Woj is clearly in the player camp, and has been in the player camp. This is a player nightmare, and a fan/employee nightmare. Some owners will actually come out ahead without a season, and the ones who make money have enough money to not miss the season's profit. Plus, they'll make up that profit once the players realize that they have no other options in baskeball that come close to the money they would have made in the deal that was just passed on by the union reps.
What it does is give them the hope of the NBA continuing to negotiate. That's really all I can think of
Yep. The Oden era is over before it even began. I'm sure some fans will still hold it against Greg, but at least we don't have to watch him play for the Blazers this season, then leave elsewhere as a UFA.
I would feel sorry for Roy if all the player's contracts are voided. He'll never see a 10th of that payday.
Once the players decertify and the contracts are voided, what is to keep the owners from selectively offering players contracts, but in a free market? Also, if the players decertify, are last year's draft picks still property of the team that drafted them, in my hypothetical (which I understand is a reach and barely realistic, btw).
The NBA voiding the contracts would be a huge mistake, IMO, at least in terms of public perception, as well as in court.
Much as I like the NBA (and sad as I am for the HCPs of this world), I'm kind of glad the players didn't just knuckle under to the squealy plurality of owners who forgot what a privilege it was to own a team. Yes, the players are absurdly rich. But the vast majority of them came from poverty. The owners didn't. (Comparative to them now poverty, but compared to most players' backgrounds, absurd wealth.) The owners are used to imposing their will because they are ridiculously rich and people have to do what they say. I would almost like to see the NBA go down in flames to stop that happening. The quality of players in foreign leagues will go up dramatically (and China will almost certainly use the opportunity to pump up its domestic league).
It's difficult to file an anti-trust case when members of your union are making millions of dollars playing overseas, isn't it?
It's funny that we feel sorry for rich people losing what we never had to begin with. Well, I never had. Clearly MM's doing a roaring trade in moving narcotics.
Yep, players taking a huge gamble in the courts, if they lose say hello to an NHL style contract - which was awful compared to what they could have settled for
If I have my rickety set of assumptions and speculation right, if the players decertify successfully, technically the lockout ends. From that point, it's a battle of two powerful parties ("The Players" and "The Owners") both going after the resources they need to start competing leagues up. I think the players will try to go all the way and attempt to torpedo the NBA as a whole and start their own league. If such actions begin, I see the owners hiring up as many players as they can gather and restarting the NBA.
The NBA players, in the deal they just rejected, had more money, and more say in the league, than any other FIBA league in the world allows their players. So, if I read you correctly, these same players should run to other leagues where they will make less money, have a much lower quality of a work climate, and have almost no say in what their owners can and cannot do? Weird logic...
Seriously, though: decertification takes a long time. If the owners don't make a few concessions quickly then it's their problem. The players came down from 57% to 50%, for fuck's sake! The owners (or enough of them) got greedy. And with people like Gilbert, they're just mad about star players having freedom of movement.
On the other hand, they'll get to travel the world, learn new languages, become better people! It's win-win. Plus schadenfreude at the value of owners' franchises slowly crumbling is priceless.
