NBA Lockout: BRI Is Still the Elephant in the Room at LinesMaker

NBA Lockout: BRI Is Still the Elephant in the Room

The NBA labor nego­ti­a­tions’ approach to the issue of BRI was pretty sim­ple on Sat­ur­day. See no evil, hear no evil, see no con­flict, make no progress. Both sides took BRI off the table and focused on sys­temic issues, try­ing to “break down the moun­tain” as Derek Fisher put it. It wasn’t a bad approach. Unfor­tu­nately, the best case sce­nario would have been get­ting to third base. Every­thing but. The fact that they’re still “miles apart” in the words of Billy Hunter only makes the sit­u­a­tion worse. Because what looms over the sys­temic hori­zon is the grand moun­tain of cash.

It’s been inter­est­ing to see the sides develop. Since the begin­ning, experts have said the debate was going to come down to BRI, to cold hard cash, the money split between the two sides. I’ve been among those peer­ing into some sort of myth­i­cal sce­nario in which money wasn’t every­thing. The talk from both sides indi­cated that the hard cap, the excep­tions, the sys­tem was as big of an issue as BRI. And were you to ask them on the street, both sides would tell you the same. But what we’ve seen the last two weeks indi­cates a pat­tern. There’s move­ment to be had in terms of how spend­ing is lim­ited. There’s move­ment to be had in the struc­ture. But the lockout’s only going to end when the two sides set­tle BRI. And that’s not hap­pen­ing any time soon.

From Howard Beck of the New York Times:

On Fri­day night, Yahoo! Sports reported this from the play­ers’ side:

Wade, James and Paul were at the fore­front of a strong play­ers pres­ence at a Park Avenue hotel for Friday’s con­tentious bar­gain­ing ses­sion. In a pri­vate union meet­ing prior to the bar­gain­ing ses­sion with own­ers, James kept reit­er­at­ing to the group of elite play­ers that they shouldn’t give back a greater share of the league’s basketball-related income (BRI) than what they’d already con­ceded in pre­vi­ous negotiations.

“We’re all together on 53 [per­cent], right?” James said. “All together on 53 right?”

via Wade, LeBron make stand in labor meet­ing – NBA – Yahoo! Sports.

The own­ers started some­where south of 44 per­cent, the play­ers started at the pre­vi­ous CBA’s mark of 57 per­cent. The play­ers have gone down four per­cent, the own­ers have gone up two. For the own­ers to be push­ing for a sub-50 mark for the play­ers is as nuts as the pre­vi­ous stick­ing point of a $ 54 mil­lion hard cap. They knew they weren’t get­ting that. They know they’re not get­ting a plus-50 BRI for them­selves. The very best case is a 50–50 split for them, and that would only come after, oh, los­ing an entire year, killing the sport and ruin­ing the fan­dom of mil­lions. Can they do it? Absolutely.

But this is the issue. It’s pos­si­ble the own­ers are just wait­ing for the play­ers to come down to 52 or 51. It’s pos­si­ble the play­ers are just wait­ing for the own­ers to come out of the freak­ing sub-basement. Until there’s move­ment from either side on what is appar­ently the abject lim­its for either side at this point.

It’s about money. It’s always been about money. It will always be about money.

Enjoy that, fans.

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