Fibroso
07-01-2011, 12:30 PM
Stalemate in Final Talks Forces N.B.A. To Shut Down
New York Times
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/howard_beck/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: June 30, 2011
Eighteen days after celebrating an electric championship series and a revitalizing season, the NBA is shutting down — perhaps for a very long time.
Enlarge This Image
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/07/01/sports/nba/nba-articleInline.jpg
Mary Altaffer/Associated Press
Billy Hunter, the players union director, said the union had no plans to decertify, a move seen as a precursor to an antitrust lawsuit.
After two years of static negotiations on a new labor deal, N.B.A. owners voted Thursday to impose a lockout at midnight, sending the league into a bleak and uncertain offseason.
“Needless to say, we’re disappointed that this is where we find ourselves,” Adam Silver, the deputy commissioner, said after negotiators emerged from a three-hour bargaining session at a Manhattan hotel.
Despite several meetings over the last few weeks, and modest movement on both sides, the parties remained entrenched in their positions, still separated by several billion dollars over the life of a new collective bargaining agreement. Over the last week of talks, each side accused the other of misrepresenting its proposals.
With no discernible momentum, league negotiators led by Commissioner David Stern and Peter Holt, the San Antonio Spurs’ owner, recommended the lockout, which was authorized in a conference call with the N.B.A.’s labor committee on Thursday evening.
Negotiations will continue, however, with both sides sounding wary of moving the battle to the courts. Billy Hunter, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, said the union had no immediate plans to decertify — a move that would serve as the precursor to an antitrust lawsuit.
“We’re going to continue to negotiate, we’ve already agreed,” Hunter said. “That was sort of the closing agreement up there, that we would not let the imposition of a lockout stop us from meeting.”
The next session could come within the next two weeks, after the union receives additional financial documents from the league. In the meantime, all league business will cease.
Players and teams are barred from communicating with each other, even through intermediaries, like agents and family members. Paychecks and league-paid health care will be suspended. No trades or signings are allowed. Free agency, which would have begun Friday, will be delayed indefinitely while the owners and the players try to bridge their vast philosophical and economic differences.
The N.B.A. becomes the second major North American sports league to shut down this year, following the NFL, which is in the fourth month of a lockout.
From the beginning, N.B.A. owners have been pushing for a hard salary cap, shorter contracts and a reduction in salaries of about $750 million a year: a package that would be the most significant change to the system in 25 years. The players adamantly oppose a hard cap, preferring to keep the current soft-cap system, with modest changes to save the owners money.
Despite annual revenue of about $3.8 billion, N.B.A. officials say the existing system is broken, with 22 of 30 teams losing money, and leaguewide losses exceeding $300 million a year. Silver said the owners wanted a system in which “all 30 teams could compete for a championship” and have “the opportunity to be profitable.”
The players union disputes the N.B.A.’s figures and objects to the inclusion of certain costs, like debt service and depreciation, in the loss estimates. The union contends that the league could solve most of the problem with greater revenue sharing.
The N.B.A. has enjoyed relative labor peace since 1999, when it played a 50-game schedule after a six-month lockout that nearly killed the season. It was the only time the N.B.A. had lost games to a labor stoppage. Back then, it took six weeks for the parties to meet once the lockout began, and the tone was acrimonious. This time, at least, the sides are open to meeting sooner, and talks remain “extremely cordial,” in Hunter’s words. Still, Stern warned that there is no telling how long a lockout might last.
“I’m not scared,” Stern said. “I’m resigned to the potential damage that it can cause to our league” and to the people who make their living in and around the N.B.A. He added: “As we get deeper into it, these things have a capacity to take on a life of their own. You never can predict what will happen.”
The parties have hardly moved from their positions in the last 18 months of talks. They cannot even agree on how to characterize their respective proposals.
Last week, Stern said the league made a proposal that effectively guaranteed the players $2 billion a year over a 10-year agreement, with an average annual salary of $5 million. The union said that proposal would in fact result in a pay cut of about $8.2 billion over 10 years and would reduce the players’ share of revenue to less than 40 percent, from the current 57 percent.
The union said its most recent proposal included a $500 million pay reduction over a five-year deal. Stern and Silver mocked that representation on Thursday, saying that the proposal merely reduced the players’ demand for $12.7 billion (over five years) to $12.2 billion. That still was a net increase of $1.2 billion for the players, Stern said.
League and union officials are awaiting a National Labor Relations Board ruling on an unfair-labor practice complaint filed by the union in May, which could change the parameters of the discussion.
Meanwhile, both sides are keeping an eye on the N.F.L.’s case before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, which will decide whether the N.F.L. lockout continues or ends. That decision could affect the N.B.A.’s proceedings and the union’s determination whether to decertify.
Although no games will be threatened for a few months, Derek Fisher, the president of the players union, said he empathized with disappointed fans.
“We don’t like it either,” he said of the lockout. “It’s something that our owners feel like is the best way to get, I guess, what they want. We don’t agree.”
