The NBA’s labor crisis moves today from New York to Dallas, where team owners will hold their annual Board of Governors meetings during which they could administer a procedural vote to authorize a lockout for Friday at 12:01 a.m.
Twelve days after a parade was held to honor the champion Mavericks, the owners convene in what could be the beginning of the end to a standard 82-game, 2011-12 NBA season.
The NBA and Players Association already have agreed at least one more bargaining session will take place either tomorrow or Thursday in New York with one last crack to avoid a work stoppage, but it seems hopeless.
The players have stepped up the rhetoric, with their bold “Stand” T-shirts they donned Friday to the last negotiation at the Omni Berkshire.
Yesterday, the brassiness continued when Etan Thomas, a member of the union’s executive committee, wrote a scathing column for the influential NBA website, Hoopshype.com, saying the NBA’s original negotiating position is “more like a Christmas list to Santa Claus than the start of an actual negotiation.”
Thomas added the season “is in danger of being completely lost” and the players are “prepared for a lockout for whatever duration it takes in order to reach a deal that is fair.”
According to the union, the latest owners’ proposal asks players to accept $500 million in cuts to salaries, a 10-year freeze on wages, and a hard cap David Stern falsely classified as “a flex cap.” The league believes the system needs changing as it projects losses of about $300 million this season.
“We are going down to Dallas on Tuesday and the meeting will be what it will be,” Stern said after Friday’s lackluster session. “The one thing we do not want is a lockout. We have told the players that we have expressed a willingness to negotiate over everything. So Wednesday and Thursday gives us two days.”
The Board of Governors meeting usually is held in mid-July during the Las Vegas summer league, but was moved up to handle the crisis. Deputy commissioner Adam Silver said Friday the owners will discuss “revenue sharing, collective bargaining, and an update on our financials.”
Revenue sharing is a key component to the labor picture but even the owners haven’t agreed on a specific plan, hurting negotiations.
Asked about a lockout vote, Silver said: “I think it would be premature to talk about where we might find ourselves [late Tuesday].”
Asked if they might push back the July 1 deadline, Stern said: “I am not going to comment on that. I do not want to prejudge anything.”
On Friday, Derek Fisher, the player’s union president, said: “We’d love to avoid a lockout, but we are unified in not being afraid if that’s what we’re faced with.”
