Tag: chairman

Source says NBA talks to resume Wednesday

By Brian Mahoney
Associated Press

NEW YORK — Officials from the NBA and players’ association will meet Wednesday, less than a week after three days of talks with a federal mediator couldn’t produce a deal to end the lockout, a person with knowledge of the plans said.

Talks broke down last Thursday after players said owners insisted they agree to a 50-50 split of revenues before they would further discuss the salary cap system. By not reaching an agreement last week, the NBA will likely be forced to cancel more games to go with the two weeks that were already scrapped.

There was a far nastier tone than usual to the breakdown, with union president Derek Fisher of the Lakers accusing Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver and Spurs owner Peter Holt, chairman of the league’s labor relations committee, of lying during their press conference.

But just as they have multiple times this month when they walked away from the table without another meeting scheduled, the sides are getting back at it relatively quickly.

The meeting, first reported by the Daily News of New York, will be small groups from each side, the person told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because details of the negotiations were to remain private. Commissioner David Stern will take part after he was forced to miss the session last Thursday because of an illness.

Stern said without a deal last week, he feared games could be lost right through Christmas. The sides tried, spending 30 hours together while meeting for three straight days for the first time since the lockout began July 1. They made some progress on minor issues, but continue to be stuck on the two main ones.

Players proposed lowering their guarantee of basketball-related income to 52.5 percent, leaving the sides about $100 million apart annually based on last season’s revenues. They are also sparring over the length of contracts and the raises attached to them, along with the penalties teams would face for exceeding the luxury tax level.

Signs of lockout’s end fade quickly

“Two tickets, torn in half. And a lot of nothing to do.” — Elliott Smith, “Miss Misery”

Those tickets you bought for Spurs games in November?

Mere memories of misery.

All that optimism that oozed from a press conference room in a New York City hotel on Thursday night, in stark contrast to the gloom and doom of the previous Thursday night, was an illusion. Commissioner David Stern and union executive director Billy Hunter conjured all that giddiness with mirrors, and the gullible believed their prestidigitation was the truth.

We were told there was near-agreement on the system changes the NBA has insisted must happen if all 30 teams are to have a chance to be competitive, save for some issues that hardly seemed like deal-breakers. This was what the union had said must happen if the owners expected additional movement on the money issue, the split of basketball-related income.

The league already had proposed a 50-50 split, but as a prerequisite for discussion of the system.

With that issue so close to agreement, didn’t logic dictate a compromise on BRI somewhere between the league’s 50 percent and the union’s last position, 52.5?

Hadn’t David Stern promised he would be negotiating Friday on all aspects of the collective bargaining agreement?

Hunter believed he had, so when Stern informed the union on Friday that the league’s offer was not going above 50 percent, serendipity vaporized.

There were the expected semantic riffs about the numbers. Hunter said Stern “snookered” him into thinking the league would negotiate up from its position on the money split. He swore the league’s move was backwards, to 47 percent, an assertion Stern called “an utter misrepresentation.”

Some of us got advance warning there was trouble in the air, even as the two sides worked into the early afternoon in midtown Manhattan. Before the talks blew up this text message ? from a trusted NBA executive landed in my smartphone: “Staunch stance by owners on 50-50. Problematical.”

Stern and Hunter had tried to warn that Friday was no slam-dunk deal, but their mutual jocularity on Thursday night trumped their words.

Then, the New York Times told us NBA officials contacted arena managers with instructions to clear dates for in the final two weeks of April so enough regular season games could be squeezed in to accommodate a full, 82-game schedule.

Optimism reigned.

But the early text message warning was prescient, the feeling of letdown palpable.

The tangible casualty Friday was an 82-game season that was going to be a logistical stretch for every team, a competitive straitjacket for teams with veteran stars.

Back-to-back-to-back games, Tim Duncan?

Probably not.

Also gone was the collegial feel that had prevailed through a 15-hour session on Wednesday and Thursday’s “we’re almost there” session, and this is unsettling. In a question-and-answer session on NBA.com Wednesday, famed economist Kevin Murphy, who consults for the union, spoke a bit about ill will.

“I don’t want to see any lingering bad blood between the two sides,” Murphy told Steve Aschburner. “That’s not good, either. You run the risk that, if it gets too personal, that creates its own set of frictions going forward.”

It was a good sign, then, that union vice president Maurice Evans was spotted giving a goodbye hug to Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor, chairman of the league’s Board of Governors, before both headed to LaGuardia Airport for flights to their home cities.

Then there was this text from the league exec who had seen trouble coming:

“50.5 or 51 — gotta throw ’em a lifeline; NBA will, but will now whack some games, leave some scars.”

Find optimism in that at your own risk.

mikemonroe@express-news.net

The man in the middle

With little else going on in the NBA due to this lockout business, the folks at Hoopsworld are in the profiling the league’s various owners.

You know, the guys at least partially responsible for the ongoing labor impasse.

The website’s latest offering, on the owners of the Southwest Division, provides another reminder of Spurs chairman Peter Holt’s prominent place at the heart of the lockout.

As head of the league’s labor committee, Holt will have a big say in whatever deal is ultimately worked out with the players — and by extension how long this stalemate lasts.

Unlike one of his, ahem, , Holt prefers to keep a low public profile. We must use our imaginations to project his approach to the boardroom.

Having purchased the Spurs along with a group of 21 investors in 1993, and claiming a majority share in 1996, Holt is one of the league’s more tenured owners. He’s also one of the most widely respected.

“He runs the tractor business,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich once said of his owner, “and we run the basketball.”

Though it could be surmised Holt would support a new collective bargaining agreement favorable to small-market teams — since he owns one — the Spurs chairman is generally considered to be one of the more reasonable voices at the labor negotiating table.

There is hope, when talks resume, Holt might act as a buffer against a hardline faction of small-market owners, believed to include Phoenix’s Robert Sarver and Cleveland’s Dan Gilbert among others, bent on bleeding concessions out of the players’ union at any cost.

All of this will play out behind closed doors in the coming weeks and, most likely, months. The league office has prohibited its rank and file from making public comments on the lockout, by threat of seven-figure fine.

Though Holt is a respected voice with a powerful place within the NBA’s ownership ranks, he doesn’t have the power to end the lockout on his own. In a manner of speaking, however, the path toward ending the league’s latest labor stoppage runs through San Antonio.

Through the guy who runs the tractor business.