While I do not necessarily share your opinion regarding the players being greedy (presumably because they play a game for money and should be happy with whatever they make), I will take this opportunity to chime in on an incorrect presumption being made by the players, fans and everyone else besides the owners and a few perceptive pundits: There is no "paycut" for the players to take, in the sense of any reduction in their guaranteed percentage of BRI from 57% under the old CBA. The fact is, the old CBA was an agreement between the owners and the players union FOR A FINITE PERIOD OF TIME. Whenever there is such an agreement, there is no presumption that one party is automatically entitled to a carry-over of any of the terms of the old agreement, because it's just that. An OLD agreement. For example, let's say I'm a commercial landlord, and I enter into a 5-year lease with my tenant at $X/mo. in rent. Five years later, market conditions have changed, and $X/mo. is no longer a realistically feasible rent for my tenant. My tenant and I want to enter into a new lease. The most my tenant can afford to pay is [$X - $1,000]/mo., and I cannot find another tenant willing to pay more than this reduced amount. In this example, I am not ENTITLED to $X/mo. under the new lease. Sure, I can try to get that from my tenant, but my tenant is just going to walk and move elsewhere. Nothing was PROMISED to me when I entered into the first lease that I would get $X/mo., and not less, under the next lease. Much like the owners need to shut up with their rhetoric about "concessions" being made from an original proposal to the union that was completely ludicrous, the players union needs to shut up about "how far down they've come" from their 57%. Nothing was promised to the players under the new CBA. It's a negotiation starting from square one.
Well if it was easy it wouldn't pay as much. It's not a easy job...but I guess what you mean to say it is a FUN job and much better than the average job and not only that they get paid millions to go out and play a sport that many people play for fun. Either way I'm sorta siding with the owners. Not that the players are greedy but it is obvious to a lot of people it seems that the current NBA could be much improved for owners.
They're meeting on Monday with a federal mediator. Seems like good news since at first they said there would be no more meetings for awhile. Please talk some sense into these guys, federal mediator...
System issues, Hunter maintained, continue to be the holdup. Those issues include the structure of the luxury tax system and the length of contracts. why??? who gives a flying **** if the luxury tax is 1:1 or 9,000,000:1, how long contracts are (unless owners are proposing something stupid like 1 year and players something stupid like 8 years), or if you have to wear a red clown nose whenever on the team bus if you're happy with the BRI split. lock the BRI in just like it's locked at 57% now. or put some small range like 50.5%-51.5% or something like that. all the other stuff works itself out. a stringent luxury tax held team salaries down to 48%? well, what do you know, the owners write a check to cover the 3% difference. a soft cap let salaries get up to 53%? well, take some money out of the escrow account. longer salaries mean you can't just make crappy decisions and reverse them one year later. oh well. deal with not getting everything you want on the relatively inconsequential stuff.
