In This Thread Every Post Must Contain A Lockout Update

Carl Herrera · Nov 18, 2011

BimaThug said: ↑

Not sure exactly when that money will run out. It depends on how many players we're talking about, what their individual pro rata share are (I think anyone who was on a roster for at least half of last season get a full share, and anyone with less time on a roster gets a prorated portion of a full share), and what the union's expenses have been thus far and going forward.

Hell, I'm not even sure what authority a "trade association" has (as opposed to an actual union) to handle that stash of money for the players. I suppose it's the same authority; but I'd be curios to see what would happen if some player challenged their trade association, claiming that they are entitled to a larger share or that the trade association has no authority to hold that money in the first place.
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I believe the $168 mil or whatever it is got distributed to players in their entirety. Each player got a check, the amount of which is a set % of their salary (just like how the escrow works).

DaDakota · Nov 18, 2011

Carl Herrera said: ↑

I believe the $168 mil or whatever it is got distributed to players in their entirety. Each player got a check, the amount of which is a set % of their salary (just like how the escrow works).
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They just did a distribution earlier this week, IIRC.

DD

ascaptjack · Nov 18, 2011

KauffmanSports Steve Kauffman
Well,NBPA&staff (&lawyers) still get paid,it's going to be great college BB season and if & when NBA comes back,it will be better than ever.

ascaptjack · Nov 18, 2011

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski
With talks on ending lockout dead for now, Kevin Love and Luol Deng could be the next players to make move overseas. tinyurl.com/83ahfqh

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-wojnarowski_nba_lockout_kevin_love_turkey_111811

As time and hope for salvaging an NBA season continue to dissipate, Turkey’s top team is engaged in serious talks with Kevin Love(notes) and Luol Deng
(notes) about joining point guard Deron Williams
(notes) in the Turkish Basketball
League.

“I’ve been going back and forth with Deron on it,” Love told Yahoo! Sports’ Marc Spears on Friday. “I’ll be making my decision in the next couple of days.”

Deng’s representatives have traded contract proposals with Besiktas too, sources said, and they’re working on insurance proposals to protect the remaining $42 million on his Chicago Bulls contract.

Deng’s premiums are expected to cost $50,000 a month, and a source close to him said it’s doubtful he would accept an offer below $150,000 per month to play overseas. Players are left to subtract the insurance payments from their salaries.

Besiktas has also reached out to Chicago Bulls forward Carlos Boozer(notes), sources said.

It’s possible Besiktas will sign the first player willing to agree to a deal, but a source briefed on Besiktas’ strategy believes team officials prefer Love. Williams and Love share the same agent, which plays a part in the preference.

Agents and players are rapidly coming to terms with the reality that hopes for ending the lockout – and saving the season – are bleaker than ever. Ownership sources told Yahoo! Sports there’s a consensus among the group to let the players miss another round of checks on Dec. 1 and further test the resolve of the 450-plus players. Owners will soon review the players’ lawsuits filed against the league in California and Minnesota. More suits brought by the players could still be on the way.

[ Related: Ten NBA players not afraid of a long lockout ]

League officials aren’t rushing to meet again with the players prior to the Thanksgiving holiday and are waiting on former Players Association executive director Billy Hunter to contact commissioner David Stern about restarting talks again. The owners have little, to no interest, in negotiating a settlement with the players’ prominent new front man, antitrust attorney David Boies.

The league had scheduled a conference call with owners on Thursday, but it lasted less than a half hour. So far, the NBA has no strategy call set with the labor relations committee for next week. There is expected to be a revenue sharing committee call before Thanksgiving.

“Some owners are nervous that Stern will wake up and say, ‘Let’s go get something done now’, but I don’t think he’s going to do that,” one ownership source said. “The season’s not on the line Nov. 17. I think he’s going let them stew in the decision they made [to disband the union], and see how they react when they miss the checks on Dec. 1.”

Boston Celtics guard Rajon Rondo(notes) and Oklahoma City Thunder center Kendrick Perkins
(notes), close friends,
have been discussing the possibility of playing together overseas, and have had representatives inquiring on the possibilities, sources said.

Rondo and Perkins are interested in playing in higher-paying countries, such as Italy, Spain and Russia, sources said. There’s no deal in the works, and it’s unclear if there’s even a team that could financially put together the kind of contracts it would take to lure the players.

Insurance premiums cut significantly into the money that teams are willing to pay frontline NBA starters, and in some instances, the difference left in pay won’t make the leap overseas worth making for some players.
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ascaptjack · Nov 18, 2011

SportandoBasket Sportando Basket by ZachLowe_SI
According to agent Obrad Fimic, Derrick Williams,2nd pick in 2011 NBA draft, is ready to play in Europe. Spain&Italy as possible destination

ascaptjack · Nov 18, 2011

Bunch of players trying to go overseas.

Would this be some potential leverage against the owners?

ascaptjack · Nov 18, 2011

Great article by Bill Simmons.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7250994/business-vs-personal

Hagen: Your father wouldn't want to hear this, Sonny. This is business not personal.
Sonny: They shoot my father and it's business, my ass!
Hagen: Even shooting your father was business not personal, Sonny!
Sonny: Well then, business is going to have to suffer.

