Tag: National Basketball Players Association

Tiago headed to Spain; Manu being wooed

Spurs center Tiago Splitter is headed overseas because of the NBA lockout and guard Manu Ginobili  is being recruited like a blue chip prep prospect.

One season removed from being Most Valuable Player of the Spanish ACB League, the website of ACB team Valencia BC reported Wednesday that Splitter has agreed to join the team. His contract will have an out clause allowing his return to the Spurs should the lockout end in time for the 2011-12 NBA season to commence.

Although Ginobili has said he would not consider playing overseas until the entire NBA season is canceled, his agent said he received offers from European teams on a daily basis.

“Noting is imminent,” Herb Rudoy, Ginobili’s Chicago-based agent reported via text message, “although we field inquiries from European teams every day.”

Ginobili offered Splitter congratulations for his signing in Valencia via a Twitter posting on Wednesday.

Splitter averaged 4.9 points and 3.5 rebounds in 61 games as a Spurs rookie. At the FIBA Americas tournament in Argentina in September he helped Brazil capture the silver medal and a berth in the 2012 Olympic tournament.

He will join 2009 Spurs draftee Nando de Colo on the Valencia roster.

Splitter will be the fifth Spurs player venturing overseas during the lockout, now 140 days old and embroiled in litigation after the disbanding of the players union on Monday. Three-time All-Star point guard Tony Parker is the most prominent Spur playing in Europe, leading ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne in France. Parker is part-owner of the team.

Forward DeJuan Blair signed with Krasnye Krylya, in Samara, Russia, but was released by the team in mid-October.

Also playing overseas are swing man Danny Green, playing in Slovenia, and point guard Chris Quinn, playing for Khimki Moscow.

Attorneys who now represent the trade association that has replaced the National Basketball Players Association in dealings with the NBA on Tuesday field an antitrust suit against the league in the Northern District of California. A second, similar suit was filed in the Minnesota District.

Player representatives from 27 of the 30 NBA teams met Monday in New York and voted unanimously to reject a proposal from the league for a new collective bargaining agreement. They then voted to disclaim interest in bargaining, disbanding as a union and become a trade association.

Mike Monroe: Emotion runs high as talks turn sour

There’s a simple way for Spurs fans to know how to feel after what transpired in a hotel meeting room in midtown Manhattan early Thursday evening: Turn back the calendar to May 13, 2004.

Remember the elation you felt when Tim Duncan nailed one of the toughest shots of his career, a jumper over Shaquille O’Neal that gave the Spurs a 73-72 lead with four-tenths of a second left in Game 5 of a Western Conference semifinal series at ATT Center?

Will you ever forget the punched-in-the-gut feeling you felt when the Lakers’ Derek Fisher’s 18-footer hit nothing but net, turning a certain Spurs victory into a numbing loss.

How ironic was it that on Thursday it was Fisher, president of the National Basketball Players Association, on the receiving end of a numbing shot from the owners, including the Spurs’ Peter Holt?

Just when momentum that had seemed to build towards the framework of a new collective bargaining agreement had raised hope for an end to the lockout, all the goodwill blew up when the owners made an offer that union executive Billy Hunter called an ultimatum.

The take-it-or-leave-it position that soured everything, according to Hunter: Accept a 50-50 split of revenue if you even want to talk about the system by which your 50 percent will be distributed.

The goodwill that had seemed to prevail during marathon talks under the guidance of Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service chief George Cohen evaporated in a series of charges and counter-charges in a pair of post-blowup press conferences.

NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver and Holt went first, contending the players didn’t budge far enough from their prior position on revenue split.

This time, the union spoke second, getting the last words. Said Fisher: “I want to make it clear: You guys were lied to earlier.”

Hunter was more pointed, naming names, good and bad.

Good: James Dolan, Mark Cuban, Mickey Arison and Jerry Buss, big market owners he said wanted to make a deal.

Bad: Mostly Dan Gilbert.

Hunter said Gilbert, the Cavs owner who behaved like a spoiled brat after LeBron James decided to take his talents to South Beach last summer, wanted his trust. Agree to a 50-50 split, a giveback of roughly $300 million next season, and we’ll make sure there will be a system you can live with.

Oh, sure.

That Hunter would have revealed this after two days of gag orders issued by Cohen spoke volumes about the nastiness of the emotions, so raw they need to be numbed.

How numb will you feel without an entire NBA season? Because that’s where this dispute between billionaires and millionaires is headed.

The scariest comment was Silver lauding the National Hockey League’s collective bargaining agreement for being “so successful from a competitive standpoint with their flex-cap system that has a hard, absolute cap at the top of the band.”

The NHL got that deal the NBA’s small-market owners covet by locking out their players for the entire 2004-05 season.

Anyone for a Rampage game?

mikemonroe@express-news.net