Month: October 2011

Representatives of NBA owners and the players union met again Thursday with the mediator, but apparently no real progress was made, and negotiations have broken off for now.With David Stern sick with the flu, Adam Silver led things for the owners side today.

Adam Silver and Spurs owner Peter Holt after the meeting said:

1) Players are now willing to drop their BRI (basketball-related income) demands from 53% to 52.5%. But owners are still offering players 50% and are not willing to go higher. So there’s just a 2.5% difference.

2) There continue to be system issues, meaning the way free agency works, mid-level exceptions or other exceptions, salary cap and other items that need to be worked out. The two sides still have a lot to work on in this regard aside from the big BRI issue.

3) Silver said that as of tonight (Thursday), the league is not ready to announce that additional regular season games have been canceled yet. They aren’t saying when the next set of two regular season weeks may be canceled, but it won’t be tonight.

4) San Antonio Spurs owner Peter Holt says his team has lost money two straight seasons.

The owners side, as it has done before, suggested that the players union isn’t really open to negotiation.

Players Union president Derek Fisher after the meeting said:

1) “You guy were lied to earlier,” said Fisher to reporters. It appears what he means is that the owners reps were implying that the players union is unwilling to negotiate and be flexible, but Fisher says they are. That’s a general paraphrase.

2) Fisher says that the above is extremely frustrating.

3) Billy Hunter said what he’s said before, that he feels this has been the NBA’s plan for two or three years now, to totally break the union, and that owners really want the NHL system applied to the NBA.

4) Hunter confirmed what is pretty well-known, that the big-market owners are looking to get a deal done, but he feels the small-market owners are the ones who are playing harder than the rest and really going for a homerun deal. He thinks there’s a sizable gap between the big vs small-market owners.

5) Hunter says owners are still saying that the deal needs to be a 50/50 BRI (basketball-related income) split, or else a deal is simply not going to work, regardless of the other issues that still need to be resolved.

Billy Hunter ended with: “We’re open to negotiate. We’re ready to go back to the table anytime — without any preconditions, though.”

It turns out that the players union says that owners have again made it clear that players have to agree to a 50-50 BRI split or else there’s simply nothing else to talk about at this time.

And that, the NBA lockout continues.

Read NBA fan opinion or share your views in this basketball forum topic.

The NBA and Players Association have made progress on the proposed revenue split between owners and players, an important element in settling a new collective bargaining agreement and ending the lockout, league sources involved in the ongoing labor negotiations told Yahoo! Sports.

As long expected, the two sides have moved closer to a “50-50 split, give or take a point with ranges based on revenue performance,” one source said.

While the league’s owners and players made progress in Wednesday’s 8½-hour mediation session, one source involved in the talks was hesitant to characterize it as a “breakthrough” moment, saying system issues could again derail talks. The two sides will resume mediation at 2 p.m. ET following the conclusion of the owners’ board of governors meetings. The owners are meeting to discuss a new revenue-sharing plan, and what type of proposal they present to the players on Thursday will determine whether the labor talks continue to gather momentum.

Still, the biggest hurdle between the two sides remains the luxury tax proposals to punish big-spending teams and discourage them from overpaying players.

— Reported by Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports

Bryant Gumbel invoked images of slavery in a scathing attack on NBA Commissioner David Stern, saying he is acting like a “modern-day plantation overseer” in his treatment of players during the league’s lockout.

Gumbel, during a closing segment on HBO’s Real Sports, said Stern is standing in the way of a solution to the league’s labor dispute…

“His efforts are typical of a commissioner who has always seemed eager to be viewed as some king of modern-day plantation overseer, treating NBA men as if they were his boys. … His moves are intended to do little more than show how he’s the one keeping the hired hands in their place.”

He called Stern’s poor treatment of the players “palpable and pathetic.”

— Reported by Joel Provano of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Video of Bryant Gumbel talking about David Stern

InsideHoops.com editor says: This is absurd nonsense, and an unrealistic, crazed exaggeration by Bryant Gumbel. There certainly is some truth in suggesting that the men of the NBA do get treated like boys in some ways (dress code — though almost every company has dress codes one way or another — and some other stuff), but Gumbel went completely over the top with this. Pretty silly stuff. If getting $5 million USD a year to play basketball, travel and live the life of a rock star means sometimes having to not post on Twitter around game-time, dress a bit more corporate sometimes, and avoid bashing the refs and saying a few other things is the equivalent of being a “plantation worker,” then sign me up.