NEW YORK-So that's it-the negotiations on a new collective-bargaining agreement that may end the NBA lockout is now able to best summed up as a ticking time bomb,Cheap Jordan Shoes set to detonate on Wednesday.
That, at least, is when the league and representatives of its union portrayed the situation early Sunday morning.
In order to resuscitate the league's five-month-old labor impasse, representatives from the NBA players association and the owners met for almost nine hours here starting on Saturday, underneath the eye of federal mediator George Cohen.
Despite the fact that Cohen made tries to bridge the gaps between the two sides with compromises, by the end of the night, the talks had devolved right into a personal head-butting session-commissioner David Stern, it seems, has found himself a hard-headed foe in union lawyer Jeffrey Kessler.
Stern calmly outlined six regions of compromise suggested by Cohen, saying the league would co-opt five of them-including a 49-51 percent "band" of basketball-related income, and deals on luxury-tax related issues-and present them to the union like a formal proposal.
But Stern then asserted the union would have until Wednesday to accept the offer, and if this didn't, the league would revert to an earlier and far less palatable CBA that would feature 47 percent of BRI going to the players, Barcelona Jersey with a "flex" salary cap the union has already dismissed as being, essentially, a hard cap.
Stern said he was confident that, after holding an earlier meeting among his owners-who have been demonstrated to be fractured-he felt he could get such a deal passed, plus a new revenue sharing agreement.
"We had, in the language of diplomacy, a frank and open dialogue the actual owners' meeting," Stern said. "When you've 30 people, you get different perspectives, however they were, In my opinion, very supportive of the committee and it is efforts to bring back an offer that would be presented simultaneously as a revenue sharing proposal."
Stern said it was Kessler who turned down the offer. That got Kessler's dander up about the true nature from the league's offer.
"We would not reach 51 percent, within our wildest, most unimaginable, favorable projections. And that we might squeeze out 50.2. OK? The proposal that this is really a robust deal at 51 is really a fraud. They arrived here having a pre-arranged intend to attempt to strong-arm players. They knew today, they were likely to stay with 50, essentially, 50.2, these were going to make no movement around the system and they were going to say, 'My way or the 47 percent highway.' OK?"
Now, obviously, the options on sides become very limited-in short term, at least.
This method has become a game of chicken, and also the owners hope they are able to make the union blink by setting a Wednesday deadline, using the commitment of a worse deal in the future.
The players, though, are hoping the threat of decertification from the union is going to be enough to get the league to budge off its position. Already, a large number of players have been receiving a conference call a good antitrust lawyer to learn by what decertification will mean. Union president Derek Fisher said that decertification could be a choice, and already, agents around the league have planted the decertification seed in the minds of players.
Ultimately, it's as real possible as ever that the season is going to be lost.
That doesn't necessarily mean that everything will explode on Wednesday, even if the union declines the league's offer and goes ahead with the initial steps in the entire process of decertification.
Both Stern and Fisher said there'd be no further discussions on the issues available, with Stern implying that the next offer would be a, "take-it-or-take-something-much-worse" situation. But we have seen these post-meeting tough stances soften repeatedly throughout this process.
The fact is, although the rhetoric is difficult, the sides have almost come together on BRI. Kessler himself said the league's offer on BRI was 50.2-49.8, as well as asserted the union was offering a 51-49 split, with 1 % going to retired players. We're getting pretty close on that front.
What is hanging up the process is when teams which are over the luxury tax threshold are treated.
The league-and Stern asserted Cohen floated this as a "what-if" concept-wants to have taxpayers taken out of the market for sign-and-trades, really wants to reduce taxpayers to some, "mini" mid-level exception (worth two years starting $2.5 million total, as opposed to 4 years at $5 million) and wishes to penalize heavily "repeat" taxpayer teams, those people who are in the tax threshold three from five years.
The union were built with a problem with all those issues, fearing the league would essentially take the biggest spending teams from the marketplace for free agents each summer.
The sides are butting heads on those issues, especially Kessler and Stern. The rhetoric is getting thicker. BRI isn't biggest concern here, nor are the bulk of other system issues.
The treatment of taxpayers is the big holdup, and the two sides must now decide precisely how far they'll go to fight for his or her viewpoint. Stern has organized a deadline. The time, Custom Soccer Jerseys certainly, is ticking.
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