That's one of the most famous scenes from one of the most famous movies ever made. You know how things end for Sonny Corleone — he ignores his consigliere, makes it personal and ends up gorging on a bowl of bullets parmigiana. His brother, Michael, assumes command and remains all-business for his first few years, slowly losing perspective and becoming more and more paranoid. He stops trusting his inner circle, grows apart from his family and murders his bumbling brother. Killing Fredo is strictly business for Michael, a warning that nobody should ever cross him. He can't see anything beyond making money and keeping power. He's dead inside. No different than Sonny, really.

What does this have to do with the NBA lockout? The owners wanted to blow up their current model; the players gave them gas and matches. But why? I think the answer lies in that Godfather scene. The owners treated these negotiations as a natural extension of their business, only caring about their bottom line and nothing else. The players took the proceedings much more personally. After things fell apart on Monday — when the NBPA rejected David Stern's "take it or leave it" ultimatum and decided to decertify, a confusing move (because of the timing) that almost certainly wrecked the 2011-12 season — agent Aaron Goodwin made a telling comment to the Washington Post's Mike Wise.

"For years owners have treated players as if they are just their property," Goodwin said, "fining them over how they dress, act, everything. This is the first time the players have the opportunity to say no."

Whoa. For months and months, bubbling beneath the surface of the posturing and rhetoric, buried under anonymous leaks, veiled threats and everything else that makes any professional sports lockout or strike so insufferable, a dynamic had been swelling that was entirely, 100 percent personal. Let's look at Goodwin's take a second time.

For years owners have treated players as if they are just their property …

That's a recurring theme of this lockout, something Bryant Gumbel broached on Real Sports when he compared the NBA owners to plantation owners, then festered when nobody on the players' side distanced themselves from Gumbel's words (if anything, you could almost feel them silently nodding). A few days later, Wise's column "Negotiations could be hijacked by racial perceptions" publicly nailed many of the points that NBPA insiders had been whispering privately for weeks. Why isn't anyone pointing out that Peter Holt is one of Rick Perry's biggest donors? Why isn't anyone remembering that Donald Sterling battled those racial discrimination housing lawsuits, or that Dan Gilbert skewered LeBron James after The Decision and made him seem like, as Jesse Jackson said later, "a runaway slave?" Why hasn't anyone noticed that 28 of these 29 owners are white, or that everyone in David Stern's inner circle is white except for Stu Jackson? Race overshadowed these negotiations more than anyone wanted to admit. Gumbel recklessly ripped that scab open. The NBPA's lead negotiator, Jeffrey Kessler, reopened it last week by stupidly saying, "Instead of treating the players like partners, they're treating them like plantation workers."1 Goodwin (an African-American) revisited the theme a little more diplomatically on Monday, but still … calling the players "property" is pretty telling.2

Is this what happens when 28 wealthy white guys (plus Michael Jordan, who emerged to everyone's surprise as a leader of the "let's screw the players over as much as we possibly can" side) keep trying to impose their will on a collection of not-nearly-as-wealthy-and-mostly black guys? This was one of Stern's biggest mistakes — believing the league had squashed their race issues decades ago, that his record was impeccable on this front, that he could negotiate one last labor deal without worrying about things like, "The players won't care that nearly everyone on my side for this meeting is white, right?" Stern would disagree — vehemently — with Goodwin's assertion that owners treated players like "property." But Goodwin isn't some low-level flunkie. He has represented superstars like Jason Kidd, Paul Pierce, LeBron James and Dwight Howard over the years. He represents Kevin Durant right now. He has a better feel for these guys than Stern does. And if he truly believes the players feel like "property," that's pretty frightening.

Let's look at the second part of Goodwin's quote …

For years owners have treated players as if they are just their property — fining them over how they dress, act, everything.

That's not an outlandish claim. For the past twelve years (since our last labor shutdown), Stern capped contracts and rookie deals so players didn't get paid too much (or too much right away). He instituted a mandatory dress code so injured players looked more professional (translation: less "urban"). He cracked down on taunting during games, physical play, leaving the bench during altercations and anything else that might lead to another Artest Melee or Kermit/Rudy scenario. He pushed players to participate in "NBA Cares," fined them for not showing up on time to All-Star Weekend, fined them for avoiding the press during the playoffs and basically treated them like an overbearing high school principal. And, of course, he made every decision in his typically smug, sarcastic, endearing-or-bullying-depending-on-how-you-feel-about-him manner.3

He's clearly wearing out the players … and not in a good way. During one of Stern's typically biting lectures in a crucial labor meeting two months ago, Dwyane Wade snapped and yelled at him, "Don't you point your finger at me!" That was personal, not business. That was Wade telling Stern, "**** you, you're not my dad. We're tired of your condescending bull****. It's not happening anymore." Same with Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce staging their infamous (and totally ill-conceived), "We're not budging from 53 [BRI]" walkout a few weeks later. Even more interesting: Stern and his inner circle were (and are) genuinely dumbfounded by the players' growing enmity towards them.4

Quick tangent: My father served as the superintendent of schools in Easton, Massachusetts, for nearly twenty years. He retired in the summer of 2009, at the age of 62, for a variety of reasons … but mainly this one. He didn't want to stay too long. When you're a superintendent, it only takes one renegade school committee member, one unexpected budget cut, one scandal or one tragedy to shift momentum against you. Once it happens, you can't get it back. Adversaries smell your weakening power the same way zombies smell blood. You start getting undermined or browbeaten into ideas you never wanted to do. By the time you finally resign or get replaced, those final years become part of your legacy, the last thing anyone remembers about you (whether you like it or not). My father never wanted that to happen. He left one year too early instead of one year too late. He has no regrets.

