Tag: Player

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?

MJ’s perspective changes with team ownership

Tigers apparently can change their stripes.

Ownership of an NBA team will do that to you.

Michael Jordan once was a hawk on all labor matters when he was a player. He famously is remembered by many former players for the way he took the late Washington owner Abe Pollin to task during the 1998 strike.

“If you can’t make a profit, then maybe you should sell your team,” Jordan told Polin.

Now, 13 years later, there’s been a dramatic transformation in Jordan’s perspective.

The New York Times reports that Jordan is who are determined to hold the line in the player’s share of the basketball-related income.

Jordan, who now serves as managing partner for the Charlotte Bobcats, has a  group includes between 10 and 14 owners sharing his sentiments.

That group wanted the players’ share of the BRI to be more than 47 percent and was extremely upset when negotiators proposed a 50-50 split last month. That group likely isn’t large enough to dictate the owners’ final policy, but it will still hold much influence in shaping how the deal is perceived by the group.

These concerns will be considered during an ownership meeting that will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday, six hours  before the players and owners meet again in New York City on Saturday afternoon.

A lot of former players are wondering about Jordan’s dramatic change in attitude over the years.

I’m curious what “His Airness” as a player would say to his alter ego, the small-market supposedly struggling NBA owner, if they ever ran into each other.

Despite new offer, players break off talks for weekend

After nearly 11 hours of talks Thursday, the NBA’s players and owners broke off negotiations still without a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement.

NBA commisisoner David Stern has been authorized by the league’s labor relations committee to make a revised offer.

And the offer wasn’t the onerous deal that would have provided the players with 47 percent of the basketball-related income as he had threatened.

It’s still not what the players wanted in the neighborhood of 52-53 percent. But it’s enough that the players will take the new numbers to their members for voting early next week.

Ken Berger of CBSSports.com reports that the deal is an . But it’s still not clear if it will be palatable for the players once they start crunching numbers.

NBPA president Billy Hunter said the key aspect of the NBA’s new offer is a mid-level exception increase for tax-paying teams for three years at $3 million per year.

Whether that will be enough to garner support from the union is undetermined. But Stern is confident a deal can be made if the players union gets approval from its membership.

“We have both done everything possible that it’s possible to do,” Stern told reporters after Thursday’s meetings. “I am optimistic owners will approve if union approves it.”

The league is offering the players a , Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports.com reported.

“At this point we’ve decided to end things for now, take a step back,” NBA president Derek Fisher told reporters. “We’ll go back as an executive committee, as a board, and confer with our player reps and additional players over the next few days and then we’ll make decisions about what our next steps will be at that point. Obviously, we still would like to continue negotiating and find a way to get a deal done but right now is not that time.”

Maybe next week could finally be the time.