Thanks man. I have joked around about it on here, but this is huge for me and my family. My wife is going to have to go back to work. We are trying to find someone to help watch the kids when I am not around. Already cut back on the cable package and a few others things we didn't need. Hope this doesn't cost us any games. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk..... Cause I'm a balla'!
NBA COMMENCES LOCKOUT NEW YORK, June 30, 2011 - The National Basketball Association announced that it will commence a lockout of its players, effective at 12:01 am ET on July 1, until a new collective bargaining agreement is reached with the National BasketballPlayers Association. “The expiring collective bargaining agreement created a broken system that produced huge financial losses for our teams,” said NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver. “We need a sustainable business model that allows all 30 teams to be able to compete for a championship, fairly compensates our players, and provides teams, if well-managed, with an opportunity to be profitable.” “We have made several proposals to the union, including a deal targeting $2 billion annually as the players' share -- an average of approximately $5 million per player that could increase along with league revenue growth,” said Silver. “Elements of our proposal would also better align players’ pay with performance.” “We will continue to make every effort to reach a new agreement that is fair and in the best interests of our teams, our players, our fans, and our game.” During the lockout, players will not receive their salaries; teams will not negotiate, sign or trade player contracts; players will not be able to use team facilities for any purpose; and teams will not conduct or facilitate any summer camps, exhibitions, practices, workouts, coaching sessions, or team meetings. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk..... Cause I'm a balla'!
No, the current contract pays 57%, the players have offered to reduce their own pay to 54%, and the owners' offer would reduce it to about 40%.
That makes me think. What is a player? Does it include only players signed or drafted? Or guys who have your chance of ever getting a tryout? How do they define player in the contract? You'd better not talk to anybody until after your tryout. Even then, probably not.
Oh I definitely see a lack of ticket sales next year ... especially after they cancel the season in January when they fail to make enough headway to get a deal done. I have to ask though, are you planning to take your sign down to the Rose Quarter and hold it up outside the closed arena or will you protest from a curb somewhere?
After spending the last 15 minutes on the Blazers Management website I have concluded that without the players, there is nothing of interest to me in any other aspect of the team. They should just shut down the site until they return as a team. To me, the Portland Trail Blazers are the players and their coach(s). The management and office people have pretty much been a mix of incompetence and deceit since Allen bought the team, getting worse and worse with each new season. Best case scenario is PA sells the team during the lockout to someone other than Larry Miller and we start fresh with a group of honest, intelligent BASKETBALL managers.
It says teams, not players. Nate and management are part of the team, as is anyone who works for the Blazers.
Wrong my friend. Coaches and management are part of the orginization, not the "team". hat is why on every teams websites, there is coach and historical info and NOTHING to do with the current players. On my shows, they are reposting them and are only re-airing the ones that do not have players in them. They just put up one with me interviewing Monty in NOLA.
This is also why coaches and management are not allowed to contact any players....... 1 million dollar fine FAMS!
Wouldn't let me copy the link....... so here it is, nice article. NBA Monday: Let's Make A Deal By: Steve Kyler Let's Make A Deal: With the NBA in its third day of Lockout 2011, a number of you have asked what kind of deal I think would be fair for both sides. Now that we are Locked out and the owners have made it clear basketball could be lost unless the system changes, here is the deal I think can get done. Revenue Share: The NBA will book in an estimated $4.3 billion in gross revenue this season; the largest revenue pie in NBA history. The current agreement has the NBA and Players splitting the bulk of that revenue, Basketball Related Revenue, 57-43, with 57% of that figure going to the Players in salary and benefits. BRI this season is expected to be $3.8 billion. That's the figure the Players and Owners are fighting over. There is a complex formula used to set the salary cap and the Luxury tax levels as to insure salaries and benefits do not exceed 57% of revenues. The Players also currently pay in 8% of their salaries into an Escrow system that is used to reduce any overages in the 57% agreement. Under the current deal Players will receive $2.1 billion in salary and benefits this year, and based on growth over the last few years they would expect that figure to grow at the rate of about 3% to 4% each year under the current rules. The NBA and its Owners have been proposing a ten year deal, so over that span the current agreement would yield a projected $26 billion in salary and compensation to the Players. That's the number they get now. The Owners have offered a system that would lower the annual payment to under $2 billion a year, but altered that to a guaranteed payment of $2 billion for the first five years and an increasing revenue share based figure in years six through ten. Using the 4% growth rate the Owners are guaranteeing $2 billion as an annual salary, shaving off some $1.73 billion from the current system over a five year span. It's easy to say the Owners are guaranteeing $2 billion in salary and that's fair when benefits were $2.1 billion this year, the problem is in year five salaries and benefits should be $2.53 billion under the current system. The compromise here has to be the same split of revenues and growth that's in place now. The Players offered to give back a few percentage points in their last offer dropping their share from 57% to 54.3%, which amounts to a $1.23 billion giveback over the NBA's proposed ten year deal. The number that gets it done has to be closer to 52%. At 52% of BRI, the Players share in year one falls under the $2 billion mark, but stays above $2 billion for the balance of the agreement and returns $2.28 billion to the owners side of the table with salaries not materially affected outside of Year 1, and that can be resolved with a compromise that the salary for year one be set at $2 billion and each year after that would be computed based on a 52-48 split, with 52% of revenues going to the players. An even better compromise would be for the percentage to drop to 52% in year one through four and increase in year five to year ten, say something like 55% for the second half of the deal. The Owners would get immediate cost savings in the first four years and a more equitable split in years five to ten. Salary Ceiling: The NBA owners want to cap salaries. The NBA Players are ardently opposed to the idea and frequently say they get "religious" about this topic. The Players believe a hard or hardened salary cap will ultimately phase out the middle class in the NBA and further restrict player movement. The Players Association understands that freedom of movement drives up salaries and salary valuations and they will not agree to a deal that has a hard cap in it. That's going to be the hard to overcome. The NBA needs to cap salaries and they need to establish some level of competitive balance in the labor deal. The compromise here may simply be the value of the hard cap. The NBA proposed a "Flex Cap" idea, which would set a salary cap figure like the current system, and then establish a hard ceiling above that cap that no team can exceed. The current system has a Luxury Tax line which most teams view like a hard cap, so we may already be there. The NBA proposed a $62 million "flex cap" ceiling. That number may have to be closer to $65 to $70 million initially in order to get traction. The compromise here may have to be a phased introduction. For instance in year one the Flex ceiling may be $70 million on a salary cap number of $52.73 million. Year two would have a cap figure of $54.83 million and a Flex ceiling of $68 million. This will be the single hardest part of reaching a new deal, and a lot of this won't be as much about the idea of a hardened cap as much as the value. An $80 million ceiling on a $52.7 million cap will go over much easier than a $62 million ceiling on a $52.7 million cap. The other issue that has to be addressed in this concept is protecting the middle class of the NBA. To achieve that the current Mid-Level exception which was valued at $5.8 million last season would have to be retained. The compromise would be to change the value and length of the exception. The Players Association has proposed that the Mid-level be two exceptions, which if valued right would make more sense than one large exception that has brought on a number of bad decisions over its lifespan. Two Middle Class Exceptions make the most sense, valued at $3 million each, and can be no more than three years. That means basically 60 roster spots per season would earn $3 million or more. The exception's value goes up on a percentage basis tied to growth of revenue. If the value is $3 million in year one and growth is 4%, the value in year ten would be $4.26 million. Rolling Back Existing Costs: The NBA owners want to rollback existing contracts and that's going to be a tough sell. The Owners latest proposal smartly went after the 8% Escrow that Players are already paying, and for the most part have been losing for the last several years. The value of the escrow fund this year is said to be roughly $160 million, and the Players have been losing that money for the last three years. This year they are projected to get those funds back, but this is money that has been paid in and individually does not represent a huge windfall for the players. The compromise here might be a phased rollback. This will be a tough sell for the Players, but this combined with an altered revenue split makes a huge difference to the owners and could earn other concessions in the process. The idea here is that for the next three years the Players surrender their 8%, the difference is this amount is coming off the top and is immediately cap space, something the current Escrow dollars are not. Players have been paying in, but not seeing the benefits in terms of additional cap space to help them add talent. This compromise would do that. So for Year one through three the Players surrender 8% on all contracts in effect when the deal is signed. If the Players revenue split drops to 52% and the Owners get an 8% rollback; that swings the NBA roughly $326 million to the Owner's side all by itself, which is really the magic number. Length Of Contracts: The biggest issue in the NBA in terms of bad deals are long term deals. Most players want to hit free agency as frequently as possible. Currently the NBA allows a six year deal if a player stays with his current team and a five year deal if he leaves his team via free agency. The compromise here is pretty easy, three year deals on players leaving their home team and four year deals for players that remain on their home team. As we addressed above, the Mid level Exception would be replaced with two Middle Class Exceptions, valued at $3 million and can be no longer than three years. The current Rookie Salary scale would be retained, which gives teams options to retain drafted talent for up to four years. One other compromise change would be the elimination of restricted free agency, if the owners want massive givebacks financially they are going to have to give some items back and restricted free agency is one area where Players are held captive by the system. New TV