Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
Is it that bad that now we're going to blame the WNBA for this??
Is it that bad that now we're going to blame the WNBA for this??
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
Because they're not performing to expectation.Why should the players as a whole earn less for their services because some owners are poor evaluators of talent or make terrible economic choices?
I said it in the first topic and I'll repeat it...
Why should the last guy on the bench get paid $480k a year for practically nothing? He's getting paid to have the best seat in the house and produce 1.2 PPG with half a rebound and a quater of an assist in 4 minutes per game. $480,000 for 5 hours and 40 minutes of "work".
The owners should have an even harder stance than they do now,players should take what they can get before they come to this realization.Comment
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I have more respect for a man who let's me know where he stands, even if he's wrong. Than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil. - Malcolm XComment
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
Thats a secondary thought though... pumping money into the WNBA or not wont fix the current issues with whats going on in the leagueComment
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
Barkley
Charles Barkley may donate TNT salary
ESPNChicago.com
TNT analyst Charles Barkley said Tuesday he would feel uncomfortable drawing a paycheck during the NBA lockout, so he's considering donating his salary to charity.
NBA commissioner David Stern announced after negotiations on Monday the cancellation of at least the first two weeks of the season, and he said a significant gulf remained "on virtually all issues." Barkley is on record predicting the entire 2011-12 season will be canceled.
"The problem I have is if these guys hold out all season, it's going to be a lot of money," Barkley said."That's why I have to make that decision. I haven't made the final decision.
"I don't feel comfortable taking money for not working. I'll either defer it or give it to charity."
Barkley said the players' only chance of salvaging something out of the 2011-12 season is if they take a 50-50 split of Basketball Related Income, which would be down from their previous share of 57 percent.
But Stern said Monday the owners have reverted back to their previous position of offering the players just 47 percent of BRI in a new deal.
"There are two groups I feel bad for," Barkley said. "I feel bad for the people who work for these teams, because they're going to start laying off some of these people soon. And then I feel bad for the people who work at these arenas. They're going to take the brunt of this. And that's unfortunate."
Barkley isn't sure if the owners are losing as much money as they claim, but he said there's one part of this equation that hasn't suffered.
"We've been in a recession for basically three years," he said. "I think it's disingenuous to think all these owners, with as much money as they've been paying, haven't been losing some money. I don't know the answer to [whether they've lost as much as they claim].
"But we have been in a recession. The only thing that hasn't gone down are players' salaries, and players' salaries are going to continue to go up. So I think that is a legitimate concern. I think everybody who owns a business has been struggling somewhat financially the last three years."
Barkley said he admires Stern's motivation to save the small-market teams through better revenue sharing.
"I think David Stern is the best commissioner in sports," he said. "I listen to both of these sides very carefully when they say stuff. I don't listen to the BS. You can fool the fans, you can fool the media, but you can't fool someone who's really paying attention.
"If you notice, he mentioned every small-market team. The NBA owners are going to protect these small-market teams. They don't like the fact all the stars want to play in big cities. And this whole thing is going to be about: We're not going to be like baseball, where you have 20 bad franchises that are really like a minor league system until the players get good enough and then they go to the Yankees or Red Sox.
"I thought it was very telling that Commissioner Stern mentioned every small-market team. That's what this thing is about. They're not going to let just the big markets dominate like they do in baseball."Comment
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
As I stated, I'm not blaming the WNBA for the league's issue. That's not the point I'm making. The point that I'm making that if the league says it's loosing money then why is it still pumping money into the WNBA? You'd figure if a corporation was loosing money it'd be more frugal with it's spending.
But hey, take it for what it's worth. if you think I'm blaming the WNBA, the go right ahead.
