Latest on the lockout...???

Latest rumor:

A source tells Shaun Powell that if given the opportunity, the union's full membership of players would vote to approve the NBA's revised proposal.

Powell cites a "silent majority" of rank-and-file players who want to get back on the court and are uninterested in the decertification process or further negotiations with the owners.

http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/216503/Source_Players_Would_Approve_Owners_Latest_Proposal

gyso,

I can only hope that report is true, but considering the mood swings this thing has gone through so far, I'm not cutting up confetti just yet.

I think the players have gotten the raw end of the negotiations, with them giving back on almost every front while the only movement from the owners has been from their original absurd position to one that's barely palatable. But having said that, NBA players are in many ways the best compensated team sport pro athletes, even with the latest proposal from the owners. Sign it, please.

Looks like that's a wrap folks...

AP is now reporting players rejected the latest proposal in a unanimous vote (today, Monday, Nov 14).

Papers are being filed to decertify the players union.

That makes the odds fairly strong for no NBA hoops this season.


Hmmmmm...

How about those Pat's? No defense but they can rack up points!

The Bruins have scored 30 times in a 5 game winning streak!

College basketball officially started Friday; how about UNC beating Michigan State on that aircraft carrier!

NYC,

The Bruins play the Sabres again on Wednesday the 23rd. I think this will be a must see game as the Sabres manhood has been called into question throughout the league for their total nonresponse to Lucic nailing their goalie. (which I think was uncalled for and should result in a suspension of at least a few games)

While certainly not pleased, I'm OK with no NBA season as I follow all Boston sports teams and have alternatives. I feel for those many Celtics fans around the world who may not have ready alternatives, plus the working people who work at the stadiums, bars and restaurants who are suffering to an extent the owners and players never will.

bob NYC and all

Should there be no NBA season and the lockout lasts till.....????

Wonder how many 'underclassmen' will now think twice about staying in school another year? They will need to seek advice from their agents to make sure that is the right decision. ( inject sarcasm here )

Lots of schools have loaded young talent like NC and Kentucky should make for an interesting hoop season in college anyway.

beat

Bob,

Good point. Many others do feel the negative financial effect and the pain can be fairly significant to them.

Regards

NBA owners are on a power play?

The NBA labor dispute isn't about profitability or parity. Those are just code words. The laborious negotiations between the NBA and the NBA Players Association are about money and power.

NBA owners feel the players have attained too much of both, and they want to take them back, even if it requires shuttering the league for a year.

The NBA has always been a players' league, but now it is the players' league. Star players like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and Carmelo Anthony basically held their teams -- and to a degree the entire NBA -- hostage before dictating where they played and with whom, all while cashing in with new lucrative, long-term deals.

For egotistical, imperious, successful entrepreneurs, a description that fits almost all NBA owners, it's difficult to accept an industry in which the employees dictate the terms.

Call this the revenge of Dan Gilbert. The choleric Cavaliers owner was essentially powerless as his franchise player, James, took his talents to Miami in a self-aggrandizing television special. Gilbert's team was humiliated on national television and instantly devalued. The Cavs went from contenders to a league laughingstock, posting an NBA-record 26-game losing streak with LeBron's Leftovers.

Now, like a jilted lover, Gilbert is part of a group of hardline owners who want to bring the players to their knees and the pendulum of power swinging back in their direction.

NBA owners don't just want a victory in the labor game -- they have that already with the players agreeing to decrease their percentage of basketball-related income from 57 percent to as low as 50 percent -- they want a 40-point rout replete with scrubs (Cleveland, Indiana, Sacramento) throwing down dunks and mugging for the cameras in the final seconds.

No wonder the NBA is headed for a different kind of court, with the players association decertifying after rejecting the owners' final offer.

The owners' take-it-or-leave-it proposal would lower minimum salaries by 12 percent; trim the maximum length of contracts from six years to five; cut the annual salary increases for a player that re-signs with his team from 10.5 percent to 6.5 percent (players like James and Bosh who were sign-and-trade free agents would only be eligible for four-year deals with a 3.5 percent jump per year); prohibit teams from offering a contract extension to a player they acquire via trade for six months (the 'Melo Mandate); bar teams that exceed the luxury tax from making sign-and-trade deals, starting in 2013 and replace the dollar-for-dollar tariff for exceeding the luxury tax with a more onerous tiered system that penalizes teams up to $3.25 per dollar depending on how far they go over the cap.

