Garnett, Kobe, Pierce Shut Down 50/50 Talks Before Deadline on Their Own at LinesMaker

Garnett, Kobe, Pierce Shut Down 50/50 Talks Before Deadline on Their Own

In a way, I’m kind of glad for stuff like this. I mean, the lock­out had become down­right depress­ing. Both sides were “miles apart” but “ready to make a deal.” We’ve lost games, good games, which may or may not be resched­uled. Both sides seem more inter­ested in rhetoric than progress, and it’s become about ego as much as it is about money, both of which are pretty dis­gust­ing in the times we live in.

But this? This is pretty funny. Not “JaVale McGee said the play­ers were fold­ing to a half-dozen reporters with tape recorders in their hands right in front of his face and then denied it on Twit­ter before Derek Fisher smacked him down” funny, but it’s pretty funny. And once again it shows that the play­ers, despite being in most people’s minds on the side of right in the dis­pute, are woe­fully out of their league.

The first news came out of a Bill Sim­mons col­umn. Those are typ­i­cally filled with lit­tle nuggets of insider infor­ma­tion, par­tic­u­larly about the NBA, nes­tled in with the real­ity tele­vi­sion and mid-90-s prison break drama movie ref­er­ences, but it’s hard to catch them, so they’re not treated as news, since Sim­mons isn’t a news reporter or breaker. But it was enough to make peo­ple stop and go, “Wait, what?”

From Grant­land:

Should some­one who’s earned over $ 300 mil­lion (includ­ing endorse­ments) and has deferred pay­checks com­ing really be telling guys who have made 1/100th as much as him to fight the fight and stand strong and not care about get­ting paid? And what are Garnett’s cre­den­tials, exactly? Dur­ing one of the sin­gle biggest meet­ings (last week, on Tues­day), Hunter had Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce and Gar­nett (com­bined years spent in col­lege: three) nego­ti­ate directly with Stern in some sort of mis­guided “Look how resolved we are, you’re not gonna intim­i­date us!” ploy that back­fired so badly that one of their teams’ own­ers was sum­moned into the meet­ing specif­i­cally to calm his player down and undo some of the dam­age. (I’ll let you guess the player. It’s not hard.) And this helped the sit­u­a­tion … how? And we thought this was going to work … why?

via Bill Sim­mons Avoids a Few Sub­jects Before Mak­ing His Week 6 NFL Picks – Grantland.

Because we’re pride­ful, Bill. And often times, very dumb with our deci­sion making.

That was going to slip through the cracks, though. A vague ref­er­ence with­out nam­ing names in Sim­mons’ col­umn wasn’t going to pen­e­trate. But this will. From TrueHoop:

As Stern has recounted a dozen times since, not long after what was sup­posed to have been the hall­way con­ver­sa­tion that saved the sea­son, some­thing odd and wholly unex­pected hap­pened. There was a knock on the door where Stern was sell­ing his own­ers on the idea. The play­ers wanted to talk.

When they con­vened, instead of the union’s head, Hunter, or their nego­ti­at­ing com­mit­tee of Mau­rice Evans, Matt Bon­ner, Roger Mason, Theo Ratliff, Etan Thomas and Chris Paul, rep­re­sent­ing the play­ers were Fisher, Kessler, and three super­stars who had been to very few of the meet­ings at all: Kevin Gar­nett, Paul Pierce and Kobe Bryant.

A bad sign: Pierce was still wear­ing his backpack.

The play­ers had two pieces of news that shocked the league: 50/50 was not good enough. And there was noth­ing fur­ther to discuss.

via True­Hoop Blog – ESPN.

Abbott goes on to note that those play­ers had not been to every meet­ing the play­ers were invited to, much less the ses­sions the two sides had held pri­vately. And that the own­ers were bewil­dered by what in the name of Stern just happened.

In essence, you have three vet­eran play­ers inter­ven­ing on behalf of the union, shut­ting down talks when a poten­tial deal was within reach.

Now, some things to remember:

50/50 is not a real com­pro­mise. It’s a win for the own­ers. Say­ing they started at 46 and com­pro­mised at 50 is like if I were to go to a BMW sales­man and offer $ 500 for a brand new car, him giv­ing the list price, and then me claim­ing that $ 5,000 was a com­pro­mise. It’s not. It’s a win. But the union rec­og­nized that this deal would keep most if not all of the essen­tial things they wanted and would let them live to fight another day.
Talks didn’t end at this point. There was more to it. A deal could have been sal­vaged. Who knows, if the own­ers had said, “Fine, how about 51 per­cent?” the play­ers might have shaken their hands and walked out the door. But we’ll never know, because it was par­tially on the own­ers to respond, and they responded by say­ing “Well, I guess we’re done here. Guess we’ll go extort the money we want from you via eco­nomic siege.”
But you know what’s hard for an owner to do? Take you seri­ously as a bar­gain­ing entity when the same four peo­ple you’ve been meet­ing with from two years van­ish into a hotel while three play­ers with­out a law degree between them come in to tell you what’s what. And one of them is Kevin Gar­nett, who has the emo­tional tem­per­ance of a wolver­ine jacked up on Red Bull and mesca­line. None of the play­ers should have gone in with­out Hunter or Fisher. None of them would have helped, they would have only hurt. There’s lead­er­ship, and there’s a mis­un­der­stand­ing of the nego­ti­a­tion process. And the play­ers plunged into a big pool of the latter.But if you’re going to go that route, you want the most sta­ble, well-reasoned, cold-blooded guys you can find. Pierce? Sure. Bryant? Absolutely. And Gar­nett is known for being very per­son­able off the court. But from these reports, it sure seems like he went dog-off-the-chain like it was Game 7 of the Finals. His inten­tions were noble. His approach was regrettable.

This, com­bined with the JaVale McGee saga from Fri­day, paints the pic­ture that the play­ers are out of their depth. Some of the play­ers know what’s going on. Their union is doing the best it can to keep it together. They’re blast­ing Stern in pub­lic while try­ing to reach a deal to get the play­ers pay­checks. Hunter report­edly gave his bless­ing to the con­fronta­tion as a tac­tic to try and blow the own­ers back off their hard line, some­thing he’s strug­gled with. But as it stand, it does not come off as an impres­sive show of strength. It seems like a Jr. High protest.

The own­ers waged this lock­out, have drug their heels to get the deal they want, have exerted every influ­ence they have to “crush the union” as reports sug­gested they wanted months ago. But the play­ers? They’re run­ning head­long into the own­ers’ swing.

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• Report: Rock­ets Make Offer Sheet to Marc Gasol, Work­ing on Sign-and-Trade
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