I think I'm going to get some sleep and pick this up tomorrow. The twist of my comments is starting to make my eyes sleepy.I have more respect for a man who let's me know where he stands, even if he's wrong. Than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil. - Malcolm XComment
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
Nobody is twisting your comments man... you know good and well this has nothing to do with the WnBA
I could say the same for players... if theyre so worried about salaries going down, why wont they stop supporting mooching family members and living outside their means
The reality is, this isnt a wnba issue.. its about the current structure of the NBA, and its not working anymoreComment
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
Stephen A. Also
Sometimes, even if your argument appears valid, and sensible, and right, it can still be devoid of common sense, strictly because of what it is up against. The moment the National Basketball Association canceled the first two weeks of the 2011-12 season on Monday night, officially putting pro basketball for the year on a respirator, all arguments by the players over how wrong the owners are became irrelevant.
Quite frankly, the jig is up!
Michael Cohen/Getty Images
Most fans don't want to hear about a reduction in basketball-related income from 57 percent to 53 percent. They just want to see their favorite players play.
The players can scream all they want about how they are being locked out and are not on strike. They can lament over how unfair it is that since they're the product fans come to see, they shouldn't have to give up anything. But when commissioner David Stern announced that the first two weeks were being canceled, ensuring that approximately $200 million would be lost, it should have reminded players of something they should have realized quite a long time ago: Whatever leverage they thought they had is on the verge of extinction.
Let the players try to hashtag their way through these negotiations, tweeting to their hearts' content. Let LeBron James apologize to the world, saying "There's no us without ya'll," and let Steve Nash keep asking, "Why are the owners unwilling to negotiate in good faith?" Such rhetoric rings hollow right now to a fan base aware that there will be no NBA games starting Nov. 1.
No Chicago Bulls vs. the defending champion Dallas Mavericks on opening night.
No Miami Heat visiting Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks on Nov. 2.
No sightings of Kobe Bryant, just 729 points shy of passing Shaquille O'Neal for fifth on the all-time scoring list.
Absolutely nothing!
Fans don't hear a reduction in basketball-related income from 57 percent to 53 percent as much as they hear that players made $2 billion in salaries. They're not interested in the suffering of those averaging $5 million a year in salary when a ravaged economy has many Americans worrying about whether they'll have a job next month.
Most fans have no patience for player complaints when the National Football League managed to resolve its issues without missing games, and when NFL and major league baseball games are taking place.
"We tried awfully hard to move towards the players and ultimately come up with a system that works for everyone," Stern said last night, following the latest failed meeting with the players' association. "We made, in our view, concession after concession.
"I'm not sure if the players would agree with everything we've done. But we think we've tried very hard to move towards the players and ultimately come up with a system that ... over the seven years of the deal we offered before, the players have the right to opt out of a 10-year deal ... a raise [in average-player salary] from $5.5 million to probably over $7 million. In this economy, at this time with what's going on in this country and in the world … I'm proud of my owners. They really demonstrated to me, to the fans ... that they really tried to make a deal."
So now that Stern has won that public relations battle, as he usually does, getting his message out first, it's up to the players to provide more pointed arguments. The kind devoid of emotion, and not limited to 140-character tweets.
It's up to the players to fully explain why a deal could not be made.
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Somehow, it is the players who'll need to explain why, after entering the negotiations determined to fight off the owners' insistence on omitting guaranteed contracts and implementing a hard salary cap and being successful on both fronts, games are still being canceled.
It is the players who'll need to justify why the potential for $1.5 million in average-salary pay hikes -- with a guarantee of no pay cuts -- for at least the next seven years was not a deal good enough to accept.
The players will also need to explain why it's a problem for owners to want Memphis, Sacramento, Milwaukee, Charlotte and other small-market cities to have a fairer shot at competing economically with New York and Los Angeles if it wouldn't affect the bottom-line dollars the players are actually receiving.
Without question, the players have a bevy of legitimate gripes. Especially pertaining to the dollar-for-dollar luxury tax that owners now want to turn into a $2 to $4 tax for every dollar they overspend, essentially dissuading owners from spending.
But there was plenty of time to resolve these issues, as the players have proved from the moment they managed to find all this time to span the country playing charity basketball games; far more time than most of them spent at the negotiating table over the last three months.
"We'll deal with this with our chin up," said Lakers co-captain and union president Derek Fisher, a five-time NBA champion. "This is a big blow, especially to our fans. We hear them loud and clear, and we're going to do our best to bring back basketball as soon as we possibly can."