And as an NBA die-hard and 38-year season ticket holder for the Celtics, he watches what's happening with David Stern right now and has one reaction: "He stayed too long. That's exactly what I didn't want to happen to me."

I don't blame Stern — sometimes you're the last to know. I think that he thought his track record was impeccable. He can't see how his players see him in 2011 — as the little/old/sarcastic/white/out-of-touch dictator who patronizes them, orders them around, genuinely feels like THEY should listen to HIM, and by the way, works for the owners (and not them). And it's not like fans are delighted with him, either. He stopped thinking outside the box years ago.5 It's funny that the league obsesses over its big market/small market issue, revenue sharing and international growth and keeps trotting out the same laborious 82-game regular season with the same jacked-up prices and the same annoying issues (like tanking for draft picks, or exhausted teams playing their fourth road game in five nights). You know what was really telling these past few weeks? We were coming off of one of the top-five NBA seasons ever, now it's November, the league isn't playing … and nobody really cared. Imagine the outrage if pro football disappeared for an entire month. Where's the clamoring for regular season pro basketball?

If anything, it's swung the other way. Many season ticket holders don't care if they miss these first six weeks of games, feeling their tickets are overpriced, anyway. Casual fans only care during the playoffs; for them, it was always a nine-week sport and that's it.6 Only the junkies are pissed off. And even then, you don't REALLY feel the NBA's loss until after the holidays, when college football is gone and the NFL playoffs are winding down. No wonder the league claims to be losing money even after a godsend of a two-year stretch (pre-Decision and post-Decision) in the midst of a historic talent boon. When you remember it happened on Stern's watch, then factor in his disconnect with the players, it's sure starting to seem like one of the greatest sports commissioners ever overstayed his welcome.

Which brings us to the last part of Goodwin's quote …

This is the first time the players have the opportunity to say no.

That's a pretty bold statement. And by the way … I don't disagree. When can you remember NBA players truly standing up to Stern before these last few months? See their quotes or tweets dating back to the summer and the same themes keep popping up. Why should we trust the owners' numbers? We already gave back, what are they giving up? Why are we the ones making all the concessions? How is this a partnership when one side is telling the other side what to do? Why do they claim so many franchises are in trouble when people are still buying them? Who was putting a gun to the owners' heads when they were giving out all those contracts that they knew were dumb?

Some arguments make sense; others are too idealistic. But there is definitely an overriding theme. We don't trust them, we're tired of kowtowing to them, we're standing up for ourselves. The players would rather implode a season than accept an unfavorable deal — not as a business move, but for their own sanity, because they're over-competitive, proud people who no longer want to be told what to do. They convinced themselves (perhaps foolishly) that there's a greater good here, that their collective dignity was worth sacrificing a paid season of their preciously short playing careers. They believe they conceded enough (a 10 percent drop of their revenue share, basically), they're worried about protecting future generations of players (or so they claim), and deep down, it pisses them off that the Old Haughty White Guy Who Bossed Us Around For Years basically told them last week, "Here's our offer, here's our deadline for you to take that offer, and if you don't like it, I am going to ram that offer up your asses and you won't play this year."

Really, they're just rebelling. And over everything else, that's why the 2011-12 season is about to get canceled.

Of course, these things don't just blow up by themselves. Everything described above was the "gas." We still needed matches, and we still needed people lighting those matches and tossing them towards the gas leak. Here were the offending parties in no particular order.

1. Billy Hunter and Derek Fisher
Imagine riding in a car with someone who doesn't care if he dies. He's driving 100 miles an hour on the highway and cackling like a maniac. You're asking him to slow down. He asks, "What's it worth to you?" You stammer. He says, "Unless you give me everything in your wallet right now, I'm driving into that highway divider up there." You have to make a decision: Do you pay him, or do you think he's bluffing?

Well, you pay him. Quickly. You don't want to find out if he values his life less than you value yours.

Guess who had the leverage that whole time? That's right … the suicidal maniac driving the car. And really, that's how the latest NBA lockout played out. We have known for nearly three years that the NBA owners (a) wanted to change the financial structure of their business, and (b) didn't care how they did it, just that it happened. If they lost 30 games of the 2011-12 season to get what they wanted, fine. If they lost the season, fine. If they lost three seasons, fine. They didn't care. Just don't ask them a question like, "If you're so unhappy owning your NBA franchise, why don't you just sell it?" See, heading into the summer of 2011, your average NBA franchise was more valuable for the investment itself than for the revenue it yielded. That's pretty liberating — if you don't care that your business stops, how can anyone possibly negotiate with you? You're basically driving them towards that highway divider and asking for their wallet.

