Tag: San Antonio Spurs

Olberding revels in ABA memories

It’s understandable why former Spurs forward Mark Olberding still has such vivid memories of the ABA.

When that league folded in 1976, Olberding was the league’s youngest player. Olberding, who played 70 games for that final Spurs ABA team after arriving earlier in the year from San Diego, didn’t turn 20 until the day of Game 6 of the Spurs’ playoff series against the New York Nets.

Olberding, who has settled in San Antonio after his basketball retirement, is a natural to remember the intriguing days in the ABA. So his visit to “Spurs Flashback” Wednesday night at 9 p.m. on Fox Sports Southwest sounds like an interesting show for ABA history buffs and those fans who are pining for pro basketball because of the lockout.

Spurs broadcasters Andrew Monaco and Sean Elliott will host the retrospective of ABA memories with Olberding as the featured guest. The program will include in-depth features with former Spurs owner Red McCombs, a piece on the ABA-NBA merger, a look at the 1975 ABA All-Star Game in San Antonio and another feature remembering HemisFair Arena.  

For grizzled Spurs followers like me, the only things missing are a guest appearance by Dancing Harry and a rendition of “San Antonio Rose” played by Al Sturchio on his trumpet. 

Olberding’s memories of the ABA should make the program.

“It was very special. I was very fortunate,” Olberding says in the program. “I got to the ABA in ’75 so that was the last year of the ABA before the ABA and NBA merged. We had some classic matches between the Nuggets and the Nets with Dr. J. and everything. It really was a wild league.”

The Spurs are  showing vintage highlights of the franchise and its history throughout the lockout on the Spurs Flashback series. And following the broadcast, the team will provide a 10-minute feature called  “Postgame” on Spurs.com that will feature interviews and additional commentary from Monaco, Elliott and the guest for the program.

And in answer to several email responses over the last week, DIRECTV and Dish Network customers will not receive the program due to regional agreements.

NBA talks go on after deadline

NEW YORK — Deadline Day became Dialogue Day for the .

An ultimatum that had threatened negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement between owners and players was set aside so negotiations could resume, the sides closer to an agreement than they have been since imposition of a lockout by the league July 1.

The talks aimed at ending the lockout continued after the close of business Wednesday, with the league’s owners and players once again searching for the final pieces of a deal to save the season.

Negotiations continued into this morning over “system” issues the players insist they must have if they’re to agree to a 50-50 split of basketball-related income.

The , through president , the guard, Tuesday indicated its willingness to accept the 50-50 deal in exchange for some “tweaks” in the system issues.

Commissioner had warned the National Basketball Players Association that an offer from the league that promised the players the 50-50 split would disappear forever if they declined to accept it by 4 p.m. CST, the close of the league’s business day Wednesday.

Inflammatory rhetoric followed warning, characterized by the union as an ultimatum. Among the incendiary remarks: A charge by National Basketball Players Association outside counsel and lead negotiator that Stern had treated the players “like plantation workers.”

Kessler apologized to Stern on Wednesday morning, and talks resumed around 12:30 CST on Wednesday afternoon. Stern, Deputy Commissioner and Spurs owner , chairman of the owners’ labor relations committee represented the league, along with league attorneys and Dan Rube. Fisher, NBPA executive director , Kessler, attorney and economist represented the players.

With the union’s willingness to yield to the owners’ insistence on a 50-50 split of revenue — a precipitous drop from their 57 percent share that represents a pay cut of 12 percent and an immediate loss of $280 million in salaries — came an appeal to the league to re-open talks to address system issues.

Stern was said to be authorized to make some compromises, and the length of time spent in small-group discussion gave rise to some optimism that a breakthrough might be possible, given the small number of outstanding issues.

Most of the disagreements centered on the luxury tax system that serves as a brake on runaway spending by some teams.

The owners want to stiffen the financial penalties for profligate spending. The players are willing to see the penalties increased but object to some of the rules the owners want to impose.

The league’s proposal on Saturday would ban luxury-tax-paying teams from executing sign-and-trade deals and from using the full mid-level salary cap exception, worth $5 million.

Fearing a chilling effect such rules would have on the free-agent market, the players want to see those rules “tweaked” to promote a more robust free agent market.

Failure by the two sides to reach agreement promises to lead to increased effort by some players to decertify the union as its bargaining unit. This would open the way for a federal antitrust suit, but the process of decertification figures to take about 45 days. The NBPA would be able to negotiate with the league before a decertification vote were taken.

Stern’s warning to the union Saturday was simple: Accept the league’s offer or face a much worse offer in the future. The league’s economic offer would be reset to 47 percent of revenue for the players, with a “flex” salary cap the union already has deemed a hard cap. Further, the reset offer will seek to roll back current contracts.

Such an offer would almost certainly lead to the decertification vote going forward.

Wednesday’s talks aimed to avoid that Doomsday scenario.

NBA players file antitrust lawsuits

NEW YORK — Locked-out NBA players including Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant filed class-action antitrust lawsuits against the league on Tuesday in at least two states, moving pro basketball’s labor dispute from the negotiating table to federal court.

Attorney David Boies, who represented the NFL during that sport’s work stoppage and now has been brought aboard by basketball’s players, said the NBA lockout violates antitrust laws by refusing to allow players to work.

Boies also said NBA commissioner David Stern’s ultimatum to the now-disbanded union to accept the owners’ last economic model or face a harsher proposal “turned out to be a mistake” that strengthens the players’ case because it proves that the collective bargaining process had ended.

“If you’re in a poker game, and you run a bluff, and the bluff works, you’re a hero. If someone calls your bluff, you lose. I think the owners overplayed their hand,” Boies said at the players’ association headquarters. “They did a terrific job of taking a very hard line and pushing the players to make concession after concession after concession, but greed is not only a terrible thing — it’s a dangerous thing.”

Dangerous enough to cost the league billions of dollars in damages if players win.

“We haven’t seen Mr. Boies’ complaint yet, but it’s a shame that the players have chosen to litigate instead of negotiate,” NBA spokesman Tim Frank said in a statement. “They warned us from the early days of these negotiations that they would sue us if we didn’t satisfy them at the bargaining table, and they appear to have followed through on their threats.”

Even so, Boies said he hopes it won’t be necessary to go to trial.

Anthony and Chauncey Billups of the Knicks, NBA scoring leader Durant, rookie and first-round Spurs draft pick Kawhi Leonard and Grizzlies forward Leon Powe were listed as plaintiffs in the complaint that was filed in the Northern District of California against the NBA and the owners of its 30 teams. That case has been assigned for now to U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu in Oakland, Calif.

Timberwolves forward Anthony Tolliver, Pistons guard Ben Gordon, free agent forward Caron Butler and Derrick Williams — the second overall draft pick by Minnesota in June — were listed as plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the league and owners in Minneapolis, where NFL players had some level of success in a similar court proceeding over the summer.