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here comes the lockout

Discussion in 'NBA Dish' started by wstar, May 18, 2005.

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  1. ChrisP

    ChrisP Member

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    Oh, and...

    "I think our average salary is a couple million dollars a year. You ain't gonna get no sympathy from the fans. They're hard working people - some of them [grin] - and you ain't never gonna get sympathy from the fans."
     
  2. xiki

    xiki Member

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  3. NewYorker

    NewYorker Ghost of Clutch Fans

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    I don't know man, David Stern crushes his enemies, he's bested Hunter at every turn...and always wins. Look at the NBA, the Luxury Tax, the Salary Cap, restricted free-agency....yeah, basketball salaries are high....but compared to baseball? And when you consider that teams are only 12 players compared to 40-man rosters for football and baseball, NBA stars are cheap.

    David Stern pretty much gets everything he wants from the union, beats them down...no wonder the owners love him so much.


     
  4. tigermission1

    tigermission1 Member

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    I am sorry NewYorker, I disagree. I am not saying that the owners/league are "good people" or are any less interested in maximizing their profits than the players are, I am just saying that the Union is clearly not trying their best to avoid a lockout, they have retracted their previous position on certain issues and now ALL of a sudden come back and tell the league, "Oh, you know when we told you that (X) issue is OK? Well, we changed our minds!" That is a bunch of BULL that just tells me, and shows fans, that the Players Union is not really trying hard to avoid the lockout.

    BTW, NBA athletes are the best payed athletes of all three major sports leagues. For God's sake man, NFL players don't even have guaranteed contracts, and you don't see them pulling off this ****:rolleyes:

    I maintain that the NBA Player's Union is just spoiled, and they are trying to act like lil b****es in these negotiations.

    Look, I still think that a lockout will be somehow avoided, but it will go down the wire, and the NBAPA will agree to these conditions sooner or later, the owners are not really asking for outrageous concessions here: the two major requests are age limit and to shorten the rediculously long 7-year contracts, which as anyone can tell you are problematic to NBA teams that get stuck with those massive contracts, and end up handicapping a team's cap room to make improvements. (See Webber, Kidd, Houston, etc.)

    So sorry, but I have zero sympathy for those stupid players.
     
  5. KellyDwyer

    KellyDwyer Member

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    Who created these handicaps?
     
  6. StupidMoniker

    StupidMoniker I lost a bet

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    Basketball has the highest average salary of any sport, including baseball, which has no salary cap, and the strongest players union.
     
  7. KellyDwyer

    KellyDwyer Member

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    There are 15 players on the roster, and 22,000 seats in the stadium.
     
  8. NewYorker

    NewYorker Ghost of Clutch Fans

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    Baseball pays out 60% of it's revenues to players

    The NFL pays out 56-63% (Labor Agreement).

    Some say the NHL is near 75%

    The NBA you ask?

    53-57%

    Not bad...

    Let's not forget folks that David Stern couldn't deal with the union back in '97...so what did he do? He got big name players like Ewing to decertify the league and basically agree to all of his demands.

    Masterful.


     
  9. Nelly

    Nelly Member

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    Great now our championship next year will be tainted with an asterisk next to it :mad: :p
     
  10. StupidMoniker

    StupidMoniker I lost a bet

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    What is your point? Baseball has 25 man rosters and stadiums that hold more than twice that much. That is no reason for basketball players to make more than baseball players. In addition, half of the drafted rookies in the NBA have 3 year guaranteed contracts for ~3 million per year. Do you think half the players drafted in baseball get deals like that?

    The point is, NBA players are doing more than fine. All of the owner demands that we have seen in the press are reasonable, and there is no reason for the NBAPA to fight them. If the players don't watch out, they need only to look at the NHL to see what happens when you kill the golden goose. Unions are an archaic remnant of a time that no longer exists. There is too much mobility in the modern world, and too much access to information for workers now to be comparable to workers from the Robber Barron era. If the players were really getting screwed, they would be going over to play in European leagues.
     
  11. Fegwu

    Fegwu Member

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    More

     
  12. KellyDwyer

    KellyDwyer Member

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    I'm sorry, but I'm just not buying the "you're lucky to making millions, so shut up and take what we give you" argument.

    Comparing professioinal sports leagues is beyond pointless. The players would like 50 percent of the money generated by the people they bring into arenas, the people who watch the games they play in, and the people who buy the jerseys they sell.

    And they don't have to sit and watch as the NBA enacts legislation to protect itself from itself. James Dolan signed Allan Houston, the Maloofs signed Chris Webber, and Mark Cuban signed Mike Finley. Nobody put a gun to their head, and the market didn't force them into making horrible deals.

    Arguing over baseball vs. basketball players relative worth is boneheaded. The Bulls had the third best record in the East this year with four rookies in their eight-man rotation. The third best team in the NL doesn't get that. The players make this money because they're worth this money, and they're under no obligation to sit idly by while the stupid owners work like hell to make up for their myriad mistakes.
     
  13. room4rentsf

    room4rentsf Member

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    I dont know if nba players have it better than mlb players, but its obvious both have it much better than NFL players...

    The obvious problems for the nba players association is that, most fans shares the owner frustration, views and demands.