New York Times
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/howard_beck/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: June 30, 2011
Eighteen days after celebrating an electric championship series and a revitalizing season, the NBA is shutting down — perhaps for a very long time.
Enlarge This Image
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/07/01/sports/nba/nba-articleInline.jpg
Mary Altaffer/Associated Press
Billy Hunter, the players union director, said the union had no plans to decertify, a move seen as a precursor to an antitrust lawsuit.
After two years of static negotiations on a new labor deal, N.B.A. owners voted Thursday to impose a lockout at midnight, sending the league into a bleak and uncertain offseason.
“Needless to say, we’re disappointed that this is where we find ourselves,” Adam Silver, the deputy commissioner, said after negotiators emerged from a three-hour bargaining session at a Manhattan hotel.
Despite several meetings over the last few weeks, and modest movement on both sides, the parties remained entrenched in their positions, still separated by several billion dollars over the life of a new collective bargaining agreement. Over the last week of talks, each side accused the other of misrepresenting its proposals.
With no discernible momentum, league negotiators led by Commissioner David Stern and Peter Holt, the San Antonio Spurs’ owner, recommended the lockout, which was authorized in a conference call with the N.B.A.’s labor committee on Thursday evening.
Negotiations will continue, however, with both sides sounding wary of moving the battle to the courts. Billy Hunter, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, said the union had no immediate plans to decertify — a move that would serve as the precursor to an antitrust lawsuit.
“We’re going to continue to negotiate, we’ve already agreed,” Hunter said. “That was sort of the closing agreement up there, that we would not let the imposition of a lockout stop us from meeting.”
The next session could come within the next two weeks, after the union receives additional financial documents from the league. In the meantime, all league business will cease.
Players and teams are barred from communicating with each other, even through intermediaries, like agents and family members. Paychecks and league-paid health care will be suspended. No trades or signings are allowed. Free agency, which would have begun Friday, will be delayed indefinitely while the owners and the players try to bridge their vast philosophical and economic differences.
The N.B.A. becomes the second major North American sports league to shut down this year, following the NFL, which is in the fourth month of a lockout.
From the beginning, N.B.A. owners have been pushing for a hard salary cap, shorter contracts and a reduction in salaries of about $750 million a year: a package that would be the most significant change to the system in 25 years. The players adamantly oppose a hard cap, preferring to keep the current soft-cap system, with modest changes to save the owners money.
Despite annual revenue of about $3.8 billion, N.B.A. officials say the existing system is broken, with 22 of 30 teams losing money, and leaguewide losses exceeding $300 million a year. Silver said the owners wanted a system in which “all 30 teams could compete for a championship” and have “the opportunity to be profitable.”
The players union disputes the N.B.A.’s figures and objects to the inclusion of certain costs, like debt service and depreciation, in the loss estimates. The union contends that the league could solve most of the problem with greater revenue sharing.
The N.B.A. has enjoyed relative labor peace since 1999, when it played a 50-game schedule after a six-month lockout that nearly killed the season. It was the only time the N.B.A. had lost games to a labor stoppage. Back then, it took six weeks for the parties to meet once the lockout began, and the tone was acrimonious. This time, at least, the sides are open to meeting sooner, and talks remain “extremely cordial,” in Hunter’s words. Still, Stern warned that there is no telling how long a lockout might last.
“I’m not scared,” Stern said. “I’m resigned to the potential damage that it can cause to our league” and to the people who make their living in and around the N.B.A. He added: “As we get deeper into it, these things have a capacity to take on a life of their own. You never can predict what will happen.”
The parties have hardly moved from their positions in the last 18 months of talks. They cannot even agree on how to characterize their respective proposals.
Last week, Stern said the league made a proposal that effectively guaranteed the players $2 billion a year over a 10-year agreement, with an average annual salary of $5 million. The union said that proposal would in fact result in a pay cut of about $8.2 billion over 10 years and would reduce the players’ share of revenue to less than 40 percent, from the current 57 percent.
The union said its most recent proposal included a $500 million pay reduction over a five-year deal. Stern and Silver mocked that representation on Thursday, saying that the proposal merely reduced the players’ demand for $12.7 billion (over five years) to $12.2 billion. That still was a net increase of $1.2 billion for the players, Stern said.
League and union officials are awaiting a National Labor Relations Board ruling on an unfair-labor practice complaint filed by the union in May, which could change the parameters of the discussion.
Meanwhile, both sides are keeping an eye on the N.F.L.’s case before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, which will decide whether the N.F.L. lockout continues or ends. That decision could affect the N.B.A.’s proceedings and the union’s determination whether to decertify.
Although no games will be threatened for a few months, Derek Fisher, the president of the players union, said he empathized with disappointed fans.
“We don’t like it either,” he said of the lockout. “It’s something that our owners feel like is the best way to get, I guess, what they want. We don’t agree.”