Sadly, Fisher sounds as if the fans are the primary ones he needs to be concerned about, as opposed to the players themselves.
The cancellation of games means the loss of income to players. It also means that whatever stance is being taken by the owners will only harden now that games are missed and money has been lost.
The players, emboldened by a desire for "respect" and not "caving in" to the owners -- as many of them have said -- will now be forced to prove that their financial portfolios can stomach hits to the degree that owners' portfolios can.
On that note, there's only one thing left to say: Good Luck With That!Comment
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
Good thing Barkley's thinking of donating his salary.
Less money to gamble away and hire hookers with.Comment
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
Stern ducks, lets NBA players take hit
NEW YORK – For the bleakest days of these labor talks, David Stern chose the Lowell on 63rd Street and the corner of Lexington Avenue. The hotel has a sparse lobby, unable to manage a small pack of reporters covering the NBA labor meetings. The commissioner won’t use ballrooms for news conferences, refusing to drape the background with the NBA logo. And when it was time again for one of his lockouts to cost regular-season games, he chose a small swath of sidewalk under the hotel canopy to deliver his damning proclamation.
Stern’s always wanted the glory of the commissioner’s seat, but never the light that comes with his failings. This labor fight is the championship series of Stern’s career. He’s overseeing the ultimate owners’ hustle to shut down the sport because they think they can squeeze far more money than they need to simply stabilize financial losses and bring the league better competitive balance.
The owners want it all, and Stern’s forever been the man to bully people to their knees. This is a mission to make his richest owners even richer, ultimately allowing him to reap the bonuses and rewards that come to a union-breaking CEO. Yes, Stern and the hardliners shut down the NBA season Monday, and still Stern didn’t have the stomach to stand with the NBA logo in the background. The most sanctioned, most scripted event of his life, and he still couldn’t own it.
As much as anything Stern wants his professional shame in the shadows, narrowing the scope, the coverage. For Stern, the strategy is simple: Step out of the way, and let the players impale themselves in the public eye. Two weeks of the regular season are gone, more promise to be wiped away, and Stern will feed that public desire to tear apart his star players and feed into all the worst stereotypes. Only, this lockout will eventually end, and he’ll need to repair those images to make the NBA thrive again.
Stern is the master manipulator, and that’s never been easier to see. Throughout these talks, he’s had the Players Association leadership on a string. His agenda, his deadlines, his conditions to meet. One minute, the union’s calling for player meetings in Miami and Los Angeles, urging players to get on planes. Emails went out with locations and times, players purchased airline tickets. And then Stern says he wants to negotiate more, pushes back artificial deadlines of his creation, and soon the union is hastily canceling the player meetings and retreating back to his bargaining table.
[Related: David Stern cancels the first two weeks of the NBA season]
Sometimes, the players union makes it so easy for the NBA. Before the talks fell apart without a deal on Monday, Players Association president Derek Fisher(notes) had an idea: Let’s flood people’s Twitter timelines with pointless catch phrases and hashtags, a plan born from the NFLPA and “The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training.” “Let us play,” Fisher told the players to post, forgetting that the public’s response – besides un-following his Twitter account out of sheer annoyance – was to tell the players to simply take the deal the owners were offering.
This wasn’t an idea out of the union’s smartest PR mind, Dan Wasserman, but one of the consulting pockets of the Players Association that do nothing but waste the players’ dues. Before you know it, there was Kenyon Martin(notes) calling for his “haters” to die of “full-blown AIDS,” and inviting everyone else giving him a hard time on Twitter to send along a home address, so he could come to your house and “kick your ***.”
Martin isn’t the norm, but he’s who many people want to believe populate this NBA. And why give them the chance on Monday, when the players could’ve let Stern have the bad-guy stage all to himself?
For better or worse, NBA players will never win public sympathy. They have every right to this labor fight, but it is their fight and their fight alone. It isn’t shared with the fans, the arena workers, no one. The sooner they understand that, the easier this will go for them. Forget the PR fight – just win the fight.
