Are Owners, Players Closer to a Deal Than It Seems? Maybe. at LinesMaker.com

Are Owners, Players Closer to a Deal Than It Seems? Maybe.

David Stern spent a lot of his post-negotiating ses­sion Tues­day try­ing to make a point — that the play­ers walked away from a fair deal, a 50/50 split of “bas­ket­ball related income.” It felt like spin at the time, in part because it was an infor­mal con­cept and part just how Stern por­trayed it.

Well, it was his spin. But a few reports from inside the bar­gain­ing room – par­tic­u­larly by Ken Berger at CBSSports.com — have leaked out and the real­ity of those infor­mal con­ver­sa­tions was that the own­ers and play­ers made real progress. The two sides may only be a cou­ple per­cent­age points apart, mean­ing more like $ 80 mil­lion a year than the $ 240 mil­lion in the last for­mal pro­pos­als from either side.

Still, that may well not be enough to save the start of the sea­son. There are a whole lot of hur­dles in the way to make a deal a reality.

Here is how Berger describes what was discussed.

The league’s offer, accord­ing to three peo­ple famil­iar with it, came in a range of 49–51 — with 49 per­cent guar­an­teed and a cap of 51 per­cent, the sources said….

While the own­ers were cau­cus­ing, a mem­ber of the play­ers’ group returned with a coun­ter­pro­posal — approx­i­mately 52 per­cent of BRI for the play­ers with no addi­tional expenses deducted. The play­ers’ coun­ter­pro­posal fol­lowed the for­mat pre­sented by the own­ers — a 51–53 per­cent band with 51 per­cent guar­an­teed and a cap of 53. League offi­cials rejected the offer, the sources said.

So while Hunter and Stern remained pub­licly entrenched in the eco­nomic posi­tions of their most recent for­mal pro­pos­als — with the play­ers ask­ing for 53 per­cent and the league offer­ing effec­tively 47, the real­ity is this: the gap has closed to 2 per­cent­age points of BRI, the dif­fer­ence between the mid­point of the two offers.

For the record, union offi­cials are ticked at Stern for tak­ing a side con­ver­sa­tion public.

There is hope there, if you’re feel­ing opti­mistic (50–52 per­cent range seems the mid­dle ground, although how many expenses the own­ers get to take off the top impacts that num­ber). That said, there are also a whole lot of hur­dles between where the sides are late Tues­day night and where they need to be to get to a deal. Likely too many.

The pri­mary one is that no talks are sched­uled. David Stern sounded like a man who wanted to talk again and he is wait­ing until Mon­day to can­cel reg­u­lar sea­son games in hopes the play­ers union will make one more push, accord­ing to Adrian Woj­narowski of Yahoo. How­ever, union chief Billy Hunter sounded like he was in no rush to meet again say­ing talks may not resume until next month.

That was in part because of the con­stituency in the nego­ti­at­ing room. Agents and star play­ers — guys like Kevin Gar­nett and Kobe Bryant who were there Tues­day, and LeBron James who was there last week — do not want the union to accept any­thing less than 53 per­cent of BRI. The entire rank and file does not feel the same way, but the stars are the hard­lin­ers and they likely can pull a major­ity with them right now.

Which brings us to the next big hur­dle — Hunter and Stern both would really have to sell a deal like the one infor­mally dis­cussed. Hunter already has agents talk­ing decer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the union and send­ing let­ters out to clients telling them not to accept a deal they don’t like. The stars can afford to hold out and be hard­lin­ers. Hunter would have to con­vince a major­ity of play­ers this was a good deal.

Stern has his own hard­line own­ers, smaller mar­ket own­ers and ones who bought in at high prices and want a labor win. This deal would be a major labor win, but would it be enough of one to please most own­ers? There are some out there that want play­ers to lose pay­checks and feel the sting, expect­ing that to lead to a bet­ter deal for owners.

Then there are the sys­tem ques­tions — if the play­ers come all the way down to 52 per­cent of BRI they are going to demand a soft-cap salary sys­tem sim­i­lar to what has been in place. That could be a hard sell with some own­ers in smaller mar­kets that want to hand­cuff the spend­ing power of larger markets.

That’s a big moun­tain still to climb.

But, they can climb it this week or they can pay a lot of lawyers a lot more money for a month or two then climb that exact same moun­tain later. It’s up to them. All that hangs in the bal­ance is the NBA sea­son and killing the momen­tum the league has built up in the past cou­ple seasons.

Related Posts:

• Coach Jack­son, Raiders Play­ers Sad­dened by Davis’ Death
• Can­cel­ing NBA’s First Two Weeks Would Cost Play­ers $200 Million
• NBA Nego­ti­at­ing Sacra­mento Arena Deal, Mal­oofs Not There
• Blame Falls on Stern, Own­ers for Loss of NBA Games
• Report: Own­ers Move Off Demand for Hard Salary Cap, Sort Of

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