NBA Lockout Reaches Critical Mass
NEW YORK (CBSMiami.com) – Negotiators from the NBA and the National Basketball Player's Association restarted talks in New York with a Monday deadline to avoid cancelling the first two weeks of the season.
Both sides have been drawing proverbial lines in the sand as negotiations to end the owner-imposed lockout began in July. There are several issues holding the talks up, but the main hurdle the two sides can't climb is simply money.
The two sides must split what is known as basketball-related income, basically all the money the league takes in. The previous collective bargaining agreement had players receiving 57 percent and owners receiving 43 percent.
The owners originally wanted to reverse this and give players approximately 47 percent of the BRI. The players flatly refused this number and the two sides began posturing over who would break first.
The players finally agreed to drop down to 53 percent, but the owners refused this number. This comes despite the fact that the players would essentially be giving back $160 million a season, or close to a billion dollars over a six-year collective bargaining agreement.
According to CBSSports.com's Ken Berg, the two sides are $900 million apart over seven years, of which $400 million would be lost if the first two weeks of the regular season were lost.
Berg said that if the two sides are separated by just two points on basketball-related income, 52 compared to 50, the difference is actually roughly $80 million in the first year of the deal. It would take players roughly a week to lose that much money.
There's also an owners issues of revenue sharing from big market teams like the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks with small market teams like the Sacramento Kings and even the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Not surprisingly, the big market teams that will be impacted would want more from the BRI split in order to compensate them for any revenue they lose to revenue sharing.
The owners have proposed a harsh luxury tax that would tax teams like the Lakers at a dollar-for-dollar amount with tiers that could increase to four dollars-to-dollar taxes. That would in effect work like a hard salary cap, if big market owners aren't willing to violate it.
But, until both sides can come to a consensus on the overall basketball related income; the extraneous issues of the draft, revenue sharing, mid-level exception, and Bird rights players will not be addressed.
NBA Commissioner David Stern said that if the framework for a deal isn't in place by the end of negotiations Monday, he will cancel the first two weeks of the regular season.
