Tag: In the News

Stern confident the season will not be missed

NBA commissioner David Stern was making the media tour today as he continued to express confidence that a deal is close that could save the NBA season.

On the day before Stern’s deadline to players on a 50-50 split on basketball-related income, the commissioner made several public comments about his confidence that a deal would be made.

Stern adamantly expressed his confidence to Stephen A. Smith of ESPN New York that a deal eventually will be made. (Hat tip: Sports Radio Interviews.com)

When Smith asked him if the league has prepared for the eventuality of a missed season, Stern expressed forcefully .

“Stern: I refuse to contemplate it or discuss because we are going to make a deal.

“Smith: So you’re confident?

“Stern: Unlike any other deal, if I don’t bid enough for your house you don’t have to sell it to me. Or if you ask too much I don’t have to buy it. Our players, there’s going to be a deal. The only question is how much damage is done to the game and our fans and the people who work in our industry before we make that deal.”

Stern also refuted charges by some players that their group is making all of the concessions in the negotiations with owners.

“I would argue that if I were them also,” Stern said. “But another view on this is by working together with us over the last number of years, 30 years or so, we’ve taken the average player salary from $250,000 to well over $5 million. If we make the changes that are in the owners current proposal we will take a small step back from the $5.5 million average salary to something above five and we will grow it over the life of the proposal to well over $7 million. This at a time when there’s 9 percent unemployment, when all of the risk on this business is on the owners and the five or six thousand other people who help make it.

“We think it’s a very fair accommodation. We’re giving them the benefit really of keeping them pretty close to where they are under a system that is no longer sustainable. If you ask the people at the Ford plants, the GM plants, the other plants that no longer exist and you look at public workers and the cutbacks that are going on, we think that our players deserve to be kept as close as we possibly can to what they’ve earned under the old deal and keep them growing after we take that reset. We think it’s eminently fair and reasonable and we think that when you look around and look at the deals that are being made out there in the public sector, the private sector with give back after give back, being a member of the highest paid union in the world whose wages and compensation continue to rise is not a bad deal.”

How about it Spurs Nation? Do you share the same optimism that Stern has about settling a deal soon?

But more importantly, at this point do you really care?

Buck Harvey: In private, would Spurs take the deal?

NBA players aren’t being greedy. They haven’t been given a chance to be.

Their leadership made the decision for them Monday. Their player representatives said they “unanimously” agreed to begin anti-trust action rather than put the owners’ proposal up for a full vote.

That’s the nature of unions; the reps don’t forward to their members what they don’t like. But this isn’t another union, and this isn’t just another wage scale they are debating.

That’s one reason all of the players should have been able to vote.

There are a few million more.

As it is, the NBA took a step Monday toward what David Stern called “nuclear winter.” Billy Hunter responded with something that hasn’t happened often. He agreed.

Hunter said there is a “high probability” there will be a lost season.

All of it still falls under negotiations, no matter how many lawyers are now collecting fees. That’s why it is too early to say there won’t be a season; at this point in 1998, the agreement was still six weeks away.

Still, everything is at risk, including the players’ reputations. To the majority of fans, they are greedy or worse, undeserving in today’s job market.

The average salary of an NBA player, $5.1 million, equals the combined average salaries of the NFL and Major League Baseball. And they can’t come to a deal?

The details say something else. The players are the ones who have compromised, yet as recently as last Friday, were blindsided by further owners’ demands.

Stern’s arrogance also has done little to reach compromise. He’s already won, yet keeps running up the score.

Little wonder the union stood in defiance Monday. “The players feel that they’re not prepared to accept the ultimatums,” Hunter said.

But only about 30 players felt that. These are the reps, some of whom got the job because no one else wanted it. They try to do the best they can, but a few things are working against them. One is a confusing business world that is out of their comfort zone.

Another is a dynamic that has a locker-room feel to it. They’ve built their careers trying to be tough-minded teammates. So, given the group mentality, who wants to be the one arguing for surrender?

Individually, however, they are like their teammates in their respective cities. They have their own careers to worry about. Their shelf lives as NBA players are short, and, for every insulting clause Stern throws at them, the pay is still good.

So imagine what was going through Matt Bonner’s head as he stood at a press conference Monday as the Spurs’ rep. He’s 31 years old, with a contract that will pay him through 2014 — yet he would prefer to sacrifice something tangible for something that is not?

