Sometimes you have to know when to give up, it's that time now for the players.

They're missing the bigger picture, they don't understand they're losing more money than they're arguing about and unlike the owners who have the ability to own a team for 50 years and have other income sources to overcome these losses, the players have a very limited career and they're not helping themselves by being stubborn.

What's the endgame for the players here? Hope the owners throw them a bone and come up to something like 50.5% so they can sell it as a win? Or throwaway the whole season and then give up anyway when mortgage payments on the 3rd mansion and 5th car start biting them in the arse?

And one thing I'm mad about with the players is them insisting on soft caps and exceptions. There should be a hard cap, no exceptions and no maximum contracts.

Lebron James, Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul and the rest of the elite of the elite are criminally underpaid for the value they bring. Role players are criminally overpaid. But the players union is 1 player 1 vote, and the junk players who NOONE pays a cent to see want to keep the system that underpays Lebron and Kobe and overpays Eddy Curry and Rashard Lewis.

If we had a hard cap of $60m Lebron would be worth $50m a year. With no maximum contracts there would never be more than 1 star on a team, the talent would be more spread around so the small market teams would have more of a chance. The stars would get what they deserve, the owners would be happy, but the dime a dozen players noone cares about won't let it happen.

BunniesMan's perfect solution that is good for the game, good for the players who bring in fans and good the NBA as a whole: players get 57%, no maximum contracts, fully hard cap.

The problem with the players is for too long they thought the owners were negotiating in good faith, and when they eventually realised the owners are willing to burn the house down it was too late and they'd lost too much pride to give up.

 

[ceagle]

Agreed Bunniesman, also who do you support?

 

[Tonearm Terrorwrist]

The players don't need the NBA at all. These morons don't even realise that if they strung a fraction of their money together they could easily start their own league and control their own future, Melo spoke about it about EventStatus got at him about it and that's it.

Nobody is going to go and see D-League scrubs in the NBA.

Also, if LeBron is criminaly underpaid then what's a 4th quarter brick shot worth then? :lol:

 

[BunniesMan]

Agreed Bunniesman, also who do you support?

Heat. <ducks>. I liked them before the big 3, even before D-Wade.

The players don't need the NBA at all. These morons don't even realise that if they strung a fraction of their money together they could easily start their own league and control their own future, Melo spoke about it about EventStatus got at him about it and that's it.

Nobody is going to go and see D-League scrubs in the NBA.

Also, if LeBron is criminaly underpaid then what's a 4th quarter brick shot worth then? :lol:

Playing well in the 6th minute of the 2nd quarter counts for as much as the final minute of the 4th q. Unless the rules have changed when I wasn't looking and made crunch time baskets count for 4 points.

I'll take the best player on the planet for the first 46 minutes over whoever people think is the best player on the planet for the final 2.

Over the long run Lebron will win you more games than the other guy.

Lebron was the best Heat player in the finals, he was better than Wade in 4 of the games. In one 4th quarter of the finals he fired off 5 assists...that's Magic Johnson level passing. Lebron may not be quite as good as a handful of other players in the final 2 minutes of games, but those 2 minutes don't count for any more than any other 2 minutes during a game and he is without peer over an entire season.

All the unfair crap that's been directed at him the last 18 months, I'm putting money on him channeling all that frustration and winning MVP #3 and a ring and finals mvp next season...if there is a season.

 

[Ridders]

I totally agree that the players are in the right. That they have given major concessions while the owners have given virtually nothing. In a perfect world we'd have got a deal months ago when they agreed to go down to 53. But we're not living in a perfect world, the owners are not negotiating in good faith. Sometimes you have to know when to give up, it's that time now for the players.

They're missing the bigger picture, they don't understand they're losing more money than they're arguing about and unlike the owners who have the ability to own a team for 50 years and have other income sources to overcome these losses, the players have a very limited career and they're not helping themselves by being stubborn.

What's the endgame for the players here? Hope the owners throw them a bone and come up to something like 50.5% so they can sell it as a win? Or throwaway the whole season and then give up anyway when mortgage payments on the 3rd mansion and 5th car start biting them in the arse?

And one thing I'm mad about with the players is them insisting on soft caps and exceptions. There should be a hard cap, no exceptions and no maximum contracts.

Lebron James, Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul and the rest of the elite of the elite are criminally underpaid for the value they bring. Role players are criminally overpaid. But the players union is 1 player 1 vote, and the junk players who NOONE pays a cent to see want to keep the system that underpays Lebron and Kobe and overpays Eddy Curry and Rashard Lewis.

If we had a hard cap of $60m Lebron would be worth $50m a year. With no maximum contracts there would never be more than 1 star on a team, the talent would be more spread around so the small market teams would have more of a chance. The stars would get what they deserve, the owners would be happy, but the dime a dozen players noone cares about won't let it happen.

BunniesMan's perfect solution that is good for the game, good for the players who bring in fans and good the NBA as a whole: players get 57%, no maximum contracts, fully hard cap.

The problem with the players is for too long they thought the owners were negotiating in good faith, and when they eventually realised the owners are willing to burn the house down it was too late and they'd lost too much pride to give up.

I agree with parts of what you say. The owners know that they can wait the players out, and have taken that mindset into negotiations.

I don't agree that star players should get that high an amount proportionally. And having no maximum contracts would just allow owners to make even more moronic decisions than they already do.

