Tag: San Antonio Spurs

NBA, players hold another marathon meeting

By BRIAN MAHONEY
AP Basketball Writer

NEW YORK — NBA owners and players were engaged in another marathon session Friday, meeting for more than 13 hours in talks aimed at ending the 148-day lockout in time to save the league’s Christmas Day schedule.

That deadline has created a sense of urgency because the Dec. 25 schedule is traditionally a showcase for the league. This season’s three-game slate was to include Miami at Dallas in an NBA finals rematch, plus MVP Derrick Rose leading Chicago into Los Angeles to face Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.

After a secret meeting earlier this week, the sides returned to the table to try to hash out a deal. Commissioner David Stern has said the league needs about 30 days from an agreement to when games could be played.

Participating in the talks for the league were Stern, deputy commissioner Adam Silver, Spurs owner Peter Holt, the chairman of the labor relations committee, and attorneys Rick Buchanan and Dan Rube. The players were represented by executive director Billy Hunter, president Derek Fisher, vice president Maurice Evans, attorney Ron Klempner and economist Kevin Murphy.

The discussions between representatives of the owners and players are now centered on settling their lawsuits: The players filed an antitrust lawsuit against the league in Minnesota, and the league filed a pre-emptive suit in New York, seeking to prove the lockout was legal.

Because the union disbanded, it cannot negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement, but the settlement talks could lead to that. The CBA can only be completed once the union has reformed.

There are still a handful of issues relating to spending rules for teams that must be worked out — issues that have been an obstacle to a new deal since the lockout began July 1. Players fear that owners’ desires to curb spending by the big-market teams would limit their options as free agents.

Talks last broke down Nov. 14 when players rejected the owners’ proposal that included opening a 72-game schedule on Dec. 15, instead announcing instead they were disbanding the union, giving them a chance to win several billion dollars in triple damages in an antitrust lawsuit.

On Monday, a group of named plaintiffs including Carmelo Anthony, Steve Nash and Kevin Durant filed an amended federal lawsuit against the league in Minnesota, hoping the courts there will be as favorable to them as they have been to NFL players in the past.

The NFL players enjoyed several victories over the owners in federal court in Minnesota, most recently when U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson issued a temporary injunction this summer that lifted the NFL’s owner-imposed lockout. That decision was stayed and eventually overturned on appeal by the 8th Circuit in St. Louis.

The legal system could take months to resolve, so both sides repeatedly have said the only way to reach a deal that would save the season is through bargaining. The 1998-99 lockout reduced that season to 50 games. It was settled shortly after the new year and play started in February.

This season games have been canceled through Dec. 15, but in reality another week probably already has been lost, given the time needed to write and approve a new collective bargaining agreement, have a free agency period, hold training camps and play exhibition games.

Quick hopes TP will help them catch McDonald’s in France

Tony Parker is a marketing dynamo in France with deals for everything from shoes and watches to food delivery and clothes.

But if you ask anyone this side of LeBron James or Michael Jordan, the best way to build extreme broad-based public recognition is by doing a fast-food commercial.

You can look at Parker and see he doesn’t eat fast food very often. But he’s a natural spokesman because his game is predicated on speed — almost as quick as getting those burgers and fries to you through the drive-through window.

Parker has just hooked up with  a Belgian company that operates more than 400 restaurants in Belgium, France, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Andorra, Luxembourg, Spain, Russia and Armenia. It is considered one of Europe’s top competitors to McDonald’s.

Their most popular product is their Belgian fries and their gimmick is that they don’t salt them. It’s left up to the customer to decide exactly how much salt to place on the potatoes.

When it started in 1970, Quick became the first European fast-food restaurant basing most of its business on selling burgers. And it’s still popular as the company ranks first in Belgium and Luxembourg and No. 2 in France behind McDonald’s. 

Quick marketers hope that by linking Parker to their restaurant will boost their market share as they challenge “the golden arches” across  the continent.

Here’s a look at awith Quick, courtesy of You Tube.

Sapp, Rose aren’t buying LBJ as NFL player

It’s an image that LeBron James has helped cultivate over the years.

Back in the day, James was an All-State wide receiver at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio, as a  sophomore.  He helped lead his team to the state semifinals in football as a junior.

Those performances, his 6-foot-8, 255-pound size and his 44-inch vertical jump have led some to believe he could have been a standout receiver in the NFL if he .

If the lockout continues for an extended period, who knows? Seattle coach Pete Carroll even had James’ name stitched on a .

Despite those indicators, there’s a big difference from thinking you can play NFL football and actually thriving in the league. It’s why former NBA player Jalen Rose and NFL player Warren Sapp both doubt that James could really play in the NFL.

He’s a tremendous athlete, probably the best physical specimen you’ll see in sports,” Rose said earlier this week while serving as a guest panelist on the NFL Network’s No Huddle. 

“The one thing about football — you can go up for the football — I don’t think his feet’ll hit the ground on the way down because they will take him out. I think that game is too physical, I think it’s too demanding, I think that it’s hard to block defensive ends — it’s more to that job of being a tight end than just running routes.”

Sapp was even more forceful, wondering if James was competitive enough to play against the NFL’s best.

“How about LeBron do one-sixth of what Jordan did, let’s see him go win a championship,” Sapp said.

“Go do that. Go see if you can conquer your sport before you come over here because them boys on defense, we like pretty boys like that. We want to split them.”

But it’s also interesting to consider that basketball players a lot less accomplished than James — Tony Gonzalez, Jimmy Graham and Antonio Gates — have had a lot of success after leaving basketball to become NFL tight ends.

None of them have the combination of size, speed and explosive athletic ability that James has. Given time, he might be able to develop into an accomplished tight end.

But whether he could morph into an NFL contributor is a big, big stretch — particularly when there’s so much money for James to make in the relative safety of the NBA.