You could see the owners' devious plan percolating as far back as All-Star Weekend in 2009, when I wrote my "No Benjamins Association" column7 and predicted doom. You know who else could see it coming? Billy Hunter! You know, the guy who admitted last week to knowing this day was coming for two or three years. That begs the question, "Why didn't you start the decertification process on July 1 instead of November 14, Billy?" It's like losing your house to an earthquake and saying, "I knew we were going to have another earthquake, I've been saying this for years," only never buying earthquake insurance. Excuse me? Maybe Hunter doesn't realize it yet, but he's become a permanent punchline for playing the decertification card so late (and for how he handled the past six months in general). I wouldn't let Billy Hunter negotiate an eBay bid for me at this point.

As a friend who works in professional sports (not the NBA) pointed out by email this week, "When one party has all of the leverage (like the NFL lockout once the Court of Appeals ruled the lockout could continue, or the NBA lockout until now), it does not necessarily mean the other party has to hit its head against the wall. What is wrong with figuring out, well in advance, that you have a weak position and cutting the best deal you can? This notion that a good negotiation lasts right up until a deadline (or past a deadline) is stupid. A good negotiation is understanding your position and getting a deal done before bad things happen. That is where the NBPA (Kessler, really) screwed this up. Sometimes you just have to understand that the best deal to be made (under any circumstances) CAN be made early. If you get criticized as a Gene Upshaw-type lackey then so be it. By the way, when you are willing to do a deal early you can sometimes get peripheral issues your way because the other party does recognize the value of avoiding a fight and missed games."

And sure, if the league suddenly started making boatloads of money, that leverage would shift and the players could say, "Everything stops unless we get more." But those weren't the stakes this time around. Hunter and Fisher failed to prepare the players, fed their anti-Stern neuroses, never unearthed a decent strategy and misread every conceivable tea leaf. Their goal from Day One should have been, "We have no leverage, we need to get the best deal we can without missing any paychecks." Even last week, they mistook Stern's ultimatum as "take it or leave it" when it was really an "S.O.S." — with his influence eroding, Stern barely had enough owner votes and knew small-market teams (along with Washington and Denver) wouldn't back any other offer unless it pillaged the players.8 Hunter and Fisher thought he was bluffing. They were wrong. Dead wrong. That offer is gone. And it's not coming back.

You can't oversell how disorganized Hunter's side has been — especially last weekend and on Monday, when they never allowed the players to vote, failed to give them enough information and couldn't even wrangle every player rep to Monday's meeting in New York. It took them five solid days to respond to Stern's offer; instead of countering with four or five system tweaks like Stern expected (he would never admit that publicly because it would belie his whole "take it or leave it" stance, but it's true), the players simply shredded it and launched the NBA's "nuclear winter" (Stern's words, and really, his only inspired moment of the past few months). Anyone who commends the players for standing up for themselves should mention that, during those five days — which doubled as the five most essential days in the recent history of the players association — many players couldn't even get in touch with their team reps (much less Hunter or Fisher). Those players were standing up for themselves, all right — they were standing up to make sure they had cell phone reception because nobody was emailing them any updates. What a mess. If I wrote a book about the 2011 NBA Lockout, it would either be called Cluster****! or CLUSTER****!

2. The Owners
Either they never wanted a season (and lied this whole time), or they badly misread the players' resolve and their growing contempt for Stern. It's one or the other. Hmmmmmmm. Let's lie and pretend they wanted a season. Who "negotiates" like that? Why were they going for Eff You touchdowns like the post-Spygate Patriots? Why weren't they more magnanimous? Why did they try to win every single issue? Whatever happened to the concept of "I want to win, but I also want to be fair because these are my partners for the next 10 years?"

Players are competitors. They don't want to be "embarrassed" or "broken." It's easy for them to confuse "taking a stand" with "not making the best available deal given the limited leverage you had." Why didn't the owners find a few subtle ways to let the players save face? Didn't they learn anything from how Roger Goodell and his owners handled those few days after their NFL agreement, when they effusively praised the deal for both sides even after working the players like a speed bag? And if Team Stern expected the players to counter, why not say that? Hell, why not say, "We screwed that 'last offer' thing up, we're revising our offer as a sign of good faith in one last attempt to save the season"?

One thing's for sure: If Stern believed they were that close (and I know for a fact he did), then he totally failed and totally underestimated how the players felt. Not their resolve, just how they felt. Maybe that's why he seemed visibly stunned afterwards, blaming Hunter and Kessler when the reasons were so much more complex. The players know they have terrible leadership. Their agents have been telling them that for months and months and months. And at this point, they don't care. Even though Hunter was an unequivocal disaster these past few months — his lack of urgency was stupefying, his lack of a coherent strategy was almost criminal, his summer media strategy couldn't have been worse, and his inability to keep his 450 players in the loop from day to day was inexplicable — the players kept following him and Fisher if only because the other option (trusting Stern and the owners) was less palatable. How can someone run a sports league for 28 years and lose the trust of his players that completely? And how could he possibly expect to win that trust back?

(The short answer: He won't. It's gone.)

