I think most of us around here thought the players and owners would start making progress in early September. It looks like the parties are falling in line. Let's just hope there are no sticking points in the negotiations. NBA owners, union talk for 5½ hours
Re: Players and owners making progress in CBA negotiations I like the fact that both sides are giving the media damn near nothing. While the media feels that they have a right to every morsel of information they seek and often base this right on their assertion that "fans have a right to know," this fan firmly believes that, when it comes to labor negotiations, the two sides are best left alone to do their work and media/fans are best left in the dark.
Re: Players and owners making progress in CBA negotiations ESPN ran a great story today on the lockout that somehow made it past their editors. The takeaway is that the NBA negotiated its last set of television contracts, including with ESPN, when its ratings were struggling on a historical level. Their deals came in 300 million under where they should have been because, at the time, most of the elite players and teams were in small television markets. The 300 million is the exact same number that the owners are claiming they lost last year. So in effect, the current CBA would be fine if the NBA hadn't negotiated its deals at such a bad time. That makes the CBA negotiations potentially so much easier, as the author notes. You aim for a short contract with minor changes to the overall structure (and accept larger short-term changes to the dollar figures) and then come out fighting five years now when everyone is in a better financial position. I never put any of this together. This is why so many franchises have changed hands this off season and financing was available. It's not a question of where the NBA is now -- the NBA is set to be profitable again, without any changes to the CBA, in five years, and the players have already made concessions that would allow the teams to remain profitable or close to profitable for the next five years. This could conceivably be a much easier negotiation than we've been anticipating.
Re: Players and owners making progress in CBA negotiations And then it all falls apart . . . No progress made after latest labor talk More at link.
Re: Players and owners making progress in CBA negotiations Okay, I don't understand the owners' position at all. The problem with the NBA is team revenue and not competitive balance. Indeed, the two are inversely correlated. If the bigger markets had better teams when the last set of television deals were negotiated then the NBA would be in much better shape. Moreover, you take away the soft cap and you lose an additional mechanism for revenue sharing among the teams. What are the owners aiming for? David Stern said that "[a]ll of the owners were completely unified in the view that we needed a system that at the end of the day allowed 30 teams to compete." Well, yes. The Spurs have been competitive for the last decade. Do they really want a system that decreases their revenues?
Re: Players and owners making progress in CBA negotiations You get the feeling that the owners' house is not in order. It feels like getting the players on the same page is herding cats because there are so many of them. But the owners apparently cannot even agree amongst themselves on their objectives.
Re: Players and owners making progress in CBA negotiations I think they want a system that genuinely improves the viability of middle market teams. At least in theory, parity does this by increasing mid-market attendance and local TV contracts.
Maybe they should extend the current CBA for a year. How does a team claiming to struggle financially come out better with a lockout and no revenues at all?
Re: Players and owners making progress in CBA negotiations Well that's essentially the tact Andrew Brandt suggests, except with CBA being extended for five years until the next set of TV negotiations comes up. Take concessions from the players so that your teams are breaking even or making moderate profits, and then work on a broader restructuring when times are good and there isn't a revenue crunch. That has to make the most sense. The owners seem to want to broadly restructure now though, when the league is trapped in bad television contracts. That's going to be tough.
Re: Players and owners making progress in CBA negotiations Maybe they can invite Obama to come and give everyone change we can believe in. And to speak to a point in another thread -- Obama has brought change, mostly in ways that he had nothing to do with, except by virtue of being elected. My University, in the middle of whiter than white America, just inaugurated its first black president. Lots of things are happening. But Obama is overwhelmed. I kept hoping it would be like Lincoln -- a guy who was really ready to heal with his words. He has time...but it looks like the civil war is upon us.
Re: Players and owners making progress in CBA negotiations Me too. I'm hoping that I can refocus on Real Madrid to make things easier. The posters on RealGM had some links that may allow us to watch games live (and even more importantly, watch games on delay.) They just signed Rudy Fernandez to one of those contracts that allows a player to leave once a CBA is finalized. Real is in preseason games now, and I think the first regular season game is on October 8, so not far away. We'll see if that satisfies my jones.
Re: Players and owners making progress in CBA negotiations They're just teasing us. But you know what? I'm enjoying my "free" time -- free from agonizing and wondering about Derrick, Carlos, etc. Getting into some jazz. Exploring some new research. You never know, I might just keep going this way...
Re: Players and owners making progress in CBA negotiations From Thonus: http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-b...towards-deal-owners-agree-to-remove-hard-cap/ He quote ESPN: Doug went on to add:
Sham expresses optimism as well. http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-bulls-talk/2011/09/optimism-stems-from-short-labor-meeting/ God I hope we see some basketball soon. Been a long, long summer and early fall without NBA discussion.
Thonus is wrong. Teams will quickly spend up to a hard cap, will have no flexibility at that point, and a bad deal like for Brandon Roy would kill their ability to compete. Am I wrong? (never!)
No, you're right. Thonus is a strong voice on the Bulls beat, but I don't think he really has a good grasp of the negotiations. Thonus also makes the mistake of assuming that the owners will not continue to weaken their stance on a hardcap. Is there potentially more flexibility for player movement under a hard cap as compared to a harder-soft cap? I guess you can make that argument but I don't see it. Is there more flexibility under a hard cap than a slighter-harder cap than is in place now (where they will be after continued negotiations)? Absolutely not. At some point, you have to ask whether the Heat are good for basketball. I think they are. Thonus disagrees.
Re: Players and owners making progress in CBA negotiations Say it ain't so, Hope. Say it ain't so. I'm not particularly positive about the chances of reaching a deal. Both sides seem to realize the impact of the impending deadlines. But unless we see way more movement from the owners over the weekend, they're not going to come away with a deal.
Oh, and what do you guys think Oklahoma thinks about the one bird rights limit? . They must be pitching a fit, even if this only is a temporary bargaining position.
The current CBA wasn't all that great for player movement. Few FAs changed teams that I can remember. It did take teams doing insane maneuvers (on the court) to make cap space (off the court) to make this past summer a huge exception. Going forward with the current CBA, there's only a few teams with any cap space to go after FAs.
