November 8, 2011
N.B.A. Union Signals a Shift That May End the Lockout
By HOWARD BECK
The path to an N.B.A. labor deal, and the end to a 131-day lockout, came into sharper focus Tuesday, with the players signaling for the first time that they would accept the league’s proposed 50-50 split of revenues.Derek Fisher, the union president, made that overture at a news conference, with 43 players standing behind him. In return, the union wants the league to relax its proposed restrictions on free agency.
By offering to take the league’s offer, the union effectively shifted the onus back to Commissioner David Stern and the owners.
“We’re open-minded about potential compromises on our number,” Fisher said, referring to the revenue share for the players. “But there are things in the system that are not up for discussion, that we have to have, in order to be able to get this season going again.”
Stern told NBA TV that he would be happy to take a call from Billy Hunter, the union’s executive director. However, Stern said he could not resume negotiations until he consulted with the owners’ labor relations committee. Stern also told the network that he denied Hunter’s claim that the league was about to cancel games “up through Christmas.”
If a final bit of horse-trading can happen by Wednesday afternoon, it could save the 2011-12 season. Stern has set a 5 p.m. Wednesday deadline for the players to accept the league’s last proposal, or have it replaced by a significantly worse offer — an ultimatum that could, in effect, push the sides even further apart and toward a courtroom showdown.
Union leaders had rejected Stern’s ultimatum early Sunday morning, right after he issued it. They restated the rejection Tuesday, with the full support of the player representatives from 29 teams, following a lively three-hour meeting with the union’s executive board at a Manhattan hotel.
The meeting was a broad cross-section of players, including superstars (Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony, Russell Westbrook) and bit players (Jason Kapono), veterans (Raja Bell) and rising young stars (Blake Griffin).
Although some fractures have emerged in the union’s 400-plus membership, the players in attendance projected a unified front in rejecting the league’s offer.
“Across the board, I think we all pretty much felt like that deal wasn’t going to get it done,” Bell said.
A handful of players, most notably Houston’s Kevin Martin, have said publicly that they want to vote on the N.B.A.’s offer, whether they favor it or not. The suggestion did not seem to get much consideration Tuesday. The meeting was mostly devoted to explaining the rules that the union finds objectionable.
“Once it goes up and you fully understand what it is, it’s not pretty,” Bell said.
At issue are a number of proposals that, in the union’s view, would strangle free agency.
The N.B.A. wants to ban luxury-tax-paying teams from using the full midlevel exception (worth $5 million), and from executing sign-and-trade deals. The union also objects to a so-called repeater tax that would punish teams for exceeding the tax threshold three times in five years.
The N.B.A. has been proposing, in some form or another, a 50-50 split of league revenues since Oct. 4. Since then, the union has gradually reduced its demand from 53 percent to 52.5 percent and finally to 51 percent on Sunday. As recently as last week, Hunter remained stridently opposed to a 50-50 deal.
The players now see that number as the key to a deal, if the league will compromise on the system issues.
“They want to get back to work,” Fisher said, with the 40-plus players behind him. “They want us to try and get a deal done. But they don’t want us to be shortsighted and get a deal done just to say we got a deal done today, and regret it 5, 10, 15 years from now.”
As union leaders made their strategic move Tuesday, a dissident faction of players was proceeding with a petition drive that could force a vote on dissolving the union. The players, who believe the union has conceded too much, are working with an antitrust lawyer and could push the battle into the legal realm if they object to the final deal.
As the labor crisis moved toward a potential endgame, the rhetoric once again flared from two key figures.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Jeffrey Kessler — the union’s outside counsel and its lead negotiator — accused the league of treating players “like plantation workers.” Stern fired back by blaming Kessler for the lack of a deal, calling him “the single most divisive force” in talks.
