Players Union to Host Meeting in Los Angeles Friday at LinesMaker

Players Union to Host Meeting in Los Angeles Friday

The NBA play­ers union can­not win the pub­lic rela­tions war — the fans will side with the own­ers, espe­cially after the blunder-filled “let us play” twit­ter cam­paign Mon­day — and their only hope of sal­vaging what they have of the last labor deal is to stay unified.

So far that has gone well — with the NBA’s stars lead­ing the way the union is not break­ing ranks. Kobe Bryant and Kevin Gar­nett have made pleas with the play­ers to stay uni­fied, and the NBA rank-and-file loved Dwyane Wade snap­ping back at David Stern in a meet­ing a cou­ple weeks back.

To keep that going, there will be a play­ers meet­ing in Los Ange­les on Fri­day, with union head Billy Hunter and union pres­i­dent Derek Fisher fly­ing out, accord­ing to Chris Brous­sard at ESPN.

The union had orig­i­nally sched­uled this meet­ing for Mon­day, but Hunter post­poned it to stay and nego­ti­ate with David Stern and the owners.

The play­ers have han­dled this lock­out pretty well, keep­ing their heads down. They are hold­ing firm say­ing they want 53 per­cent of bas­ket­ball related income. They are in a tough spot because the play­ers never win in the minds of the pub­lic, whether they are in the right or not (and I think they are). We don’t relate to their salary, we don’t under­stand why you don’t show up for work when you make that much money.

But Mon­day when the play­ers started tweet­ing “let us play” they came off as hav­ing a “woe is me” atti­tude. It fell flat. You can’t do that when you make mil­lions and many Amer­i­cans are wor­ried about how to pay their health insur­ance bill. If it really was about the bas­ket­ball and not the money, you could take the own­ers last offer and still make more money than 99 per­cent of Amer­i­cans. It’s about the money. Own that.

So long as the union can stay together, they can get more money. But they may have to go to the brink of los­ing a full sea­son to do it.

Related Posts:

• Report: Group of 50 NBA Play­ers Threaten Union Decertification
• Titans’ Defen­sive Coor­di­na­tor Tells His Play­ers to “Put Fear in Guys”
• Bron­cos Play­ers Are Learn­ing to Tune In, Turn on to Tebowmania
• MLB Play­ers, Own­ers Close in on Deal
• FIA Fri­day Press Con­fer­ence – Abu Dhabi

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