There's more on the second page, here is some of it:

There is also what we'll call the LeBron Rule, a stipulation that all but ends the early termination option (ETO) in contracts that LeBron, Wade and Bosh all used to become free agents last summer, and that Dwight Howard and Chris Paul could utilize to hit the market this summer.

Now, a player (and a team) could only have an option year if the first-year salary is less than the NBA average player salary, which will never happen for an NBA star, or if the option years are non-guaranteed.

and:

NBA stars like LeBron, Kobe, D-Wade, Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose aren't just employees. They're the product, and that's the irony here. The NBA is trying to slay a monster it created.

The NBA's success has been built on the idea of peddling personalities and building individual brands. It's how the NBA rose to prominence. It wasn't Celtics vs. Lakers. It was Bird vs. Magic, or Magic vs. Michael, or Jordan vs. Barkley. No league has emphasized individual accomplishment and personality like the NBA over the past 25-30 years. The league empowered its star players by putting them above its teams.

It's no wonder that they ended up with some self-serving, entitled, egomaniacal players like LeBron. But what the NBA is trying to do is jam the tooth-paste back in the tube, one messy, desperate dip at a time.

The idea of star players steering what team they play for didn't start with James. Back in 1975 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar let the Milwaukee Bucks know that they could either trade him to a more desirable NBA locale or watch him walkaway to the ABA. Abdul-Jabbar forced his way to the Los Angeles Lakers.

In 1996, 14 years before LeBron's Decision, a young, telegenic, charismatic franchise player for a small-market franchise used free agency to abscond for sunnier climes. Shaquille O'Neal, the Big Mercenary, left Orlando and landed with the Lakers.

This is not a minor correction. The new owners are of a different breed (from Ferenginar?) and professional teams are more to them than mere toys.

Here's the link:

http://articles.boston.com/2011-11-18/sports/30415756_1_nba-owners-james-and-bosh-lower-minimum-salaries

Here's another thing I found:

NBA Players Are Beginning to Sign in Europe, But Who is Actually Playing in the Euroleague? A List, by League, of All NBA Players Who Have Signed Overseas (UPDATED Nov 18th 2011)

A Few Facts About the Updated List:

• The Guangdong Southern Tigers, historically the strongest team in China, have made a late power play in signing Yi and Brooks. This will undoubtedly help them continue their run at the top, especially considering their strong stock of domestic players. And considering that Yi is technically a Chinese player, they still have room to sign another NBA player should they choose. (CBA teams are capped at two.)
  
• Australia's NBL has really had a fall from grace. Due to some recent instability and previous failed experiments with old NBA players, the only player so far to sign in Australia is favourite son Patty Mills.
  
• The Euroleague teams that have recently signed players haven't necessarily been in trouble. Rather, they're mostly middling teams needing to put themselves over the top.
  
• With recent signings, French teams have signed 11 former NBA players, the most in the world. Closely behind are Turkey with 10, Italy with 9, China and Russia with 7, and Spain with 5.
  
• Panathinaikos and Olympiakos, two of the strongest teams in the Euroleague, have still not signed any players.
  
• This list shouldn't be taken as a end all be all to whether a team will be good or not. Several teams include former NBA players who still have good skill, and players who are good enough for the NBA but decided to make the transition. Rather, it should be used as a reference for those who wish to keep track of their favourite players.
  
• The only teams with no overseas signings are the Miami Heat, the Houston Rockets, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Los Angeles Clippers. The Detroit Pistons only have a rookie, Kyle Singler, playing overseas.
  
• Check the previous list for more observations.
  

Please use the link to see the actual list. There are some old friends there; Scal, Von Wafer, Semih, Avery Bradley, Nenad Krstic, E'Twaun Moore, etc.

If China teams do not allow opt-out clauses, are all those players gone from the NBA for the entire year?

Hey, NBA players, listen up:

There are only a few openings left and there are well over 400 of you that need work. Getting paid is sketchy at best, travel is sub-par, accommodations are not 5 star, most food is not exactly palatable (at least to our standards). I imagine that the whole experience would be humbling, to say the least.

Its not a monopoly if there are other opportunities to sell your wares, is it? (LOL)

Here's the link:

http://www.welcometoloudcity.com/2011/11/18/2570840/nba-players-are-beginning-to-sign-in-europe-but-who-is-actually

My feeling, last expressed in 1994, is that the Union needs have a financial interest in the well being of the franchises.

Suggested making the union 50% owner of each franchise, Members sitting on each Board, with player salaries contingent on team profitability. Dollars were fewer then but principle the same: Until both sides have a vested interest in success no one gains.

Regards,

Tark

Gyso, the articles you quote raise several interesting points.

