Sunday, November 6, 2011

With 'trump cards', NBA lockout negotiations teeter on the brink

NEW YORK-Here we go once more.
After enduring probably the most tumultuous week of the NBA's 128-day lockout, the league's union and owners will sit down today at four p.m. at a Manhattan hotel and, again, try to resolve the main problems remaining before a new collective bargaining agreement may be accepted. The sides have invited federal mediator George Cohen, Cheap Jordans who sat in for three days of talks in October, back towards the table. Already, the league has lost the first month of the season, and if anyone hopes to begin the schedule by Dec. 1, a deal will need to be carried out soon.
Eight days ago, the process was laced with optimism, with each sides hinting that a deal could be done last weekend. Rather, those talks collapsed more than the owners' refusal to go above a 50-50 split of basketball-related income, and the players' refusal to drop beneath a 52.5-47.5 split. Union executive director Billy Hunter accused commissioner David Stern of, "snookering," him into believing the owners would offer the players more than 50 percent.
In the meantime, fractures on both sides have emerged. Hunter reportedly had a rift with union president Derek Fisher over Fisher's willingness to think about a 50-50 split. Along with a group of 50 players, both Yahoo! and also the New York Occasions reported, Cheap Soccer Jerseys held two separate conference calls with an anti-trust lawyer to consider a player-led decertification of the union, a long and pricey process that would surely lead to this season becoming lost. That news surfaced following the league made its case in federal court on Wednesday, attempting to preemptively head off a decertification movement. The judge within the case did not issue an immediate ruling.
Reports also surfaced about Charlotte owner Michael Jordan, a guy who certainly took in a great share of BRI throughout his playing career. But on the other side of the table, Jordan is playing the hardliner, reportedly leading a group of small-market owners willing to sacrifice the season in order to tamp down the players' share of BRI. There's a certain disingenuousness about a guy who produced so much cash on the other side of previous CBAs acting like Scrooge when it comes to negotiating this one.
But that is the screwy state of this process. Each sides-with the leaked story about Jordan on one hand and also the decertification threat on the other-have upped the ante. If this really is a game of chicken, we're getting closer to the cliff that marks the cancellation of the season, and each sides are hitting the gas pedal.
All of this might not be so bad. Perhaps the sides have exhausted their ammunition. "All the trump cards have been played now," Barcelona Soccer Jersey said one source with understanding of the talks. "Decertification will be the players' bogeyman. Michael Jordan will be the owners' bogeyman. Beyond that, there's no other angle that we can throw at each other. So now that it is all on the table, perhaps something will get done."
Or perhaps the two sides will just keep accelerating toward that cliff.


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