NEW YORK — The final blow came swiftly and decisively, an array of NBA superstars standing behind union president Derek Fisher and executive director Billy Hunter yesterday in a Manhattan hotel, having just finished the most important negotiating session of this contentious summer.
We have known all along this was the end game, all these months of campaigning and posturing coming down to one last gasp to determine whether the NBA season would start on time. And finally yesterday here they were, the players digging in, the owners holding firm, and still no hint of understanding about what the NBA is doing to itself.
“We engaged in more intense discussions today to see if we could close what remains to be a very large gap,” said Fisher, the Los Angeles Lakers guard. “And today was not the day for us to get this done.”
After nearly five hours of meetings that ended with no new collective bargaining agreement, the NBA has called off the rest of the preseason. If a deal isn’t reached in principle by Monday — and no more meetings were scheduled as of last night — the first two weeks of the regular season will be canceled as well.
For the second time in the last 14 years, the NBA will almost certainly miss games due to a labor impasse.
“We’ll have no choice,” commissioner David Stern said.
In reality, this isn’t the end of the line for the 2011-12 season, or even close to it. If you look within all the ominous rhetoric from both sides yesterday, there might even be a reasonable enough compromise to save a large portion of the regular season.
But symbolically, yesterday was a disaster. Because for whatever progress the two sides may make in the coming weeks, they have grossly underestimated the danger now of public anger turning to apathy.
With the obvious importance of this meeting, with the implications so clear, there was simply no room to walk away from yesterday’s negotiations appearing so far apart. The last thing the NBA could afford was perception taking hold that the 2011-12 season might not happen at all.
And yet, that’s the perception both the players association and Stern were all too willing to create.
All the talk about the hard salary cap the owners want, guaranteed contracts the players want, potential changes in the NBA age requirement and all the ancillary stuff that has to be negotiated? They didn’t touch any of that yesterday.
This seminal meeting in the heart of Times Square was about one topic and one topic only: How to split the NBA’s $4 billion revenue pie.
“It was the elephant in the room,” Hunter said.
That’s where the negotiation began, involving the likes of Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ben Gordon representing the players. It’s also where it ended, with the union offering to whittle its share from 57 percent of basketball-related income in the previous CBA to 53 percent.
That would be a significant shift of revenues to the owners, who claim $300 million in collective losses last season. The owners countered by offering the players 47 percent. Put simply, those six percentage points separate the NBA from being back in business.
“We continue to be open-minded about what a final deal will look like, but today was not the day to try and continue to close that type of gap,” Fisher said. “It just wasn’t a place we feel we can go.”
“In order for us to have the robust revenue sharing the owners want and the players want, we have to be profitable as a league,” Stern said. “There’s simply no way what was [offered by the players] leads to profitability.”
Fans, however, are long past caring about percentage points. This labor fight has been coming for months, even years, and the lack of outrage about the state of the NBA is palpable. People want basketball back, sure, especially on the heels of a renaissance season and a championship series that drew huge television ratings. But everything in the NBA is more fragile than the NFL, which was always going to bounce back quickly once its lockout ended.
Outside of a handful of cities with championship-caliber teams — Miami, Dallas, New York, Los Angeles and Oklahoma City — fans are less likely to be angry about missing NBA games in November and December and more likely to simply forget. Season-ticket holders may even question why they’re spending thousands of dollars to watch basketball in the first place.
“We’re not leaving here today expecting to meet tomorrow or any time in the near future,” Fisher said.
Maybe that’s true, maybe not. The owners’ plan all along has been to make players miss paychecks and force them into a bad deal. Perhaps they come back together and work around a 50-50 “concept” that was floated in the meeting yesterday and dismissed by the players. Or perhaps emotions take over, positions harden, everything falls apart and the entire season goes to waste.
Either way, as of yesterday, we are past the point of winners and losers in this lockout. After two press conferences and two spin jobs, there is only one unassailable truth: The NBA’s chance to minimize the damage of this labor debacle is gone. The consequences only get worse from here.