I knew that the way the LeBron/Bosh/Wade/Carmelo/Deron Williams free agent situations played out was a factor in the owners' approach to the CBA negotiations, but the article gyso quoted makes a good argument that it's a bigger deal than I assumed it was. If I was an owner, I probably would want to protect myself from such a public fiasco where the success of my franchise for years to come could be so drastically affected by a single player's whims. I doubt if LeBron acknowledges how his egomaniacal handling of his free agency put such a negative stamp in so many places -- the entire city of Cleveland, the NBA fan base, and the CBA negotiations. The painful trades of Carmelo and Deron Williams were a direct reaction to those franchises wanting to avoid the possibility of being in the same situation as Cleveland. It seems only logical that owners would use the new CBA to prevent such fiascos in the future.

Gasper, the Globe columnist, is also absolutely correct that the self-absorbed individual superstar is entirely a creation of the league. It has been the league's mission over the last 30 years to use the spectacular individual player as the league brand and as the backbone of marketing that has led to explosive growth overseas. They've modified the rules to unleash athletic perimeter players with the all-too-willing complicity of ESPN highlight mentality. They created this Frankenstein monster, and now they blame the monster. They should question David Stern's previously unassailable marketing strategy, not just the CBA.

As I've said before, I also agree with Tark's sentiment that the league needs to be structured so that the players and owners are partners working together to grow the pie instead of adversaries fighting over who gets the biggest slice. Fifty percent is too much, but having players as part owners is an interesting concept. It would have to start small and grow over time.

And, silly me, I hoped that businesspeople would find a way to put aside pettiness and emotion to make rational business decisions, but the opposite has occurred -- a significant chunk of the owners is hellbent on exacting their revenge. I think we'd have a deal if the owners had just been willing to bend on some of the system issues to allow the players to save a shred of dignity, but the owners felt compelled to give absolutely nothing when the major battle -- the 50/50 split -- had already been won. Not content with stealing their lunch money for the next ten years, they also wanted to crush their soul. Maybe it stoked their egos, but it was bad business. It may take the league a decade or more to recover from this. Very bad business.

Sigh.

Outside

Hey Tark, great to hear from you. Here's hoping all is well with you and that you're enjoying lots of sunshine.

It seems as though there are as many opinions as fans regarding the lockout. Whatever winds up happening, it seems to me that it will very likely have far-reaching effects on the NBA rather than being some kind of stopgap thing.

All the best,

Sam

gyso wrote:NBA owners are on a power play?

The NBA labor dispute isn't about profitability or parity. Those are just code words. The laborious negotiations between the NBA and the NBA Players Association are about money and power.

NBA owners feel the players have attained too much of both, and they want to take them back, even if it requires shuttering the league for a year.

The NBA has always been a players' league, but now it is the players' league. Star players like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and Carmelo Anthony basically held their teams -- and to a degree the entire NBA -- hostage before dictating where they played and with whom, all while cashing in with new lucrative, long-term deals.

For egotistical, imperious, successful entrepreneurs, a description that fits almost all NBA owners, it's difficult to accept an industry in which the employees dictate the terms.

Call this the revenge of Dan Gilbert. The choleric Cavaliers owner was essentially powerless as his franchise player, James, took his talents to Miami in a self-aggrandizing television special. Gilbert's team was humiliated on national television and instantly devalued. The Cavs went from contenders to a league laughingstock, posting an NBA-record 26-game losing streak with LeBron's Leftovers.

Now, like a jilted lover, Gilbert is part of a group of hardline owners who want to bring the players to their knees and the pendulum of power swinging back in their direction.

NBA owners don't just want a victory in the labor game -- they have that already with the players agreeing to decrease their percentage of basketball-related income from 57 percent to as low as 50 percent -- they want a 40-point rout replete with scrubs (Cleveland, Indiana, Sacramento) throwing down dunks and mugging for the cameras in the final seconds.

No wonder the NBA is headed for a different kind of court, with the players association decertifying after rejecting the owners' final offer.

The owners' take-it-or-leave-it proposal would lower minimum salaries by 12 percent; trim the maximum length of contracts from six years to five; cut the annual salary increases for a player that re-signs with his team from 10.5 percent to 6.5 percent (players like James and Bosh who were sign-and-trade free agents would only be eligible for four-year deals with a 3.5 percent jump per year); prohibit teams from offering a contract extension to a player they acquire via trade for six months (the 'Melo Mandate); bar teams that exceed the luxury tax from making sign-and-trade deals, starting in 2013 and replace the dollar-for-dollar tariff for exceeding the luxury tax with a more onerous tiered system that penalizes teams up to $3.25 per dollar depending on how far they go over the cap.

