Talks
on a new collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and its
players broke off on Thursday afternoon, and players leaving the midtown
Manhattan hotel where the two sides met told reporters that the owners
said that they will lock out the players when the current agreement
expires at midnight. The lockout would effectively shutter the league
and could end up jeopardizing parts or all of the 2011-12 season.
The
last time the league went through a work stoppage, after the expiration
of its deal with the players in July 1998, owners and players trudged
through more than six months of fitful bargaining and sometimes
contentious rhetoric before coming to an agreement in January 1999. The
NBA season was sliced to 50 games that year.
This expected lockout
comes as the league completes one of its most successful seasons ever,
with attendance, broadcast ratings and revenue up virtually across the
board. But owners insist that the current labor agreement is no longer
financially viable, and they point to player salaries as the main
culprit. Commissioner David Stern has said that the league lost as much
as $300 million in the 2010-11 season and that 22 of the league's 30
teams were in the red. Owners are now asking for player concessions,
including a more equitable divide of income, more rigid rules that will
limit the amount that teams can pay players (the often-mentioned "hard
cap" on salaries), givebacks in an escrow system that the players have
paid into and changes in the length and terms of certain types of player
contracts.
Players have publicly challenged the league's claims
of dire financial hardship and have remained adamantly opposed to many
of the league's proposals. Chief among those is the "hard cap," an idea
that the union staunchly rejects, saying it would unfairly restrict
player salaries. National Basketball Players Association head Billy
Hunter also has called for improving on the plan that moves revenue from
the league's richer teams to its more financially challenged ones.
Hunter
and Stern were the key players in the last work stoppage in 1998 and
have helped steer the league as it's grown into a more than $4 billion
industry worldwide, featuring the world's highest-paid professional
athletes. NBA players make an average of more than $5.7 million a year.
During
the last few weeks, each side in the dispute has made what it considers
concessions, though both parties admit that the gulf between the two
remains considerable. The league has pulled back its initial call for
player contracts that are not fully guaranteed, for example, while the
union says it is willing to reduce its share of the split of "basketball
related income," or BRI. The players receive 57 percent of BRI in the
expiring agreement, with the remaining portion going to owners.
Still,
the two sides remained so far apart that their meetings -- most notably
during a rousing NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and the eventual
champion Dallas Mavericks -- have produced negligible gains, if any.
After a meeting last Friday in New York, the owners and players did not
meet again until Thursday's deadline-day get-together, which lasted
about three hours.
The last time the league locked out its
players, the two sides did not meet for more than a week before the
deadline passed and the lockout was imposed, and then went 37 days until
meeting again. That session lasted only 90 minutes before owners walked
out. The first two weeks of the 1998-99 season were officially canceled
on Oct. 13, 1998, and negotiations continued to sputter throughout the
fall and into the winter.
Stern announced late in December of that
year that he would recommend the season be canceled if an agreement was
not reached before Jan. 7. After an all-night session, Hunter and Stern
finally announced an agreement on Jan. 6, 1999.
Link
Hunter: Sides fail to reach deal, says lockout is next
Posted Jun 30 2011 12:35PM - Updated Jun 30 2011 3:30PM
NEW YORK (AP) -- NBA players are locked out, possibly jeopardizing next season.
Union
chief Billy Hunter said Thursday afternoon that owners had locked out
the players after failing to reach a new collective bargaining
agreement.
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With this latest
action, two of four major professional sports in the United States are
locked out. The NFL locked out its players in March, and the two sides
have been in discussions this week, trying to work toward a new deal.
Despite
a three-hour meeting Thursday, the NBA and its players could not close
the enormous gap that remained in their positions. The CBA was due to
expire at midnight.
All league business is officially on hold,
starting with the free agency period that would have opened Friday, and
games eventually could be lost, too. The last lockout reduced the
1998-99 season to just a 50-game schedule, the only time the NBA missed
games for a work stoppage.
"We tried to avoid the lockout; unfortunately, we couldn't reach a deal,'' union executive committee member Matt Bonner said.
The sides remained far apart on just about every major issue, from salaries to the salary cap, revenues to revenue sharing.
Players,
who previously offered to reduce their salaries by $500 million over
five years, considered the owners' proposal for a "flex'' cap, where
each team would be targeted to spend $62 million, a hard cap. Although
the league said total player compensation would never dip below $2
billion over the life of its proposed 10-year deal, that would amount to
a pay cut for the players, who were paid more than $2.1 billion this
season in salaries and benefits.
Owners also wanted a reduction in the players' guarantee of 57 percent of basketball revenues.
Link