I don't know if the bolded bit can work. I don't have a great understanding of it all, but from what I can tell, all the other issues fall into line once the revenue split has been decided. I mean if players keep their 57% split (so the total money they receive will be about the same), yet we have a hard cap, how could the money be distributed without breaching that hard cap? The hard cap figure would have to be pretty high to accommodate the 57% split. Which I think is why the owners want to get that figure down to 50% at most. The lower the player's share becomes, the more they can look at measure like a hard cap, lowering max salaries, lower mid-level exception etc.

 

[Tonearm Terrorwrist]

Playing well in the 6th minute of the 2nd quarter counts for as much as the final minute of the 4th q. Unless the rules have changed when I wasn't looking and made crunch time baskets count for 4 points.

I'll take the best player on the planet for the first 46 minutes over whoever people think is the best player on the planet for the final 2.

Over the long run Lebron will win you more games than the other guy.

Lebron was the best Heat player in the finals, he was better than Wade in 4 of the games. In one 4th quarter of the finals he fired off 5 assists...that's Magic Johnson level passing. Lebron may not be quite as good as a handful of other players in the final 2 minutes of games, but those 2 minutes don't count for any more than any other 2 minutes during a game and he is without peer over an entire season.

All the unfair crap that's been directed at him the last 18 months, I'm putting money on him channeling all that frustration and winning MVP #3 and a ring and finals mvp next season...if there is a season.

Except for the game :lol:

 

[BunniesMan]

I agree with parts of what you say. The owners know that they can wait the players out, and have taken that mindset into negotiations.

I don't agree that star players should get that high an amount proportionally. And having no maximum contracts would just allow owners to make even more moronic decisions than they already do.

I don't know if the bolded bit can work. I don't have a great understanding of it all, but from what I can tell, all the other issues fall into line once the revenue split has been decided. I mean if players keep their 57% split (so the total money they receive will be about the same), yet we have a hard cap, how could the money be distributed without breaching that hard cap? The hard cap figure would have to be pretty high to accommodate the 57% split. Which I think is why the owners want to get that figure down to 50% at most. The lower the player's share becomes, the more they can look at measure like a hard cap, lowering max salaries, lower mid-level exception etc.

Resisting a hard cap and saving all the various Exceptions is the blood issue for the players. They've even hinted at willing to go to 50% if the other issues were sorted out 1st (in their favour).

Because while at first glance giving whatever percentage to the players under a hard cap system or a soft cap system seems to be the same thing. It's not. x% under a hard cap is vastly different than that same percentage under a soft cap.

Under a soft cap, the stars get hurt, under a hard cap the role players get hurt. Because the role players toil away and get their paydays in the MLE, for example Luke Walton got something like 30m over 5 years because the Lakers gave him their full MLE one year. The role players make their bucks in the exceptions, the stars get paid in any system.

If we had a hard cap, the stars would get paid, the role players would be squeezed in for near minimums. The Lakers and the Heat would only be offering 1m minimum contracts.

In a soft cap, teams like the Lakers and Heat (and Mavs and Bulls and Knicks etc etc) overpay average players to push their team over the top. When the total paid to players goes over their assigned %...they get taxed. And who pays the most tax? The big money stars.

Keeping a soft cap is more important for the Derek Fishers and Roger Mason jr's of the NBA that run the Union. It is much more important than the % the players get.

If the NBA offered the exact same current system of soft caps and exceptions, and a 50-50 split of the money. There never would have been a lockout.

But the problem is the owners don't just want more money, they also want to harden the cap and reduce the size/length of exceptions so the playing field is more level NFL style.

They're digging in their heels until they get both. If they settled for just the former and gave up the latter, we'd have basketball right now, star players would be even more underpaid and the mediocre players would keep their cushy contracts.

And about your argument that the stars shouldn't get as much proportionally as I suggested. The Cavs franchise doubled in value as Lebron grew to superstardom, when he left the franchise is now worth less than what Dan Gilbert paid for it nearly a decade ago.

How many fans show up to stadiums and watch on tv to see the superstars play compared to other players. What has been Minnesota and New Jersey's average crowds the last few years? How many consecutive sellouts did the Cavs get with Lebron?

I read an article that in a pure free market league getting paid how much value he brought to the game and to his team, Lebron would earn well north of 50m a year. Over a dozen players would earn more than a maximum contract.

 

[HowHigh]

All the unfair crap that's been directed at him the last 18 months, I'm putting money on him channeling all that frustration and winning MVP #3 and a ring and finals mvp next season...if there is a season.

I guess this means Lebron will have the worst season of his career and the Heat will miss the playoffs

 

[BunniesMan]

A growing minority of owners want to lower their offer from 50/50. Stern is desperately trying to hold them back. Word is if this drags long enough, enough owners will be mad at losing all this money/games that a majority will vote for something between 45 and 48.

Meanwhile the players are considering decertifying the union. That's code for 'chaos'.

The players and owners are getting further apart, not closer. The players think 50/50 is draconian. They don't realise that 50 is the compromise as far as some owners are concerned.

IMO we're closer to losing the season than we have ever been. And unless the threat of that scares the parties into making a deal, we're going to lose December games pretty soon, then January games, then the season.

Unless the owners soften, players have to realise 50% is the best they're going to do. And in fact there is a strong chance the next offer will be less.