There's more on the second page, here is some of it:

There is also what we'll call the LeBron Rule, a stipulation that all but ends the early termination option (ETO) in contracts that LeBron, Wade and Bosh all used to become free agents last summer, and that Dwight Howard and Chris Paul could utilize to hit the market this summer.

Now, a player (and a team) could only have an option year if the first-year salary is less than the NBA average player salary, which will never happen for an NBA star, or if the option years are non-guaranteed.

and:

NBA stars like LeBron, Kobe, D-Wade, Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose aren't just employees. They're the product, and that's the irony here. The NBA is trying to slay a monster it created.

The NBA's success has been built on the idea of peddling personalities and building individual brands. It's how the NBA rose to prominence. It wasn't Celtics vs. Lakers. It was Bird vs. Magic, or Magic vs. Michael, or Jordan vs. Barkley. No league has emphasized individual accomplishment and personality like the NBA over the past 25-30 years. The league empowered its star players by putting them above its teams.

It's no wonder that they ended up with some self-serving, entitled, egomaniacal players like LeBron. But what the NBA is trying to do is jam the tooth-paste back in the tube, one messy, desperate dip at a time.

The idea of star players steering what team they play for didn't start with James. Back in 1975 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar let the Milwaukee Bucks know that they could either trade him to a more desirable NBA locale or watch him walkaway to the ABA. Abdul-Jabbar forced his way to the Los Angeles Lakers.

In 1996, 14 years before LeBron's Decision, a young, telegenic, charismatic franchise player for a small-market franchise used free agency to abscond for sunnier climes. Shaquille O'Neal, the Big Mercenary, left Orlando and landed with the Lakers.

This is not a minor correction. The new owners are of a different breed (from Ferenginar?) and professional teams are more to them than mere toys.

Here's the link:

http://articles.boston.com/2011-11-18/sports/30415756_1_nba-owners-james-and-bosh-lower-minimum-salaries

gyso,

NBA stars like LeBron, Kobe, D-Wade, Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose aren't just employees. They're the product, and that's the irony here. The NBA is trying to slay a monster it created.

The NBA's success has been built on the idea of peddling personalities and building individual brands. It's how the NBA rose to prominence. It wasn't Celtics vs. Lakers. It was Bird vs. Magic, or Magic vs. Michael, or Jordan vs. Barkley. No league has emphasized individual accomplishment and personality like the NBA over the past 25-30 years. The league empowered its star players by putting them above its teams.

It's no wonder that they ended up with some self-serving, entitled, egomaniacal players like LeBron. But what the NBA is trying to do is jam the tooth-paste back in the tube, one messy, desperate dip at a time.

He's preaching to the choir here. Just speaking for myself, I've been damning the NBA for hyping the individual stars rather than exalting team play for a long time. ESPN, with its focus on highlights (in its defense, all "news" organizations are time-constrained and look for short sound bites or videos that will grab the viewers' attention and hold it) throw kerosene on the fire because individual play ups their ratings too.

How to "get the toothpaste back in the tube"? Good question. Players, as a whole, make money by people buying their jerseys. Think they'll want to go back to being "just a member of the team"? Even bench warmers have every reason to want to focus on the stars since they share in the profit from the jerseys (even when it's the stars' jerseys being bought). In fact, that jersey money means more to them than it does to the guys who make $10M/year.

To nobody's surprise, I'm sure, I place much of the blame for this long-developing miasma on Mr. Potato Head. He's the author of the last CBA. He's the one who has been pushing the "star" aspect of basketball in league marketing for over 20 years now. Yes, teams had stars before him who had quite a bit of pull (Jabbar's demand for a trade from Milwaukee to LA was a good example that has been offered) but it never really got out of hand until David Stern took control. Everybody made money, so they followed him. Right over the cliff.

On the bright side, I'm really enjoying catching up on my reading. So many books on so many topics, so little time...


bob

.

Abdul-Jabbar, let's make note, in his power play in '75 took a very backhanded slap at the good folks of Milwaukee by saying they were not up to his cultural standards and he needed to be in a more intellectually stimuating environment. To my knowledge Kareem never met or associated with either Laverne & Shirley, or Lenny & Squiggy. That not withstanding the fans of Milwaukee worshiped him, and Kareem crapped on them and their feelings for him. In that sense, he was Lebron before Lebron. The ABA flight aspect was just a well placed dagger between the shoulder blades of Bucks' management.