3. The Pampering Issue
Your typical NBA owner operates like a sugar daddy of sorts. He coddles his players, flies them on chartered planes, serves them gourmet meals on those planes, puts them up in five-star hotels, builds them state-of-the-art practice facilities, hires them the best possible training staffs, sneaks them extra tickets for every game, enables their entourages, builds ticket campaigns around them, kisses their asses and (in some cases) even allows their friends to hitch rides on team charters. That's the real reason Dan Gilbert was so pissed off two years ago — after giving LeBron everything he wanted for years and years, LeBron never had the courtesy to call before he picked Miami. Gilbert felt more like a spurned boyfriend than anything (and acted like it).

I thought we had something! What about all those times I let your buddies ride on our team charter! You used me! I'm throwing away everything you ever gave me!

Once Gilbert flipped that switch and went after LeBron so ferociously, the players took it personally … just like they took it personally when the owners started playing hardball this summer. (You can only imagine how the players would have reacted had the owners pulled "chartered planes" and "suites in every five-star hotel" out of their last proposal. Then we REALLY would have had a problem.) There's a general disconnect here that almost feels like a bad marriage. Follow me here …

• The owners b**** about the players being greedy, and yet all they've done is enable that greed.

• The players claim they're being disrespected, and yet no group of professional athletes has ever been more spoiled.9

• The owners claim they care about the quality of the game, and yet, every player says the ideal number of regular season games — if your goal is to have healthy, rested players entertaining your fans to their best abilities every night — is somewhere between 70 and 74 games. (The owners, of course, ignore this.)

• The players claim it's not their fault that owners keep handing out lavishly dumb deals to forgettable players, and yet they ignore that their fans — the people who pay their salaries and keep their league afloat — hate nothing more than seeing overpaid assholes jogging through games, faking injuries, showing up for camp 20 pounds overweight, clogging their team's salary cap and making it harder to improve their team's roster. The fact that they don't realize this reflects on them is kind of alarming. Can you really be that self-absorbed?10

• The owners claim they need a better financial model, and yet, they're the ones recycling the same incompetent executives — seriously, someone is hiring Ed Stefanski again???? — and handing out cringe-worthy contracts year after year after year after year. I wrote the "Atrocious GM Summit" column in 2006 — four years later, with a lockout looming, we watched more moronically dumb contracts handed out than EVER before. These guys can't stay out of their own way, and even worse, the players want to keep it that way.

Aren't they "partners" here? Don't they care about the league as a whole? Don't they want fans to like their product? The players want it both ways — please, keep the chartered airplane seats, hotel suites, crab legs and stupid contracts coming, just don't ask me to care about the quality of my league. In a perfect world, both sides would work together and create the best and most fan-friendly NBA model possible. But the world ain't perfect.

You know what the real irony is? The owners' last proposal actually made a ton of sense. Read Howard Beck's breakdown of what it would have looked like, potentially, and try to find ONE thing that isn't logical. Contracts should be shorter so fans aren't getting constantly turned off by that relentlessly overpaid mediocrity. The gap between big market teams and small market teams should be smaller. A team like Cleveland should have a more favorable chance to keep its best player. A star like Carmelo shouldn't be able to force a trade and get rewarded with a mammoth extension. The mid-level exception should be tempered — it spawned too many dumb contracts and made it harder for teams to improve. What's wrong with coming up with a smarter model in which the right money goes to the right people? That's a bad thing?

As my aforementioned pro sports friend says, "In every part of life there are systems that protect people from doing things that will ultimately hurt themselves — its why banks don't charge $30/month for debit card usage; it's not like they don't want to, and it's not like some people wouldn't pay for it. Once you have the BRI split then EVERYONE should be working towards a better system. The NFL got to the dollars, got to the cap, then tried to make it so the rookie pool made more sense. This is a system issue that benefitted everyone. It doesn't make sense for Sam Bradford to make more than Drew Brees, right? The key with any system issue is trust — you tell the NBPA that the money WILL be in the system no matter what — don't they want it to go to guys like Wade or Dirk or Monta Ellis (early in his career) instead of mediocre veterans like Darko or Cardinal? This is where the agents have too much power — some of the powerful ones benefit from certain system structures even if the overall cash doesn't change — they just need to be ignored, and the players need to really trust that the system change won't cost them dollars in the aggregate."

Which leads us to …

4. The Agents

If the players don't trust the owners or Stern, and they're losing trust in Hunter and Fisher, who's left?

You guessed it … it's those shrewd and lovable legal minds who negotiate for players, call them every day, know their kids' names, won them over years ago, spent the last few months quietly undermining Hunter, know how to butter up media members and curry favor, and currently have their clients lathered into an anti-The-Man frenzy. The agents despised the owners' latest proposal — they don't want the middle class compromised in any way, or sign-and-trades, or the luxury tax, because that might curtail player movement (their bread and butter). They would rather lose a season to protect what they have, knowing they have much longer careers and they'll make those commissions back over time as long as they can prevent the NBA's model from changing against them too drastically right now.

