Fair or not, this is going to be framed in a way that makes the players look awful. ChrisMannixSIChris Mannix by WojYahooNBA Despite Hunter's claims, I'd guess a lot of players would approve a 50-50 split. Agents, stars won't. Jonathan_FeigenJonathan Feigen Still, 50/50 sounds fair. Will be tough for players to get around that, especially with many likely willing to take that deal.
Ric Bucher confirms it wasn't a real 50-50 split. It sounds like they didn't include the operating expenses they claim as a part of that split -- NOT a true 50-50, the owners are really trying to keep more.
I don't really believe anything Stern/owners are saying. I think it's time to decertify and take this to the courts. It seems like that's the only way to get either side to budge.
Good thing there are expensive lawyers and consultants on the case. How funny would it be if the NBA and players wasted thousands of hours and millions of dollars fighting this out only to eventually land at a 50-50 split? Geniuses.
HowardCooper Scott Howard-Cooper by sam_amick A lot of people just lost paychecks. And I'm not talking about players. Laugh off preseason games all you want, but it's serious to some. deandrejordan DeAndre Jordan by sam_amick I also want to say sorry to all the people who work in the arenas that don't have any means of income right now...way to go owners! ChrisMannixSI Chris Mannix Three players texted SI.com that, while needing further details, a 50-50 split sounded fair. Not star players, either.
The fact is that the Owners never "offered" a 50/50 split. Stern is merely bringing up that it was mentioned after the slap-in-the-face initial proposal was set. The fact that Stern is even mentioning this aparent conversation that the players deny is to make the players out to be the bad guys in this case and as a bargaining tactic. The fact is that the official proposals the Players have moved from 57 to 53 percent, while the owners have moved from 46 to a mere 47 percent. The players have made the largest concessions so far, if the owners really wanted to negotiate in good faith they would have had a deal weeks ago when they stood at 46 percent since June. This is all smoke and mirrors. They have had three months to make their way to 50/50, but they dont want to offer their best proposal until the stretch the union's deal as far as it will go, which is obviously 53% until November when they most likely start talks again. Then the Owners have a chance to move it closer to 50% in an OFFICIAL proposal. In the end come mid December to January 1st, the owners will gain close to 7% back in BRI, lose only 3 to 400 million in revenue in lost games, but gain it back 10 fold in the deal longterm. Its a deal that most every schrewd business person would make every day. They both know where its going to end up at. Its quite obvious. However the first party to budge always lose, and in this case, the players have already lost.
Those players dont realize that its not an official proposal, and until they actually draft the official deal, it would be ridiculous to just flat out tell Stern that they would accept if offered, without knowing the fine details. The offer needs next to go to.... 48/52. Two weeks go by..... 49/51. Three weeks go by..... .... posturing..... 50/50 deal..... Then three more weeks figuring out other details of the deal. Thats eight weeks, puts the start of season right at January 1st. Right on time.
http://ken-berger.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/11838893/32511287 According to Ken Berger, the sides are actually just 2% (or 80 mil a year) apart in terms of their last "informal" proposals. According to Berger, the owners' informal proposal was a 49% floor and a 51% ceiling and the players' informal proposal was a 51% floor and a 53% ceiling. Both of these are without additional deduction for expenses. So, while the last formal offers (47% from owners, 53% from players) seem quite far apart, the actual gap appears much smaller. My guess is each side needs some time to huddle amongst themselves at this point before proceeding.
Man the owners are really pissing me off. You moved ONE FREAKIN' PERCENT? GTFO. These guys just don't want to negotiate at all.
me too... ESPN said earlier that the avg. NBA salary is over 20% more then any other professional sport..... Come on guys.... take a paycut, the endorsements will always be there.
Avg NBA salary is high because there are less player needed to play basketball compared to the other 2 major sports. I'm not on anyone's side. It's haggling between two parties. Not my money.
Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but players are lucky to get 25%. In any case, I'm sticking to my prediction that owners are going to win, and win big, but no franchise tag ultimately means that small market fans are going to be the biggest losers, because I don't think the next generation of superstars are going to choose to spend their prime years (27-32) in cities like Milwaukee, Portland, and Denver when they have the option of switching to LA, Miami, NY, or Chicago.
Well i'm not on the owners side because of how much NBA players make in relation to the other major sports. I just feel it's the owners who should dictate how much an employee makes. I know I know, we watch basketball for the players, not the owners. But that can be said in any line of work, do people buy Apple products because of Steve Jobs? Or do they buy it because of what Apple employees put together as products? You don't see their employees earning 57% of company profits. Even if you can argue that point, the owners are not telling these players "you can't make $8M, we want you to make 200K" the players will still be paid millions a year, money that most of us posting on here won't make in a lifetime, to play a game. For 6 or 7 months.