I've been largely on the players' side in all this. But if the information below is true, I've just lost a lot of sympathy for their position. Lack of parity among teams is bull**** and boring. It's obvious that a new system needs to be put in place for the health of the league. Surprise: In NBA dispute, money not mattering most By BRIAN MAHONEY NEW YORK (AP)—NBA owners apparently weren’t bluffing when they said they wanted competitive balance just as much as a chance to profit. Though Commissioner David Stern and Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver have insisted throughout the lockout they needed the potential for both in a new collective bargaining agreement, there was often a belief—even from players— that money mattered most. Yet it was the salary cap system, not the division of revenues, that emerged as the biggest obstacle to a new labor deal in time to save the start of the regular season. Derek Fisher , president of the NBA players union, talks with reporters, Monday, Oct. 10, 2011, in New York. NBA Commissioner David Stern canceled the first two weeks of the basketball season after players and owners were unable to reach a new labor deal to end the lockout. Derek Fisher , president of th… AP - Oct 11, 1:08 am EDT 1 of 5 NBA Gallery “The numbers are close enough that that wasn’t going to doom the season. The hard salary cap is what’s going to doom the season right now,” players’ attorney Jeffrey Kessler said Monday. “That’s the sticking point, because the numbers are close enough that if there was a fair system, the parties would find a way to get there.” That’s not what union president Derek Fisher had predicted less than a month earlier. Talks had broken down after a meeting in September in which players were prepared to make a new economic proposal, but the league said players conditioned it on owners conceding on the salary cap. It was clear the union believed management was prioritizing the financial picture when Fisher said afterward that “if we can address these economics, we’re not going to lose the season over the system. So that’s something that’s been clear from the beginning and will remain from our perspective.” The split was never settled, but both sides say they see where compromise could be reached. Players had proposed lowering their guarantee of basketball revenues from 57 percent down to 53, which they said would transfer more than $1 billion to owners over six years. But in doing so, they expected something in return. “I think where our paths separate is that they believe to the extent they’re willing to make economic concessions that we should be willing to leave the current system largely intact, and our view is that the current system is broken in that 30 teams are not in a position to compete for championships,” Silver said Monday after the league canceled the first two weeks of the regular season. The league’s view is that teams willing to keep spending above the luxury tax level have an advantage over teams with payroll constraints. And indeed, teams such as the Lakers and Mavericks, who won the last three NBA titles, are annually among the top spenders. So owners want a system under which teams with means can’t keep blowing off the cap. Their initial proposal was for a hard salary cap like the NFL has, removing the exceptions that NBA teams possess to spend above the cap. Players rejected that and the league has since focused on strengthening the luxury tax to deter spenders. But players believe it would become so restrictive, saying in some cases the current $1 for every $1 over the threshold penalty would become $6 or higher, that it would act as a hard cap. And the sides are also clashing over the Bird exception, which allows teams to exceed the cap to re-sign their own free agents. “And we just said ‘Wait a minute, you’re creating a hard system. You’re creating a hard-cap system and we’ve said to you that’s the one thing we don’t want,”’ union executive director Billy Hunter said. Players fear that a hard cap would eliminate guaranteed contracts for all but the top players. And they disagree that making teams spend equally would determine how well they compete. “As athletes we don’t believe that competitive balance is completely decided by an economic system or how much payroll exists on one team or another,” Fisher said. “We believe that there are tons of other variables that impact success on the court, so we cannot just address competitive balance through the control or reduction or lower percentage of player salary or a hard tax system that essentially prevents most if not all teams into going into the tax. Those things don’t create basketball wins by themselves.” The system emerged as such a difficult issue that the sides spent all of their last two meetings discussing it, never getting back to the split before Stern’s deadline for canceling games. Soon after came word the unexpected reason for their failure. “That did surprise me. Both sides said publicly that the holdup is the system. I thought for sure the big deal was the BRI either made us or broke us,” said Anthony Tolliver, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ player representative. The sides have discussed a 50-50 revenue split, so perhaps settlement on the finances is there. But that won’t be good enough. “While we understand their position, we understand change is difficult, it makes no sense for us to operate under the current model where taxpayers, especially those taxpayers who are willing to spend $10, $20 (million) and often even more money above the average team in this league has a huge advantage over the other teams,” Silver said. AP Sports Writer Jon Krawczynski in Minneapolis contributed to this report. http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=ap-nbalabor&print=1 Follow Brian Mahoney on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Briancmahoney
LOL, WTF? <iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/G2bPSrfycLk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I confess that article has me confused. Why does the players' union care if there is a 'hard' cap or "Bird" rights? From their view, the split of the BRI should really be the only thing that matters. I could see some players being upset, because it would wreck havoc with their creation of Heat 2.0, but again, why is that something the Union would draw a line in the sand over?
Because they are afraid it would result in superstars getting a higher percentage of team salaries at the expense of everyone else. Keep in mind most NBA players are middling or journeyman. Also, the stars have bought into the concept of sharing.
I guess that makes sense, since the players' union cannot come out and say, "'put a cap on an individual player's salary" to curb that issue.
