Tag: In the News

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.

Buck Harvey: Lockout discipline: Elliott as the model

Sean Elliott felt physically fine about a dozen years ago. The NBA’s opening night was cancelled, just as it is tonight, but Elliott kept working to stay ready.

“I was anticipating some type of season,” he said Monday.

He got some type of season, all right. The lockout crunched 50 games into three months. Then, in March of that shortened 1999 season, Elliott’s kidneys began to fail.

He not only survived, he did so while playing all the way to the Finals. And that’s why he thinks a compacted season is not only tolerable for today’s players, it will also be telling of them.

“We will see who is serious about it,” Elliott said. “And who has been out there messing around.”

Elliott reports his health remains good. Monday was the birthday of his brother and organ donor, Noel. And asked if he told his kidney “happy birthday,” Sean laughed.

“Every year,” he said.

He’d been living with his old, weakened kidneys long before that championship season. Gregg Popovich was able to swap a mid-first-round draft pick in 1994 to get Elliott back, in part, because Elliott was viewed as damaged.

But the weakening of his kidneys had seemingly leveled off. By 1998, when another lockout began to cut into the season, Elliott didn’t see them as an issue. He was more concerned with a labor fight more divisive than this one.

“We weren’t talking then like they are now,” he said. “That’s why I’m more optimistic this time.”

Then, Elliott was coming off consecutive seasons of knee surgeries. So he stayed in the gym, determined to come back strong.

The kidneys? A preseason physical said Elliott’s renal functions were stable.

But sometime in March, with no explanation, his kidneys began to quickly deteriorate. Elliott told just a few people, among them Popovich and teammate Steve Kerr, and kept playing.

The schedule wasn’t easy for those not facing an organ transplant. Robert Horry, then a Laker, remembers being so exhausted after playing three games in three nights that he fell against his hotel room wall. That season, he said recently, “cut my career by a year.”

There were times, too, when Elliott wasn’t the same. There was a mental side to his fatigue; he was too aware something inside wasn’t right.

In recent years, he’s watched tape of that season, and some stretches were startling. He saw himself laying on screens, unable to get into position.

“I told Pop not long ago,” Elliott said, “‘Thank God you trusted me then.’ Because I wouldn’t have gone with that guy I was seeing.”

Still, Elliott held up. He defended Kobe Bryant in the second round, threw in the Memorial Day Miracle in the next, then chased Latrell Sprewell and Allan Houston in the Finals.

Did it feel like an ordeal at times?

“Oh, yeah,” he said.

As tired as he was in those months, he believes the body of a professional athlete “has an amazing ability to adapt.” He thinks the Spurs got into a rhythm then, just as they sometimes do in other seasons when they come to the rugged part of a schedule.

Furthermore, Elliott says the jammed schedule made him actually better in the postseason. “There aren’t any back-to-backs in the playoffs,” he said. “So you feel like you are exhaling.”

But that’s only for those who were breathing smoothly going into the season. Elliott says the longer this lockout goes, the more this will be about the discipline of the players.

He guesses this: Anywhere from 20 to 30 percent won’t be in shape and will struggle.

And what will their excuse be? That the post-lockout schedule was too demanding?

A dozen years ago, Elliott eliminated that as an excuse.

bharvey@express-news.net

Owners put ball in players’ court

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

Facing an ultimatum from league owners and dissension within its membership, the leadership of the NBA Players Association will conduct a conference call today to consider its options.

Spurs forward Matt Bonner, a member of the union’s executive committee, said he expects a wide-ranging discussion. One topic will gauge the level of player interest in signing a petition to force a vote that could decertify the union.

The NBA late Saturday night gave the union a formal proposal for a new collective bargaining agreement that Bonner characterized as “basically another 50-50 split” of basketball-related income. It included some changes in the luxury tax system he said represented little change from the owners’ previous positions.

The union rejected the offer on the spot, but commissioner David Stern said it would remain on the table only through the end of business Wednesday.

Details of the league’s offer, which Stern promised to put in writing for the union to assess ahead of the deadline, include:

– A “band” of revenue for the players between 49 and 51 percent, depending on revenue growth.

– Restrictions on teams over the luxury tax threshold, including a ban on both sign-and-trade deals and full use of mid-level salary cap exceptions. The full mid-level would be replaced for tax-paying teams by a “mini” mid-level that would start at $2.5 million, half of the full mid-level.

– An added penalty for teams that exceed the luxury tax threshold three times in five seasons.

If it is not accepted by Wednesday, Stern said the offer would be withdrawn and replaced by a much worse deal, with a revenue split giving the players only 47 percent of BRI and a “flex” salary cap system the players already have characterized as an unacceptable hard cap.

Lakers guard Derek Fisher, the union’s president, told reporters in New York on Saturday that the NBA deal was not one the executive committee could take to its players for a vote.

Bonner said every member of the executive committee is behind the decision to reject it.

“We’re all on the same page,” he said.

Saturday’s session, which was conducted under the guidance of George Cohen, head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, was frustrating for the players.

“Saturday sucked,” Bonner said. “The way we saw to save the season and get a deal was by saying the system was more important to us, BRI more important to them; we can compromise on BRI if they can come more to us on the remaining system issues.

“That’s what we were hoping would get a deal, and we really thought the approach we took was going to get it done. But when George came back after taking our offer to the owners, what he came back with was five or six changes in system things, and all but one were what the owners wanted. It was basically their deal.”

Disbanding the union would allow players to file an anti-trust lawsuit against the league. The more important, immediate result would be some leverage for the union during the roughly 45 days it would take for the National Labor Relations Board to arrange a vote of all 450 members of the union.

The threat of decertification and the uncertainty that comes with it could give the union the leverage it needs to coax a better offer from the league than the deal it rejected Saturday.

“I’m sure we’ll talk about everything on the call,” Bonner said.