If Tim Duncan had a vote, he would likely be divided. He would want to be loyal to the cause. But he would also be voting against the largest one-year salary of his career, as well as perhaps his last season.

Tony Parker would have little reason to vote no; he’s under contract until 2015. Manu Ginobili is facing the last two years of his career at a combined $27 million. He wouldn’t want to play?

Richard Jefferson not only is under contract until 2014, he would also be an amnesty candidate. If the Spurs cut him, he would get his money, as well as a chance to sign with another team.

The younger players could have a different agenda. But they also might need the money more, too. DeJuan Blair, back after a brief adventure in Russia, could use some dollars to make up for lost rubles.

Not all NBA rosters are like the Spurs, but there is a similar thread that runs through all of them. They are angry, and they are not sure if that should matter to them personally.

So given a private ballot on Monday, weighing their own lives against a tactic that might backfire, what would they have done?

Here’s a guess.

The Spurs would be preparing for training camp right now.

bharvey@express-news.net

Ex-Spurs guard returns to S.A. for game

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

Five months after being traded to the Indiana Pacers, George Hill was back on a San Antonio basketball court on Sunday afternoon, back in a black No. 3 jersey.

Except it wasn’t a Spurs jersey. And it wasn’t the ATT Center.

With the NBA lockout still in full bloom, Hill was in town to play point guard for the Texas Fuel.

“I know San Antonio misses some basketball,” said Hill, one of the Spurs’ most popular players in his three seasons with the team. “I wanted to give the fans something to do during the lockout.”

Haven’t heard of the Texas Fuel? You’re likely not alone. The Fuel is the name given to the American Basketball Association team that plays at the Alamo Convocation Center.

They are a professional team, to be sure, but about as far a leap from the NBA as the Alamo Convocation Center is from the currently unoccupied basketball gym the Spurs call home.

The ball — like the iconic sphere used in the ABA of the 1970s — is red, white and blue. A DJ blasts music while the ball is in play (sample playlist selection: Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock and Roll.”) About 500 people were on hand Sunday to watch the Hill-led Fuel beat the Hill Country Stampede — a team, incidentally, based out of Big Spring — 113-93 in the team’s opener.

“It’s not the Spurs,” Hill said. “But it’s still basketball.”

Or, as Fuel officials are fond of saying: “It’s the only game in town.”

The Fuel’s roster is filled mostly with small-college castoffs holding on to a dream. Hill was the only player in uniform Sunday to have appeared in the NBA, and likely the only one who ever will.

The team’s leading scorer was De’Andre Hall, a 6-foot-7 combo forward who played collegiately at Texas Southern. He had 34 points and 11 rebounds.

More content to facilitate than score, Hill recorded his first pro triple-double with 11 points, 11 rebounds and 17 assists.

“I was just trying to get my feet wet again and get up and down the floor,” he said. “At the same time, it’s all for fun. I’m not out here to embarrass anybody.”

Hill hooked on with the Fuel as a favor to a friend, Marlon Minifee, one of the team’s co-owners. It gave him something to do during the lockout, which next week will enter its fifth month.

To pass the time, Hill has been working out in S.A. and Indianapolis. He shared the South Texas portion of his workouts with a slew of former Spurs teammates, including All-Stars Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili.

Though it cast the 2011-12 season in dire jeopardy, Hill said he supported the union leadership’s decision to push the lockout into litigation last week. He didn’t care that the NBA’s most recent collective bargaining proposal was not put to a full vote of the membership before the union decided to take its fight to court.

“At the end of the day, you have to do what’s best for your family,” Hill said, specifically praising union president Derek Fisher. “If that’s sacrificing what you make for a year to get the best deal possible — not just for us, but for the guys coming in after us — it’s worth it.”

The prospect of missing an entire season hasn’t caught Hill off guard.

“You knew this was coming,” said Hill, who has earned more than $3.2 million in his short career. “I paid attention during rookie orientation when they said, ‘Save your money.’?”

Still, Hill would rather be earning a paycheck in the NBA right now.

Instead of spending Sunday facing the Pistons in Detroit, Hill found himself running point guard in a half-empty gym that houses SAISD’s high school teams. He might be back soon. He wouldn’t rule out a return engagement with the Fuel.

“It depends on how much Icy Hot I have to use after this game,” he said.