If the players decertify in order to have the ability to file anti trust lawsuits to try and weaken the owners resolve, the owners have a novel idea of asking the courts to declare all contracts void and thus making every player a free agent and the NBA able to entirely rebuild and restructure the league however they see fit as there would be no union or players. It also would make any and all anti trust lawsuits void. So if you were the commissioner or an owner, how would you build the new NBA?
Well if I was a small market owner I'd probably want a time machine since I just lost my best player to a major market by voiding his contract.
Would there be no salary cap or restrictions of any kind on player salaries? If the NBA lost it's collective bargaining agreement and there was no longer a player union each individual employee and each owner could agree to whatever contract they wanted to?
Whatever they wanted to do. They can change rules of any kind as they see fit as there'd be no players. They could even probably set rules that would be outside a CBA ability to change.
They still have to conform to labor laws. They are able to have a lot of the caps on player salaries because the players have agreed to it as a union with a collectively bargained labor agreement. If no agreement existed I'm not sure owners by themselves can agree to any and all caps they want, but I'm not a labor attorney.
I'm wondering if the owners could set up the league in such a way that when they stock the teams again, and the players will immediately unionize and strike, that they can set up some financials to be bargain proof so as to bring some financial sanity back to the league. .