Make no mistake: The agents are the single smartest group involved in this lockout. They make absurd commissions working over general managers (usually ex-players) who are almost always unequipped to negotiate with them. You know that saying "laughing all the way to the bank"? That's what the best sports agents do. Trust me, they have done the math. They figured out exactly where this lockout needs to end for them — repeat: for them — and advised the players accordingly. Meanwhile, these players can NEVER get that lost season back from three standpoints: how it affects them financially, how it affects their playing careers, and how it affects their fans (especially the casual ones who hopped on the bandwagon these past two years and will just as quickly hop off). The agents were supposed to be protecting these guys; instead, they protected themselves. Of course …

5. Jeffrey Kessler

The agents could never act more selfishly than Kessler, who waited his whole career for the right antitrust suit and finally found his patsy. It's his chance to become the focal point of an HBO documentary, bring the NBA to its knees and maybe become the Marvin Miller of antitrust lawyers. (It's a longshot, and we might lose a couple of NBA seasons in the process, but who cares, right?) Those just-as-ruthless NFL owners sniffed him out early, chopped his balls off and eventually shut him out of the final negotiating process, knowing he didn't totally care about getting a deal done. Now he's operating in a much bigger vacuum — thanks to a leadership void, Kessler kept amassing power even after his "plantation owners" comment backfired so spectacularly.11

Again, one of the world's leading experts in antitrust law is mobilizing NBA players towards a potentially historic antitrust suit that could wipe away multiple (repeat: multiple) seasons. You don't see anything shady there? Giving Kessler a significant say in these proceedings makes about as much sense as putting Kris Jenner in charge of a Parents Shouldn't Exploit Their Kids support group.

6. The Veteran Superstars

That would be Steve Nash, Grant Hill, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce … seven of our wealthiest, most-thoughtful and most-accomplished NBA players. Five of them have been missing in action — most disappointingly, Nash, one of the smartest athletes in any sport. Kobe can't decide whether he wants to cross Fisher and Hunter or not; he's done everything but call them out, he's allegedly leaked information to writers, he pushed hard behind the scenes for the 50/50 deal, he obviously wants to play … and yet, there's an invisible line he won't cross.12 Pierce has gone the other way — he's been the union's most vocal "veteran star" voice, and if there's been a revelation these past few months, it's that Pierce carries more weight with other players than anyone else.

All right, so let's look at Pierce for a second. He's one of my favorites. As a Celtics fan, I stuck with him through thick and thin. I remember when he was nearly stabbed to death, how that incident affected him, how his personal issues nearly led the Celtics to trade him in 2005, how that moment didn't happen only because Boston's new owner stuck up for him, how he reinvented himself over the next three years, how he graciously stuck around during a rebuilding process because his GM promised him help, how he thrived during that championship season, how he soaked in that special moment during Game 6 (in the fourth quarter against the Lakers at home, when the crowd was going bonkers and Pierce turned towards the stands, nodded happily and seemed to be saying to himself, "I've been waiting my whole life for this"), how he tried so valiantly to win a title these past three years as his body slowly betrayed him. He's one of the toughest (and most durable) Celtics ever. He could have played with Russell, Cowens, Bird, you name it.

I'm not surprised that Pierce emerged as a behind-the-scenes leader during this lockout. Every Celtics fan knows how he's wired. Here's what surprises me: Knowing how competitive he is, knowing how much he cares about one more title, knowing how much he loves playing in Boston, knowing how much he appreciates how Wyc Grousbeck and Danny Ainge stood by him over the years, knowing how he thinks about his career in a big-picture sense, knowing that he's a pretty rational guy … it frightens me that Paul Pierce cares this much about standing up to the owners and potentially losing a season. It makes me think the owner/player relationship (and the Stern/player relationship) is significantly more damaged than we want to believe. I don't agree with many of the reasons why we arrived there, or with the motives of the people who either conspired to get us there (or pushed us there with their own ineptitude), but we're there … and really, that's all you can say.

For that reason and all the others, I keep saying "no" whenever anyone asks me if there will be a 2011-12 NBA season. Just know that there's no side to take — it's mutually assured destruction in its purest form. That's difficult to explain to anyone losing their job over these next few months. I work across the street from the Staples Center at L.A. Live, in a complex that houses something like 10 restaurants and three bars within a two-minute walk of Staples. They were expecting three or four NBA games every week from now until next spring. Now on those nights, it's quiet as hell. A little eerie, even. Bartenders, waiters, bus boys and cooks will start getting axed soon. Same for many Clippers/Lakers employees across the street, and for every other team, and for everyone else who works near an NBA arena, and for every media entity that covers one of the 30 teams … it's a ripple effect that keeps going and going, and it's happening because this lockout went sooooooooooooo much deeper than just "we're taking a stand."

I can't see the players caving at this point. They're too entrenched and too rankled. Stern and Hunter are too stubborn to step aside; it's like they're trapped in the same never-ending hockey faceoff, only the referee won't ship them off. Kessler and the agents only care about themselves. Same for the small market owners and even a few of the bigger market ones. If you're looking for a voice of reason13, a veteran star14 to throw his hands up and say, "Wait a second,15 we're not really throwing this season away,16 right?", you're going to be disappointed.18 That renegade player18 would have emerged by now.

