Fisher, Hunter Respond to Stern With Tough Words of Their Own at BetLM

Fisher, Hunter Respond to Stern With Tough Words of Their Own

After David Stern’s Mag­i­cal Media Tour on Thurs­day and Fri­day, the play­ers needed to respond before a medi­a­tor puts the lock on both sides next week. And after mak­ing an “armed and dan­ger­ous” ref­er­ence, union exec­u­tive direc­tor Billy Hunter con­tin­ued along with union pres­i­dent Derek Fisher in push­ing back hard against the com­mish. Var­i­ous quotes from the and other sources:

Fisher expressed opti­mism that there would be a sea­son, which is con­trasted by the dour approach of both Stern and Hunter. Except Fisher’s asser­tion is based more on call­ing what he feels is Stern’s bluff.

“My gut tells me that there’s no way Com­mis­sioner Stern and the NBA would dam­age their busi­ness by mak­ing us miss a whole sea­son,” Fisher said Fri­day after a union meet­ing at the Bev­erly Hilton.

Regard­ing David Stern’s asser­tion that the absence of a deal on Tues­day could lead the can­cel­la­tion of games at Christ­mas, nearly two months away, Fisher shrugged it off as “arbitrary.”

“That’s an arbi­trary dead­line just to throw out on Com­mis­sioner Stern’s part,” Fisher said. “We don’t see it that way. That’s just arbi­trary, with no other pur­pose than to sway player sentiment.”

Fisher also was quick to shut down talk of JaVale McGee’s com­ments about there being “guys ready to fold in the room,” a quote that McGee later denied on Twit­ter… despite about eight reporters hav­ing heard, and recorded, the com­ments. Fisher did not exactly cover McGee’s tail publicly.

“The per­son that spent the least amount of time in the room has no abil­ity to make that state­ment,” Fisher said.

Billy Hunter com­mented that for nearly two years, the league had been push­ing for “guar­an­teed prof­itabil­ity,” a term the union had shelved for sev­eral months, only to bring it back with a vengeance. Hunter said the union replied that a sys­tem that pro­vided each NBA team with a guar­an­teed aver­age profit of $ 10 to $ 30 mil­lion “sim­ply did not exist.”

If you’re won­der­ing if it was Rhetoric Day in the NBA Lock­out, it was. Both sides were vol­ley­ing shots at one another. But with McGee’s ran­dom and pro­foundly stu­pid com­ment, the NBPA still found a way to lose the day. The pres­sure is on play­ers to com­ment when­ever they’re at an event. The own­ers face no such pres­sure. And as a result, we’re learn­ing why the union has been ret­i­cent to put its play­ers first and forefront.

Finally, it’s impor­tant to note the dis­ap­point­ing turnout. Less than 30 play­ers attended the meet­ing, with most play­ers vis­it­ing col­leges for Mid­night Mad­ness (Dwyane Wade, John Wall, DeMar­cus Cousins just to name a few).

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