    First the issue of the length of contracts. Obviously fans suffer and thus sympathize with owners when long term GUARUNTEED contracts are awarded to player who at the moment they sign them, either plays like crap (insert mo taylor, tim thomas etc) or gets injured year in and year out (insert allan houston, A. hardaway, etc). Now it may be the owners fault for giving out these contracts, but often times they were good/fair decision at the time. Regardless the point is fans would like to help the owners avoid these crippling situation, because what sadomasochistic fan would want their team to end up like the NY Knicks!

    Other issues such as minor leagues, age limit, cap increases, drug testing ect... fans seem to be able to more readily relate to the ownership position. Now part of this may be due to the leagues superior p.r. and other such issues, but the major reason is that from what little we know of, the leagues position seems reasonable, rational and fair.
     
  14. micah1j

    micah1j Member

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    In negotiations, if you agree to accept a condition the other side wants and then take it back the other side will hold out until you give it back. You can't agree to something then take it back. That is just stupid. But this could be league spin.
     
  15. vlaurelio

    vlaurelio Member

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    if you have a million bucks and you divide it to 25 players in a basebell team, how much does each player get?

    compare it to basketball where you have 16 players..

    basketball players will get a higher average salary than baseball players
     
  16. Willis25

    Willis25 Member

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    I heard that too - I am no fan of Stern, but that was a little excessive on Hunters part

    (me thinks he doth protest too much !)
     
  17. A-Train

    A-Train Member

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    All those statements that they're pretty sure that a deal will get done and there will be a minimal, if any, lockout says to me that this will probably drag out for months and that half the 05-06 season will be cancelled.
     
  18. smoothie

    smoothie Jabari Jungle

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    no doubt it will drag out for months, but hopefully those are summer months. i am still optimistic that the lockout will last only thourgh preseason.
     
  19. adai

    adai Member

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    http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=2063343&type=story
    League suspends talks, says union backtracked
    By Chad Ford
    ESPN Insider
    On Tuesday, ESPN.com reported the details of that meeting between
    the agents and union chief Billy Hunter.
    "Billy put us on the spot," SFX agent David Bauman, whose firm
    represents more players than any other agency in the NBA, said. "He
    wanted to know if we had his back, whether we'd tell our players
    the same thing that we were telling him. We all stood up, every one
    of us, said our names and said we'd reject the offer. The deal the
    NBA is offering the players right now makes absolutely no sense.
    I've told my clients that. Every one of them agrees that the deal
    that's on the table is a bad one."
    The agents are especially concerned about several major issues.
    The biggest is the owners' insistence that guaranteed contracts be
    considerably shortened. Currently, players can sign a contract for
    a maximum of six or seven years, depending upon whether the player
    is signing with a new team (six years) or his current team (seven
    years). The owners have been trying to get that rolled back to
    three and four years.
    Three other issues have become sticking points: 1) the owners'
    proposal to reduce the amount of annual raises in a contract from
    10 percent to 5 percent; 2) a "super luxury tax" that would more
    harshly penalize teams that spend more than a certain predetermined
    threshold; and 3) the proposed minimum age requirement of 20 years
    old.
    The league's release implied that the agents might have taken
    control of the process. Granik said he didn't know why the union
    reversed itself on the issues after the meeting.
    "I don't know why," Granik said. "After I read your column and from
    other things that I heard, it appears to be a possibility that the
    agents are responsible for what happened here. I don't have
    personal knowledge of this."
    "Regardless of why, they've been backing up on half a dozen things.
    When you're backing off points that have already been agreed to,
    it's impossible to make a deal."
    While the Players' Association had no comment on the league's
    latest release, a players' source said he was shocked by the
    league's public announcement.
    "Stern has been saying for months that nothing is agreed to until
    the entire agreement is agreed to," the source told ESPN.com.
    "That's the nature of collective bargaining. How can they say we
    agreed to anything unless the whole deal was agreed to?"
    In the NBA's press release, it contended the players reneged on an
    agreement to reduce the maximum length of contracts to five years.
    When pressed on the point, Granik conceded that "agreed" might not
    be the right world.
    "As a matter of law, nothing's agreed to until it's all agreed to,"
    Granik said. "As a practical matter, the way you reach agreement is
    that you eliminate issues and put them to the side."
    Still, don't be surprised to see talks begin soon enough. Both
    sides say they aren't that far apart on key issues and that a deal
    can be worked out in time.
    "I'm still hopeful," an NBA league source said. "At the end of the
    day, both sides really want to get a deal done. A lockout is the
    worst-case scenario. No one really wants it to happen. Hopefully,
    after the dust settles, people will start making up."
    Chad Ford covers the NBA for ESPN Insider.
     
  20. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Member

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    I think this is a point that everyone has been quick to forget. Stern himself has been telling us that the CBA comes as one piece; each particular issue gets revisited as concessions are made in other places. This seems like grandstanding on the league's part in an effort to garner public sympathy for the battle against the big bad union.

    I don't see how you can blame the union here. They just want status quo, the owners are the ones pushing for new concessions. If the owners didn't want to take an even larger portion of the pie, they could have just extended the last CBA and would already be done. I can't blame the union for not just bending over when they're told.

    If the union has made a mistake, I think it's that they weren't aggressive enough in making demands. When all they want is status quo, they can't concede anything without losing ground. What concessions mean in this negotiation is, Will the league take more or less? If the players demanded flat panel TVs in every locker or anything at all, then they could give that up and be no worse for wear. They are on the defensive and the league has them back on their heels as a result. They've been way too conciliatory.
     

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