Deals : This is the tricky one. Unlike the NFL who will be negotiating new TV packages inside the next three years. The NBA's major TV contracts are locked in through 2016, however if the Owners get their ten year agreement, a new TV contract will drop inside the span of this deal. That revenue gain has to be accounted for in the deal, namely because the Players would be conceding revenue percentages across the board, and there needs to be a carrot of giveback if the landscape changes. The NBA's current TV deals earn the league roughly $930 million per year. A compromised term may be to agree to apply percentage corrections in the event of a major windfall in the next TV deal. Something to the effect of a percentage change in revenue split if the new TV deal yields a certain percentage gain. We agree to a 52-48 split, but if at any point the combined TV revenues eclipse $1.1 billion, we increase the revenue percentage by 1 basis point. If TV revenue increased to $1.3 billion, we increase the revenue share by 2 basis points. That's a double bonus for the players, as their share of that revenue not only goes up because revenue goes up, but it also increases because the revenue percentage does too. If the Owners want a ten year labor deal they will have to address meaningful rewards on new TV deals and those rewards could be nice inducements to get harder concepts pushed through. The Players would be smart to engineer in a "bubble provision" – if at any point in the Labor deal revenues jump way outside the norm – say 20% to 25%, that triggers an opt-out provision for the Players. A lot of the concessions in this deal are about the radically different revenue environment the NBA finds itself in, if that changes dramatically in a positive way then the Players should have the chance to renegotiate based on the success. Revenue Sharing: Currently the NBA and its team's shares about $60 million a year in revenue. That Revenue Sharing insures that no NBA team earns less than $60 million per season. The Players want to see more robust Revenue Sharing and believe that solves a lot of the NBA's profit problems. The Owners agree to certain extent. The NBA has said that once a labor deal is reached, some $180 million to $200 million a year would be shared, but only after a labor deal is completed. The Players want revenue sharing tied to the labor deal which insures they have a voice and a contract on the subject which is something the Owners are opposed to mainly because they'd like the freedom to change the arrangement as market conditions dictate. They cannot have their cake, major salary concessions, and eat it too, control Revenue Sharing format. If the Owners want monies from the Players, Revenue Sharing has to be written into the deal it cannot be two separate components.. Another compromise that the Players should push for is a unified accounting process. There has been a lot of debate on whether teams are or are not losing money and for the sake of a clear playing field both sides should agree on a unified accounting program and retain an impartial third party to keep the books on this labor deal. Again, if the Owners want major salary give backs, clarity in the accounting and an agreed accounting system only helps the process over the life of the deal and negotiations on any future deals. Franchise Provision : The Players will not like it, but the NBA has to fight for some level of Franchise Player protection. The Owners had proposed a mutual designation that teams and players could assign to one player on their roster; a star provision. Let's take it one step further and call this the "Kobe provision". The idea here is that a team can have one Kobe provision player on their roster at one time. The Player and the Team have to agree at the time of his contract signing that he is that teams' Kobe player. Once both sides agree that a player is that teams Kobe player, the salary amount and length do not count against the cap up to a defined maximum value. The wrinkle here is that Player cannot be traded for the life of that contract and a team can only have one Kobe provision player at a time. You can still sign additional star players if you have cap space, but you only have one franchise player. This still opens up teams to bad decisions or injuries, which is why pre-defined buyout terms for both sides should be written in to allow for a divorce down the road. If the Wizards made a bad decision with Gilbert Arenas, they simply write him a check for a full years' worth of salary and part ways. If Carmelo Anthony wants out of Denver, he simply writes them a check for a full years' worth of salary and he's a free agent that year. The Players may not like the restrictive nature of it, but assuming it's a mutual consent agreement and the Players involved benefit from it greatly, and it might not be as hard to get through as say a Franchise Tag like in the NFL. Players always have the option to say no to the designation at contract time. The NBA Players' Association has made it clear that they feel the terms on the table should be thrown out completely and a new frame work crafted, so much of what we think we know may end up in the garbage and much of what the Owners have proposed may not end up in the finished deal. The deal that gets done will have to compromise on several levels, so the above is just one view of how both sides could do that.
Very illuminating, thanks! Steve Kyler's Unified Theory of Everything. Here's the link. http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?STORY_ID=20335
Most of the players in the NBA would be behind bars, working in fast food or in the janitorial field without the NBA and it mega billion dollar owners paying them to play a game. I don't see how a 50/50 split isn't fair for the precious players? The owners need a solution in place to help them from themselves. The current system is broken because teams seem to have to overpay to add players with injury issues because if they don't, another will. If the other owners don't it's called collusion