We have known all along this was the end game, all these months of campaigning and posturing coming down to one last gasp to determine whether the NBA season would start on time. And finally yesterday here they were, the players digging in, the owners holding firm, and still no hint of understanding about what the NBA is doing to itself.
“We engaged in more intense discussions today to see if we could close what remains to be a very large gap,” said Fisher, the Los Angeles Lakers guard. “And today was not the day for us to get this done.”
After nearly five hours of meetings that ended with no new collective bargaining agreement, the NBA has called off the rest of the preseason. If a deal isn’t reached in principle by Monday — and no more meetings were scheduled as of last night — the first two weeks of the regular season will be canceled as well.
For the second time in the last 14 years, the NBA will almost certainly miss games due to a labor impasse.
“We’ll have no choice,” commissioner David Stern said.
In reality, this isn’t the end of the line for the 2011-12 season, or even close to it. If you look within all the ominous rhetoric from both sides yesterday, there might even be a reasonable enough compromise to save a large portion of the regular season.
But symbolically, yesterday was a disaster. Because for whatever progress the two sides may make in the coming weeks, they have grossly underestimated the danger now of public anger turning to apathy.
With the obvious importance of this meeting, with the implications so clear, there was simply no room to walk away from yesterday’s negotiations appearing so far apart. The last thing the NBA could afford was perception taking hold that the 2011-12 season might not happen at all.
And yet, that’s the perception both the players association and Stern were all too willing to create.
All the talk about the hard salary cap the owners want, guaranteed contracts the players want, potential changes in the NBA age requirement and all the ancillary stuff that has to be negotiated? They didn’t touch any of that yesterday.
This seminal meeting in the heart of Times Square was about one topic and one topic only: How to split the NBA’s $4 billion revenue pie.
“It was the elephant in the room,” Hunter said.
That’s where the negotiation began, involving the likes of Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ben Gordon representing the players. It’s also where it ended, with the union offering to whittle its share from 57 percent of basketball-related income in the previous CBA to 53 percent.
That would be a significant shift of revenues to the owners, who claim $300 million in collective losses last season. The owners countered by offering the players 47 percent. Put simply, those six percentage points separate the NBA from being back in business.
“We continue to be open-minded about what a final deal will look like, but today was not the day to try and continue to close that type of gap,” Fisher said. “It just wasn’t a place we feel we can go.”
“In order for us to have the robust revenue sharing the owners want and the players want, we have to be profitable as a league,” Stern said. “There’s simply no way what was [offered by the players] leads to profitability.”
Fans, however, are long past caring about percentage points. This labor fight has been coming for months, even years, and the lack of outrage about the state of the NBA is palpable. People want basketball back, sure, especially on the heels of a renaissance season and a championship series that drew huge television ratings. But everything in the NBA is more fragile than the NFL, which was always going to bounce back quickly once its lockout ended.
Outside of a handful of cities with championship-caliber teams — Miami, Dallas, New York, Los Angeles and Oklahoma City — fans are less likely to be angry about missing NBA games in November and December and more likely to simply forget. Season-ticket holders may even question why they’re spending thousands of dollars to watch basketball in the first place.
“We’re not leaving here today expecting to meet tomorrow or any time in the near future,” Fisher said.
Maybe that’s true, maybe not. The owners’ plan all along has been to make players miss paychecks and force them into a bad deal. Perhaps they come back together and work around a 50-50 “concept” that was floated in the meeting yesterday and dismissed by the players. Or perhaps emotions take over, positions harden, everything falls apart and the entire season goes to waste.
Either way, as of yesterday, we are past the point of winners and losers in this lockout. After two press conferences and two spin jobs, there is only one unassailable truth: The NBA’s chance to minimize the damage of this labor debacle is gone. The consequences only get worse from here.