For the owners, nothing has changed — it's strictly business. For the players, something has changed — it's almost entirely personal. You can't find a middle ground between those two worlds. You just can't. Maybe it's the opposite of how definitively The Godfather: Part II ended — with Michael Corleone sitting outside by himself, lost in thought, alone in every sense, a ruthless businessman with no personal connection to anything — but even so, that deafening silence sounds the same.
Click to expand...

ascaptjack · Nov 18, 2011

DraftExpress Jonathan Givony
Sacramento Kings fans wouldn't be very happy with the shape Tyreke Evans is in if the season started today. At least 20 pounds overweight.

Shawn Kemp syndrome?

JeffB · Nov 18, 2011

ascaptjack said: ↑

Great article by Bill Simmons.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7250994/business-vs-personal
Click to expand...

Great read. I followed the NFL lockout closely and Kessler was an obstacle every step of the way. The NFL and the union reached an greement once Kessler (and Jerrah) was barred from the meetings. Kessler is definitely in it to get his Marvin Miller on.

EDIT: looks like Dwayne Wade is exploring overseas options.

http://m.espn.go.com/nba/story?storyId=7247874

TheGreat · Nov 18, 2011

DaDakota said: ↑

HP,

If they started their own league they would not be able to make the same $$$, as soon as the NBA started up, the other league would fold.

That is why it is not a viable option at this point.

1. The players are not smart enough to manage a league on their own.
2. The businessman that are smart enough are not dumb enough to start one when they could lose the players in a heartbeat.

DD
Click to expand...

No players = No League

ascaptjack · Nov 18, 2011

ascaptjack said: ↑

DraftExpress Jonathan Givony
Sacramento Kings fans wouldn't be very happy with the shape Tyreke Evans is in if the season started today. At least 20 pounds overweight.

Shawn Kemp syndrome?
Click to expand...

DraftExpress Jonathan Givony
Trey Thompkins had 15.5% body fat percentage at the NBA combine, but looks to have slimmed down dramatically since. Used his time off wisely

The Anti-Shawn Kemp?

ascaptjack · Nov 18, 2011

NBA Players hoping for one more shot at settlement

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/story/16161349/nba-players-hoping-for-one-more-shot-at-settlement

NEW YORK -- Despite the grim outlook of potentially lengthy and costly lawsuits, there are strong indications that NBA officials and attorneys representing the players want to take one more shot at reaching a settlement before the possibility of having close to a full season is devoured by the legal process.

Two people who have been briefed on the league's strategy told CBSSports.com that the NBA is holding out hope that a settlement can be reached in time for the season to begin no later than Christmas. One of those people said the process already is under way through what he described as "back-channeling," although sources from both sides professed no knowledge of such conversations.

A third person said that based on how vendor contracts and other financial arrangements were put in place, starting the season by Christmas would be optimal as far as preserving those relationships, and of course, revenues. Multiple people who have spoken with top NBA officials about the matter said it is understood that starting the season after Christmas is not viewed as a viable option.

"The 50-game season like they had in '98-'99, the league doesn't want that," one of the people briefed on the NBA's strategy said.

"I don't know that there's an appetite for a 50-game season," another person familiar with the league's position said.

Deputy commissioner Adam Silver did not respond to a request for comment on the league's approach Friday.

Neither Silver, commissioner David Stern, nor any of the NBA's legal representatives has spoken publicly since the players filed two antitrust lawsuits Tuesday alleging that the lockout is illegal -- one in California and one in Minnesota. But attorney David Boies, lead counsel for the players in the California case, said Tuesday that the goal of the lawsuits wasn't to see them to their finality -- which could take years and bring everyone involved to their knees -- but rather to "resolve these issues and allow the players to start playing."

"Certainly, everybody in this building wants to have people start playing right now," Boies said Tuesday during a media gathering at the players' Harlem offices. "If it were up to the players, games would be being played right now."

One top member of the legal team representing the players told CBSSports.com Friday that he had yet to receive a call from the NBA's legal representatives. Some contact and preliminary dialogue would be required soon if enough time were going to be available to reach a resolution in time for the season to begin Dec. 25.

The two people who have been in contact with NBA officials both used the word "optimism" to characterize the league's attitude with regard to reaching a settlement with the players that would save the season. However, it goes without saying that time is not on their side. It will take about a month from the day an agreement is reached until the season can start, and the process is further complicated by the fact that no collective bargaining agreement can be had until the players reform as a union and the owners recognize it as the bargaining representative for the players. Next Friday is Nov. 25, and Thursday is the Thanksgiving holiday.

"It's all about the calendar," said one attorney involved in the legal process.

According to two people familiar with the players' strategy, one of the reasons the union disclaimed interest Monday -- signaling a formal end to the collective bargaining relationship -- was to lay the groundwork for an accelerated legal schedule compared to the option of decertification. Had the players initiated the dissolution of the union, they would've had to wait 45-60 days for the National Labor Relations Board to schedule an election. By then -- December or January -- the chances of having more than a 50-game season would've been lost.