Rest assured that a maximum salary will be carried over to the new CBA. The fear of a "hard-ish" salary cap is that the MIDDLE CLASS will get hurt. Teams will continue to gladly pay the max salary for superstars and to pay the league minimum for supporting players. It is the mid-level guys that will be feeling the squeeze. Hopefully, though, the (supposedly agreed-upon) new smaller Mid-Level Exception--along with the fact that the luxury tax will not be TOO burdensome for some teams for the first $5M or so--will allow for enough mid-level guys to still get more than the minimum. But I'm generally with you. The union needs to sack up and take on more responsibility for handling large portions of the players' money, as I stated previously here: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=6353125&postcount=114 Sure, a revamped cap system COULD hurt some of the current players. But guess what? Nothing is preventing the union from devising its OWN system for making sure that any excess BRI paid to the union each year is divided up in a most utilitarian manner. To the extent that this concept has NOT been explained adequately to the union membership (most of whom are players making well below the MLE amount), then shame on Billy Hunter and Derek Fisher.
A hard cap sucks. Do you think Cuban or other big spenders will go $10M over the cap if it will cost them between $20-40M extra? Maybe for a few elite stars but teams will spend less money in general. At least that's the players fear. Makes sense to me though.
Only thing a stricter luxury tax does without revenue sharing is further stratify teams from those with money willing to pay fines and those who are not. Even with the current luxury tax, some smaller market teams are willing to spend in the in the luxury tax when they feel the have a shot. But they will not if the repercussions are as high as the owners proposed. Now if there will truly much better revenue sharing, that should not be an issue, but I doubt that will happen. With a true hard cap, non-guaranteed contracts have to be in place. It is just not financially feasible to have a true-hard cap with guaranteed contracts. That was the issue. It has all been well reported how badly the NFL treats players who get injured and with their "health coverage" for former players. Once you give-in to a hard cap with non-guaranteed contracts there is no going back. The players would have to strike and few would ever be on their side during that. It is NOT true that ever negotiation is different and should start from scratch in CBA negotiations, because there are NO replacements for either side - the NBA's infrastructure or the players talents. That is why it is truly a re-negotiation, and since they have to base it on something they go by past agreements. Any CBA agreed do now will effect ever CBA re-negotiation for forever. With that mind, the players are entirely in the right to hold off as much as possible. That may suck for us fans, but if you hate it so much then stop paying for the product (that includes watching the games and click on links that talk about the sport). Otherwise, just deal with it.
If the BRI split is in place, teams won't spend less money on player salary just because of the hard cap. The only difference is how the salary money is distributed among the players and the teams. I don't really understand why players care about the hard cap as long as they get their guaranteed share of BRI. They can install some kind of rulse on max contracts to even out the salary distribution.
This is exactly what I said. More money will go to superstars while everyone else loses. Middle class players would bear the brunt because lower salary players have less to lose and min players have almost nothing to lose.
How can players do that? The answer is they can't. Teams will determine individual salaries and salary distribution, NOT the players union. Get it? For the players, salary distribution is a huge issue.
Nice counter-argument. First, the owners appear to have conceded on not having non-guaranteed contracts, so that isn't an issue. At most, only a portion of some salaries will be non-guaranteed. Second, the fact that players will be guaranteed a set percentage (or narrow range) of BRI means that it doesn't truly matter if there's a hard cap (which there won't be). The union will get paid any amount by which the player's BRI percentage exceeds total player salaries, NO MATTER WHAT. The union (i.e., the players) can divide that money any way they see fit. Any. Freaking. Way. That said, I'm not 100% on the side of the owners here. I do agree that the players need a system that doesn't completely squeeze out the middle class. I'm also sure the players, individually, want as much of that BRI in THEIR pockets and not the union's. All in all, at this point, I'm siding more with the owners. But I'd like to see the players come out of this with more than just the shirts on their backs. Hopefully, the sides can reach a mutually acceptable agreement.
