If you successfully surmised two rounds of the draft were internationally interminable, stay tuned for the rounds and rounds of ridiculousness we’re in store for in the coming months (years?) after the NBA’s owners unanimously vote today in Dallas to lock out the players on July 1.
(The owners could fool us by issuing a moratorium and elect to extend bargaining for a week or two, but I haven’t heard a hint of that possibility.)
More of the same squealing silliness, in other words, that some outlets got suckered into comprehensively covering for much of 2011.
Chalk me up as being utterly apathetic in the past and in the future. What’s more, my living will explicitly forbids exhumation should the new Collective Bargaining Agreement ever be resolved.
I’m guessing the 12th of Never rolls around first.
How are the league and the Player’s Association expected to reach a equitable compromise when the horde of freshly-minted militant owners demand David Stern repossess a load of luxury bartered away previously . . . a treaty the commissioner had happily pronounced as mutually beneficial?
Every indicator points to the owners wanting nothing less than $900 million in revenue retuned. That’s the root of the non-negotiation. Stern has demanded that from day one, starting two years ago when he told executive director Billy Hunter as much at a meeting in Cleveland, and hasn’t flinched. Each owner wants to be assured of a $30 million annual profit.
The pressure is definitely on Stern to make the players “give” and they definitely feel his fangs. In most negotiations one side opens up by insisting on the sun, the other side counters with an equally outer space offer, and they end up meeting near the moon.
While the league recently backed off a couple zany demands, nothing of consequence (see above) has happened to convince the union there’s any middle ground to be found, maybe ever.
And, so, the NBA will shut down operations for the second time in 14 seasons. That costs money. But it also means teams can’t lose as much by staying open for business; many employees, the ones not already laid off, will get paid less, half salary in innumerable cases, and there’s no summer leagues, or rookie camps, etc., to bankroll.
As for the players, the free agents are the biggest losers; management’s financial flexibility to make monumental mistakes evidently is ending. Contracted union workers are not expected to panic until they miss at least one pay check . . . although, I’m told, supposedly players are much more psychologically and economically prepared this time.
Will the players remain united or turn on the negotiating committee as they did during the last lockout, a revolt Stern privately celebrated but obviously greatly laments today? Thirty-two games of the 1998-99 season were wiped out.
Back then, Stern’s “Drop Dead” date was Jan. 7. If an arrangement couldn’t be arrived at by then, he threatened to cancel the entire season. By Jan. 20, the league was back in action.
July 1 is a “Play Dead” date, it says here. Closing down the league is not going to sweat the players or soften the stance of hardcore owners. In fact, once they walk away in a huff, count on positions to remain intransigently unchanged come early October when players normally report to training camp . . . when the season usually starts several weeks lateraand, as paralleled, right into early January . . . and beyond.
Until that blood bath is drawn, don’t expect either side to budge. Why would the owners or the union make their best offer yesterday, today or six months from now when there’s still plenty of time to bargain in bad faith?
“No, we have not made our best offer,” recently said an official whose affiliation, in all fairness, I opt to protect. “If we made our best offer now they wouldn’t believe it was our best offer the next time we negotiated.”
Meaning, you can’t get ahead of yourself in negations. Best offers are held in reserve for a Drop Dead date not a Play Dead date.
Is it any wonder I’m so unsympathetic? Why get bent out of shape or passionately involved in either side’s cause when, the end of the day, the players are still going to be multi-millionaires and the owners are still going to be billionaires?
What’s the worst that can happen to the guys in the used-to-be shorts? Smaller posse? Fewer baby mamas? Drive domestic?
As for the owners, they can inject all the fuzzy math they want into the equation about how many teams are losing money and how much, but humor me for a second while I get rhapsodize rhetorical:
1. How many of these billionaires actually rely on their teams to make ends meet?
2. How is it that every time a team gets sold, it fetches more folding money than the last time it was up for bids?
Stern orates about wanting the owners and players to be equal partners. I assume that means losses and profits. Fine, so fix it that the players get half the profit when the franchise is sold and half the annual write-offs.
You know who really deserves a seat at the table? No, not paying customers; they apparently enjoy having their pockets picked, no matter how deep.
It’s the arena ancillaries, especially in smaller markets — from team game-days to vendors to parking lot attendants, all whom badly need those 41-plus dates to help balance their own books — in addition to neighborhood restaurant owners, whose existence might not totally depend on pre-and-post-game traffic, but get to maintain/increase staffs because of it.
These are the only people I’m really concerned about.
Don’t make me pretend I care what happens to the owners or the players.
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Was there any merit to reported possible Lamar Odom-Luke Walton–Andre Iguodala trade: According to a team official, the 76ers never had a conversation with the Lakers. LA-based agent Rob Pelinka “is trying to get Iguodala traded to his home city.” Hence, the purported Chris Kaman-Iggy dialogue. . . . It’s about Kawhi Leonard‘s suit; did the Pacers’ forward mug Captain Kangaroo for it? All that was missing was a carnation.
Houston indeed offered Hasheem Thabeet for Andris Biedrins but its package included Brad Miller, not Jordan Hill. . . . The Nets paid $175,000 for an additional No. 2 choice and tried to buy another in order to draft College of Charleston’s Andrew Goudelock, who has the range of a high plains drifter. “He’s Eddie House with a handle,” is the way one general manager nicely described the Lakers’ No. 46 pick.
This just in from column contributor Brian McGunigle: “Bismack Biyombo announced he’s changing his name to Ron Artest.”
Contrary to a Daily News report, Timberwolves general manager David Kahn did not approach Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski about coaching his team. A meeting did take place between the two. Topic of discussion: Blue Devil draftees Kyrie Irving and Nolan Smith. Minnesota owned the No. 2 overall pick and it was possible Irving might drop down a rung had the Cavaliers tabbed Derrick Williams. The T’Wolves also possessed various middle first round choices at one time or another. Kahn seriously considered taking Smith based on talent, character and his strong relationship with Michael Beasley.