While the union leadership would've remained in power to continue negotiations until the decertification election was held, the one thing both sides agreed on when the bargaining talks reached their conclusion on Nov. 10 was that the existing format and dynamic were not working. Stern and the union's lead negotiator, attorney Jeffrey Kessler, had developed an unhealthy and destructive disdain for one another and their vitriolic relationship was standing in the way of reaching an agreement, two people involved in the negotiations told CBSSports.com.

Removing the talks from the negotiating room and sending them to the legal arena changed the dynamics and the negotiators involved. Kessler, for example, remains on the players' legal team, but it was telling that he was the fourth attorney listed on the players' antitrust lawsuit in California. Boies and his partner, Jonathan Schiller, are taking the lead role for the players, with Billy Hunter, executive director of the former players' association, also on the legal team.

On the league side, the Big Three (so to speak) are Paul Clement, NBA general counsel Rick Buchanan and Jeffrey Mishkin, along with attorneys from Proskauer Rose, the NBA's longtime outside law firm. Interestingly, Boies and Clement worked together on the NFL's side of the NFLPA's antitrust lawsuit and thus have a close working relationship. Clement also brings as much legal star power to the arena as Boies. The former solicitor general under president George W. Bush, Clement has argued more cases before the U.S. Supreme Court than any other lawyer in America since 2000, according to a story last month in the New York Times. (link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/u...-cases.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=paul clement&st=cse)

The NBA has 30 days to respond to the players' lawsuits, and a decision could come sooner than that in the league's own lawsuit in the Southern District of New York. In that case, filed in August, the NBA sought declaratory judgment that the lockout could not come under antitrust attack through a dissolution of the players' union. After the players took that step Monday, lawyers for both sides filed letters with the court updating their positions.

A legal settlement that could eventually take the form of a collective bargaining agreement would be negotiated among the lawyers. But while some key aspects of that dynamic have improved with the shift from bargaining to the courts, formidable impediments remain: the hard-line owners and hard-line players and agents, some of whom may be emboldened by their unprecedented step of disbanding the union and forcing Stern and the owners to answer for their actions in a court of law.

According to legal experts, neither side should feel utterly confident that it would win if the case proceeded to oral arguments, summary judgment, injunctions, appeals and the rest of the maze of legality that could leave all parties involved regretting their failure to negotiate a deal when they had the chance.

That precious window is closing fast. The majority of players will miss their second paychecks in about two weeks, bringing the carnage on their side alone to about $400 million -- with more to come even if a settlement were reached soon. The owners will soon face the reality of nearly $1 billion in squandered national TV revenues, another billion in gate receipts, and damaged relationships with other sponsors and business partners -- not to mention fans.

Right, the fans. Remember them? Or perhaps a better way to put it is, do you remember who you are?
Click to expand...

Maybe SAS was right?

sinobball · Nov 18, 2011

another article involving "sources close to the situation"... I've had enough

if that article is to be believed, if they can't sort this thing out next week (what are the odds with Thansgiving...) then no games until after London.

trueroxfan · Nov 18, 2011

DaDakota said: ↑

HP,

If they started their own league they would not be able to make the same $$$, as soon as the NBA started up, the other league would fold.

That is why it is not a viable option at this point.

1. The players are not smart enough to manage a league on their own.
2. The businessman that are smart enough are not dumb enough to start one when they could lose the players in a heartbeat.

DD
Click to expand...

more importantly they dont have the capital to back up a league. amare is so naive if he thinks the players are capable of putting together a league, it's like having the government run healthcare, it's laughable...

A_3PO · Nov 18, 2011

ascaptjack said: ↑

Great article by Bill Simmons.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7250994/business-vs-personal
Click to expand...

This expresses a lot of what I've felt all along.

ascaptjack · Nov 18, 2011

I'm calling it right now. After reading that CBS article by Berger, I think we will have a deal reached before Thanksgiving.

Giving us exactly one month to prepare for the start of the season, Christmas.

Santa Claus and Baby Jesus will not allow no NBA on Christmas. At the end of the day, Scrooge and even the Grinch settled their differences and became good.

TheGreat · Nov 18, 2011

Looking like a season agreement before Thanks giving how u

(Said it 4 times in this thread, 4 times the charm!)

sinobball · Nov 18, 2011

ascaptjack said: ↑

I'm calling it right now. After reading that CBS article by Berger, I think we will have a deal reached before Thanksgiving.

Giving us exactly one month to prepare for the start of the season, Christmas.

Santa Claus and Baby Jesus will not allow no NBA on Christmas. At the end of the day, Scrooge and even the Grinch settled their differences and became good.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, I see there is a 0% chance of that happening.

TheGreat · Nov 18, 2011

Veteran NBA insider Ken Berger wrote Friday that the owners and players are still communicating and trying to make a deal that starts the season no later than December 25.

We always thought that the players' rejection of last week's offer was to gain leverage in one last counter. And we've waited patiently for any sign that David Stern would indeed lower his offer to the 'reset proposal,' which he threatened to do by last Wednesday.

sinobball · Nov 18, 2011

rags080704 said: ↑

In ya'lls opinion, how many games would that be if there is hoops by Christmas indeed? Around 65 I think. Has to be an even number is what I read somewhere so maybe 66?
Click to expand...

Why does it have to be an even number?

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