Tag: Mo Evans

NBA deadline on hold as talks go on

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

NEW YORK – Deadline Day became Dialogue Day for the NBA.

A league ultimatum that had threatened to seriously set back negotiations aimed at ending the NBA’s lockout was set aside so talks could resume.

Twelve hours of talks that began Wednesday afternoon produced little in the way of progress, but for now, time will stand still while the talks continue, beginning with another session today.

It will be the 133rd day since the players were locked out on July 1.

“We have sort of stopped the clock,” Commissioner David Stern said after a 12-hour session that ended after 1 in the morning at a midtown Manhattan hotel.

Frozen in time was Stern’s deadline for acceptance of an offer that included a 50-50 split of basketball related income.

Stern’s warning to the union after mediated weekend bargaining sessions ended in failure had been simple: Accept by the 5 p.m. close of business on Wednesday a league’s offer or face a much worse offer in the future.

The post-deadline offer, Stern said, would be re-set to 47 percent of revenue for the players, with a “flex” salary cap the union already has deemed a hard cap. Further, the re-set offer will seek to roll back current contracts.

The threat continues to hang over players’ heads, but until this latest round of talks is declared a failure, Stern won’t wield it.

“It was our understanding going in that at the end of the negotiating session, whether it ends today or it ends tomorrow, that’s when our offer reverts. But we weren’t, in the middle of discussions, going to say, ‘OK we shouldn’t have taken that break. Stop the clock, it’s all over.’

“We’re trying to demonstrate our good faith and I think that the union is trying to demonstrate its good faith.”

On Wednesday, the threat didn’t appear in the negotiating room, according to Billy Hunter, executive director of the National Basketball Players’ Association.

“No, it was not (in the room),” he said. “They had sent us a letter indicating the 47 percent deal would occur if we did not reach accord by 5 p.m. today. Because of the nature of the negotiations and the fact there has been so much give and take they have basically agreed to freeze the deadline.”

Despite all that give and take on Wednesday, neither side said much progress was made.

“Nothing was worked out today,” Stern said. “We’ve agreed to convene here tomorrow at noontime and I would not read into this optimism or pessimism. We just continue to negotiate as we continue to negotiate.”

Hunter said the agreement to meet Thursday was an indication of a positive tenor to the talks.

“There was enough give and take on both sides that it merited our coming back tomorrow,” he said.

The union had asked for Wednesday’s negotiations after a meeting of player representatives from 29 of the 30 NBA teams that ended with solid support of the union’s executive committee and Hunter.

Negotiations Wednesday centered on “system” issues the players insist they must have if they are to agree to a 50-50 split of basketball related income.

Wednesday’s talks involved smaller groups than last weekend’s sessions. Stern, Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver and Spurs owner Peter Holt, chairman of the owners’ labor relations committee represented the league, along with league attorneys Rick Buchanan and Dan Rube.

Union preside Derek Fisher, union vice-president Mo Evans, Hunter, outside counsel Jeffrey Kessler, attorney Ron Klempner and economist Kevin Murphy represented the players.

Mike Monroe: NBA just posturing at this point

It’s Wednesday morning, and the owners and players are still talking to one another. Apparently, Tuesday was a very important day in the NBA’s collective bargaining process, but Friday is very, very important.

David Stern often resorts to hyperbole, so the massive magnitude the NBA commissioner had ascribed to Tuesday’s meeting caused some of us veteran reporters to roll our eyes.

Stern emerged on Tuesday to announce another negotiating session for Friday because the owners had made a new proposal that reflected their desire “to go as far as we can to avoid a lockout,” according to the Associated Press.

Perhaps his real goal was to make certain he can preside over the first round of Thursday’s draft without being booed off the stage or pelted with rotten tomatoes.

Thursday’s draftees may have to wait until 2012 to prove worthy of their spot in the annual selection, for there is little to suggest a collective bargaining breakthrough is imminent.

Negotiators don’t get more down-to-earth than Matt Bonner, the Spurs forward who is one of nine players on the union’s negotiating committee. But even the ever-upbeat Bonner is hard-pressed to see a way out of a process that has been complicated by major changes in the makeup of the league’s owners and a global recession that has affected nearly every business on the planet.

You can tell Bonner is discouraged when he fails to offer anything quirky or humorous in any conversation, and he was all business during a phone chat on Tuesday.

The problem with the owners’ negotiating position, Bonner said, is its very premise.

“There was movement,” he said of Tuesday’s meeting, “but the key to understanding it is that their starting position is based on the really extreme offer they made last year.

“They’re not starting from the current deal, which is our starting point, obviously. They’re starting from Candyland.”

The owners’ “Candyland” includes a hard salary cap, and Bonner and the other members of the union’s negotiating committee — president Derek Fisher and Bonner, Roger Mason Jr., Theo Ratliff, Mo Evans, Keyon Dooling, James Jones, Etan Thomas and Chris Paul — weren’t buying the latest iteration of that position, something Stern called a “flex cap.”

According to the Associated Press, Stern said the flex cap would ensure the players’ total compensation never would fall below $2 billion per year in a 10-year contract, a figure close to what the players’ total compensation was last season.

The tweak, according to Bonner, is just repackaging an old proposal in new language.

“It’s their attempt to spin something that is still essentially a hard cap,” he said.

Spurs owner Peter Holt, considered a moderate, is chairman of the owners’ labor relations committee, but it includes some relatively new owners who weren’t around when previous CBAs dictated the split of league revenues. The league insists 22 of 30 teams lost money last season and calls it proof the business model is broken and can be fixed only by the enormous changes they seek.

Frankly, some of the new owners paid too much for their teams — Phoenix’s Robert Sarver ($400 million in 2005) and Golden State’s Joe Lacob and Dan Gruber ($400 million in 2010) for example. Now they seek big givebacks from the union to prop up their bottom lines.

The players are disinclined to give up what took 40 years to gain.

This is Bonner’s first experience with collective bargaining, but he already understands the imperative that guides a negotiating committee that includes only one superstar.

“It’s humbling to be in a position where you can have an influence on a deal that’s going to affect the game that is so much bigger than you,” he said. “It will affect all the players in the game now and all the players that come in the league after you. It’s a big responsibility to do what’s right and fight for what’s right.”

The bell will ring on the next round on Friday — a very, very important day.

mikemonroe@express-news.net