IMO the worsening world econony and stock markets favor the owners

stance and of them eventually getting most of what they want. The economic outlook is looking worse and worse and IMO that does not bode well for the NBA players. Very bad timing for a possible strike and perhaps sitting out a year.

My advice is get what you can now cause it will likely we less the longer you wait.

 

You say that the economy will worsen, forcing owners to decrease their offer. But won't this worsening affect owners as much as players? It's not logical that players should hurry to make a deal more than owners.

 

Isn't it the owners who are locked into payments on arenas, etc? It's not like if there are no games to play, the arena becomes free. If you assume the owners have investments in other assets such as stocks, bonds, etc, and the markets plummet, it seems to me it's going to be harder for them to cover those fixed costs.

Also, it's not merely a game of "who gets hit the worst will flinch."

If I pay you one dollar to whack me in the head with a baseball bat, and you require me to pay two dollars to whack you in the head with a baseball bat, is anybody really winning this game? We're both getting whacked in the head with bats.

Similarly, with every day of the lockout the owner's franchise becomes a little less valuable. The last lockout caused a major hit to popularity of the NBA, which in turn devalued somewhat the franchises. They didn't suffer forever, but if you are an owner wanting to sell in the next few years, it's got to make you think.

Obviously, there are a lot of reasons why owners hate lockouts. Otherwise, they'd never sign a CBA, never recognize a union, and just close down the league every year or two and drive player salaries down to minimum wage.

 

HUH? "force" the owner's to lower their offer? No, it may "force" the players to accept the owners current offer because it's hard to argue an improving or even stable financial environment given what is going on in the economy. The owners in my opinion are already prepared to sit out the season, and are much better prepared financially to do so than the players.

When more and more people are out of work and afraid for their job, and see their retiremant assets dwindle with declining markets, it's IMO very hard for the NBA players to hold out for the status quo and not be willing to give up quite a bit, since most Americans are and have been doing with less for many, many years and it appears the economy and stock markey could be worsening again.

There is not much sympathy for NBA players who make millions when the they will still make millions no matter what CBA is agreed to.

 

Your whole post simply concerns the PR angle of who will be more popular with fans. This is irrelevant to owners and players who are negotiating in real dollars for themselves, not popularity dollars for the fans. There is one exception in your post, this sentence, which I'll answer.

Each side loses money by sitting out, and each side will gain money if it wins. So I don't see the difference in motivation you see between the 2 sides. Someone should draw a graph to find intersections of these curves: for each side (owners and players), the gain in income over the next 10 years vs. the loss in income during the one lockout season. The intersections of those 4 lines might clarify our thinking or it might not.

 

It depends, but common logic says that billionaires would have a bigger cushion than millionaires, and NBA players aren't generally known for making sound business decisions.

 

True, but most, if not all, of the owners have other streams of revenue, so they may not negotiate in good faith. That was the argument Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Peyton Manning tried to make when the disbanded the union and took the NFL to court. The courts didn't buy it then, and I don't think they'll buy it now if the NBAPA tries a similar tactic.

Simply put, the NBA players need their jobs a heck of a lot more than most of the owners need their jobs. Plus, teams like Charlotte and New Orleans may actually want to miss a season due to the massive amounts of money they are losing. The Blazers even operate in the red, and if it was Paul Allen's only source of income, perhaps he'd want to not lose millions of dollars for a year or two.

 

The lockout favors the owners period. Most if not all have many other businesses that make them money.

 

Hence them not negotiating in good faith. Hell their not even negotiating between themselves in good faith it sounds like, with no alignment or new developments on revenue sharing.

Revenue sharing a vital (yet secretive) component to talks
http://www.nba.com/2011/news/featur.../revenue-sharing-still-vital/?ls=iref:nbahpt1

 

Did you get to read "Idea Man" yet? It sounded like he was not willing to keep spending money either.

 

The majority of NBA owners are not billionaires: http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/16/lakers-nets-blazers-magic-business-sports-nba-billionaires.html

It says that 10 of the 30 owners are.

Interestingly, Paul Allen isn't the league's wealthiest owner anymore (it's now Prokorov). Allen fell so far from #1 because....he made a lot of unsound business decisions.

 

And the players are????

They know, for a fact, the teams are losing money and the only solution is either a hard cap or non fully guaranteed salaries. Yet they seem to be fighting among themselves and broken away from the agents.

 

Wow, only 10 billionaires?? Why, the rest of the owners will probably be on the corner with tin cups, asking for our spare change!

Plus, one of Allen's worst decisions was buying the Blazers, at least in terms of making money off of them. It's a hobby to him. He actually makes money off of the Seabags, btw, so not only does he have another toy, but that one is making money for him.

 

Maybe it's a meaningless distinction. But when I think of a billionaire, I think of a guy who has a, "Who gives a fuck, it's only money" attitude. Somebody with "only" $500m always struck me as the kind of person who worried more about where the next hundred mil went. *shrug* I don't dabble in those circles, so I could be wrong.

 

Players changed their minds? Link? All I saw was articles explaining how the books can be cooked.

In addition to amortizing purchase costs, owners can also allocate expenses from their other businesses to the team, and revenues from the team to their other businesses.

 

I dunno. The owners have been willing to open their books. I think the evidence is that they are losing money. I think the owners deserve the right to make money on a year to year basis.

 

I somewhat agree, but if the owners really aren't lying about losing money, then some of those really rich guys may not mind getting a better CBA. It's difficult to compare that NFL lockout with the NBA lockout, IMO, because the NFL is such a money-making machine that it was in both sides' best interest to get a deal done. I'm not sure the same thing can be said about the owners in the NBA, and if that's the case, the players are going to end up either missing at least one season or making large concessions to the owners.

I think the leverage lies 90% with the owners at this point if there are some that really are losing millions a year.

 

I don't see how teams like New Orleans or Charlotte (or even Atlanta) can be making money. Their arenas always seem half-empty, and there just isn't enough national TV money to make up for operating losses, which is why the NFL is so profitable.

 

If they do indeed have 90% of the leverage, I'd look for LeBron James to be making $2 mil/year on his next contract. A guy like Batum will make $100k/year. Lol. You want to bet on that happening?

If you want to see a league where ownership does indeed hold 90%+ of the leverage, look at the UFC. Guys consider themselves damned lucky if they get to beat the snot out of each other for $50k/year. The best fighter in the league (Anderson Silva) doesn't even make a million bucks a year. Meanwhile Dana White raked in $450m last year just in PPV sales.

 

Add Minnesota, Milwaukee, Detroit, New Jersey (until they move), Indiana, Philly, and Sacramento just off the top of my head.