Category: NBA (Page 25 of 595)

Jason Terry is the player rep for the Dallas Mavericks and this is what he had to say about the current state of the labor negotiations:

Terry said Tuesday that his optimism earlier in the process that a new labor deal would get hammered out and his Mavericks would begin their title defense on time has dissipated.

“For me it’s tough,” Terry said. “Not only did we do something great and have been sitting back enjoying it, but training camp is right around the corner. But it’s not looking good for us to get things started on time. Right now, at this point where we’re at, both sides are still far apart.”

Terry said he has been told not to talk about specifics of the negotiations; however, reports suggest the owners’ stance for a hard cap appears to be a prime sticking point. Terry attended one of the first negotiating sessions in July. He has not participated in any meetings since, but he said he is constantly apprised of the situation so he can keep teammates updated.

“When you’re in there, as opposed to reading in the newspaper or watching on TV, you really get to see people’s reactions and really see how important this deal is, not only to the owners, but to the players and not only my era but to eras that we will leave behind,” Terry said. “It’s a lot of work that has to be done. It’s not anything that you can iron out in a day or two. This is a lengthy process and if you are not on the same page with the person you are negotiating with then it’s just going to make for a long negotiation.

“Because it’s getting down to the final minutes, we don’t want to rush into anything just to try to save the season. But, as we stand right now, the owners aren’t moving and we definitely are staying strong together as a union.”

Strap in, people. This looks like it’s going to be a long one.

Ken Berger updates the status of the NBA labor negotiations.

What ultimately led to a deal [in the NFL] was the same thing that will lead to one in the NBA: the calendar. With NFL training camps about to open, both sides decided that the time for posturing and suing each other was over and the time to actually negotiate a labor agreement was upon them.

Courts were never going to end the NFL lockout, and they’re not going to end the NBA’s, either.

[Billy] Hunter has signaled his willingness to move on the economics, perhaps as low as 52-53 percent — down from the players’ previous take of 57 percent — to get a deal. But on Tuesday in New York, he told the owners he wasn’t going to give them the money and the system they want to go with it. With an unknown number of owners hellbent on a hard salary cap — Fisher said Thursday he believes it’s actually less than half — Hunter is facing the most difficult fight of his 15-year tenure leading the players union.

But the tough position he finds himself in cannot be credited solely to the owners, the opponent. It is also attributable to the enemy within — the forces who insist on zigging while he zags — and the hundreds of players who remain silent while he and Fisher and an executive committee of journeymen stick up for them.

Berger laments that just 10% of the players showed up to the union meeting in Las Vegas and that the stars seem content to watch the negotiations from afar.

But back to the deal at hand — it seems that the players are willing to concede on the percentage they get, but won’t also give the owners the other thing they want — a hard cap.

If I had to guess, this is going to drag out into late this year and a deal will only get done when both sides decide it’s time to save the season.

For more on this week’s talk, check out Berger’s update.

Henry Abbott of TrueHoop has been covering the NBA labor negotiations. Here’s what happened on Tuesday:

The players say they were ready to make what they thought was a very meaningful economic offer to the owners. But before they did, they wanted to know that the soft cap would remain.

In response to that, the owners did what both sides have done many times, and left the bargaining table to confer among themselves. (At CBA meetings, both sides typically have “caucus rooms” for just this purpose.) The owners huddled for three hours before deciding they would not respond to the players’ offer. Meeting over.

Later, the careful Stern decided to share with the public that the 11 owners in the room were not unified on how to handle the players’ offer:

“As you might guess, I don’t know how many owners we had, but we had as many views … We were not unanimous in every aspect of it. But all of the owners were completely unified in the view that we needed a system that at the end of the day allowed 30 teams to compete. And we went back to the players and said that although we have some ideas, we’ve been talking to each other, agreeing, disagreeing, coming up with everything that we possibly could to see if there was still time to save the season, it actually didn’t make sense for us to respond to their non-negotiable demand that everything remain the same that it was, and that we’d be best off going back and reporting to our respective sides at the meetings we’d have on Thursday.”

On Thursday, after his meeting with the owners, this is what Stern had to say:

“It is the view of the board and the committee that an individual team salary cap, as opposed to a league-wide salary cap, is preferred and the better way to go. But as we told the union, and will continue to tell them, everything is negotiable.”

“The vast majority of owners are in favor of a hard cap system. Having said that, they have authorized the committee to be willing to negotiate on all points, and the committee is.”

“I get reports that the union is coming out of their meeting today unified. We think that’s a good thing. We would like to negotiate with a strong union capable of delivering a deal.”

“The clock is ticking, but it hasn’t struck midnight yet. We’ve got time to do what needs to be done, and we’d like to do it, actually.”

“There’s nothing scheduled right this minute because we’re traveling back to New York and I assume the union is traveling back to New York. But we’ll both be in New York starting [Friday] and it wouldn’t surprise me if there was some conversation that was going on.”

It sounds like there is a sense of urgency right now in an attempt to get the season started on time, but I wonder if that’s going to go away once/if everyone realizes that it isn’t going to happen.

If I had to guess, I’d still bet that we miss a month or two of the season, though it doesn’t seem like the two sides are as far apart as they once were.