Wouldn't the NFL salaries be 20% higher, if they adopted the same revenue split as the NBA players on the last CBA contract? NFL players take in 47% of revenues. Add 20%. 47% x 1.20 = 56.4% If the NFL players had a 57% revenue split, they would actually exceed their current salaries by at least 21%. It can be explained by the amount of revenue that the NFL brings in compared to the NBA, which is around 100-125% more revenue. http://www.nba.com/2011/news/07/22/bri-audit/index.html http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ys-forbes-cowboys_most_valuable_nfl_team_090811
NEW YORK -- There were no fireworks, no tantrums and no tirades. There was all the resignation and disappointment of doomsday, but none of the reality. The reality is that the NBA owners and players, after showing most of their cards Tuesday in a bargaining session that failed to save an on-time start to the regular season, are approximately $80 million-a-year apart on the economics of a new collective bargaining agreement, multiple sources with knowledge of the negotiations told CBSSports.com. Though no additional negotiations are scheduled and the process now enters the dangerous and unpredictable phase where any slipups could jeopardize a large chunk of the regular season, the two sides are closer than they publicliy divulged in a pair of dueling news conferences in adjacent meetings rooms of a Times Square hotel. Here is where they are, according to multiple people involved in the negotiations: After the owners offered the players a 50-50 split of revenues that effectively was a 47 percent share with about $350 million in expenses deducted first, the two sides met in small groups in the hallway while each side's larger group caucused in separate rooms. As the hour grew late, the tension was rising and becoming palpable. Both sides recognized it was time to try everything possible to make a deal. In the group for the league side were commissioner David Stern, deputy commissioner Adam Silver and Spurs owner Peter Holt, the chairman of the labor relations committee. For the players, it was union president Derek Fisher, outside counsel Jeffrey Kessler and two of the brightest stars who attended Tuesday's crucial bargaining session -- Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett, according to one of the people with knowledge of the side meeting. In that group, the league -- sensing that the opportunity for a deal was there -- proposed essentially a 50-50 split with no additional expense reductions over a seven-year proposal, with the seventh year being a players' option, one of the people said. This was the offer Stern described in his news conference Tuesday evening, one that he and Silver thought would be enough to finally close the enormous gap between the two sides. The league's offer, according to three people familiar with it, came in a range of 49-51 -- with 49 percent guaranteed and a cap of 51 percent, the sources said. Stern told the players and Kessler that he was bringing this proposal to his owners in an attempt to sell it, making no bones about the fact that he would. In fact, Stern said in the news conference, he did sell it. The owners were prepared to sign off on this 49-51 percent band, and with many of the most polarizing system issues resolved, the framework of a deal was in sight. While the owners were caucusing, a member of the players' group returned with a counterproposal -- approximately 52 percent of BRI for the players with no additional expenses deducted. The players' counterproposal followed the format presented by the owners -- a 51-53 percent band with 51 percent guaranteed and a cap of 53. League officials rejected the offer, the sources said. So while Hunter and Stern remained publicly entrenched in the ecoomic positions of their most recent formal proposals -- with the players asking for 53 percent and the league offering effectively 47, the reality is this: the gap has closed to 2 percentage points of BRI, the difference between the midpoint of the two offers. With each percentage point of BRI worth about $40 million, the two sides -- who were at one time $8 billion apart over 10 years -- are now a mere $80 million apart on an annual basis. So you can see what the two sides saw Tuesday -- the road to a deal that both sides eventually can find a way to live with that is better than the alternative of missing a substantial portion of the regular season. Complications remain, of course, not the least of which is the fact that this sidebar, informal discussion of the two BRI bands would have to be worked through the formal process of getting each side's committee to sign off -- and then, it would have to be negotiated further. Also, by walking out without a deal Tuesday, the players' association is subject to the influence of agents who have made it clear they are unhappy with the course of negotiations and have openly threatened encouraging their clients to decertify the union. Two people with direct knowledge of the strategy being invoked by a group of seven super agents who wrote a letter to their clients over the weekend said the group -- including Arn Tellem, Bill Duffy, Mark Bartelstein, Dan Fegan, Jeff Schwartz, Leon Rose and Henry Thomas -- is willing to accept no less than 52 percent. There is disageement within the ranks on that figure, with a hard-line faction pushing for the players not to retreat at all from the 57 percent of BRI they received under the previous CBA. The more time that goes by without closing the now comparatively narrow gap between the two sides, the more opportunity there will be for players and their agents to apply pressure to the union -- and perhaps even encourage clients who are unhappy with the course of negotiations to hold a decertification vote, which would stall the talks. One of the people with direct knowledge of the super agents' strategy said at least two strong voices in that camp have quelled their pursuit of decertification, which would remove the process from the negotiating room and throw it into federal court under anti-trust law. Such a move at this stage, the person with knowledge of the agents' approach said, would inject too much chaos with a deal within reach. With most system issues preserved from the previous deal, one of the high-powered agents has told associates that he would accept 52 percent and "call it a wrap," a source said Tuesday. Recognizing the uncertainty and risk that lies ahead -- the rest of the preseason was canceled after the bargaining session Tuesday and regular season games are potentially days away from being lost -- Fisher took direct aim Tuesday at the agents who have most vocally objected to the union's legal and bargaining strategies. "The only people that really decide whether we accept and ratify a deal are the guys that are standing right here and the other 400-plus guys that aren't here right now," Fisher said, flanked by several committee members and superstars Bryant, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. "And not out of disrespect, I'm just not inclined to engage in a discussion about what a group that doesn’t control any part of this process has to say."