[ Yahoo! Sports Radio: Wojnarowski doesn’t expect quick resolution on NBA stalemate]
All along, it seemed Wasserman’s plan had been for the players to say as little as possible, and never, ever engage the public for sympathy. Eventually, these lockouts always come back to the salaries, and nobody cares if someone’s salary will drop from $5 million to $3 million. No one.
Which is why the union’s job sometimes is to protect the players from themselves, and spare the guys from the delusional world in which they exist. Too many players are missing filters, self-awareness and context about the world surrounding them. The Players Association wins far more support centralizing its message with Fisher and Hunter, with its stars, than it does letting its player masses go on a largely misguided, and entirely pointless, freelance binge. It was a desperate, transparent outreach to fans and no one was buying it.
“What the hell was going to happen with that?” one agent wondered. “Is the public supposed to march on David Stern’s office and demand justice for the players now?”
[Related: NBA players frustrated by game cancellations]
And that’s the sad, dark place that finds the NBA now: When it should be delivering an encore to one of its most successful seasons ever, it’s reduced to old times: Stern pulling the strings, manipulating the union, the fans, the players. Everyone. He knows this terrain, and knows how to win at any cost.
The owners “are more dug in than before, but it goes back to a comment David made to me several years ago,” Hunter said. “ ‘This is what my owners have to have.’ And I said, ‘The only way you’re going to get that is if you’re prepared to lock us out for a year or two.’ And he’s indicated to me that they’re willing to do it.
“So my belief is that everything he’s done is demonstrating that he’s following that script.”
It is a script, and this ends when Stern’s done administering a beating on behalf of his owners. Maybe the NBA comes back for a 50-game season, maybe it loses everything. Whatever happens, David Stern, the great illusionist, will dictate the machinations, because this year belongs to him the way it won’t belong to LeBron James(notes) and Kobe Bryant(notes).
So, there was the biggest star in the sport waddling onto the sidewalk on 63rd Street in Manhattan on Monday night without the kind of big-stage, big-event scene that the commissioner always loves for himself in the good times. He knows the drill now: Step out of the way, and let the angry mobs run past him and the owners. Let them chase his players down the street, around the corner and all the way to the lockout’s end and beyond.
I have more respect for a man who let's me know where he stands, even if he's wrong. Than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil. - Malcolm XComment
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
#BringBackSonics Tweet:
How ironic that a couple of years ago Stern and Clay Bennett were favorable people in the eyes of Thunder fans. NOW, they're realizing how much of snakes they are. I'll give them credit for finally opening their eyes to Stern BUT the people of Seattle is just getting a kick out of it.I read on Twitter that people in OKC were upset with David Stern because the lockout hurts their economy. Tell that to the people of SeattleI have more respect for a man who let's me know where he stands, even if he's wrong. Than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil. - Malcolm XComment
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
I think its ridiculous for Barkley to mention baseball, Like for example the playoffs now don't have big market teams. it has the Milwaukee and st. Louis and Detroit and Texas, The last few championship teams have been small market teams too. He made it seem like the Red Sox and Yankees win every single year.Comment
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
Thats not the total point. Its impossible for small market teams to keep their players and compete year after year. Milwaukee will lose Fielder this year and St Louis will probably lose Pujols. Detroit just had a 5 yr drought from the playoffs. Teams like Kansas City will never contend because they can afford to pay their players once they hit free agency. Boston and NY will always contend because they have the money to constantly sign FA.Last edited by aholbert32; 10-12-2011, 10:07 AM.Comment
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
Does anyone really believe the NBA wants competitive balance?
The ratings simply aren't there if none of the glamor teams are playing. Unlike the NFL, not all NBA games are televised. So the glamor teams probably get bigger share of the TV revenues since they tend to be featured more on TNT, ESPN, ABC.Comment
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Re: NBA Lockout and Collective Barganing Agreement Discussion
The league is a player driven league. Cleveland wasnt a "Glamour Team" before Lebron came there. Same with OKC. All the league cares about is getting its stars on TV. The league wants it to be easier for a small market team to keep those stars.Comment
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