NBA Labor Pains

Looking back, I hope the MLB players really appreciate what Miller & Fehr did for them (and their predecessors.) Holding out, when others would have caved, to the point of skipping an entire playoffs took guts, guts that continue to make them the strongest union in professional sports.

Football players, generally thought to be the highest educated, have been very poor negotiators. They had a chance to follow their baseball brethren but sadly (to me a labor side fan) in 1982 I saw Joe Montana cross the picket line and play a "scab" game and football's labor experience was set.

Maybe its because basketball owners are so well funded now; or perhaps baseball owners were more dependent on their franchises for everyday $$. Or simply with NBA players there are too many Kenny Andersons ("I need $60k for hanging around $$") and Ewings ("We make a lot of $$ but we also spend a lot of $$$"), they cannot hold out.

Too bad because its there for the players to make the owners understand that without players there is no game, no luxury box suite rentals, no TV $$$.

 

You're right. Baseball is in a good place right now (16 years of labor peace) because there's mutual respect, and that's difficult place to reach in this environment without a really, really big fight. The baseball players and owners had a bunch of big fights leading to the biggest fight in 1994-'95. I don't think the strong, current relationship between owners and players would really be possible without having the fights. It's like standing up to a bully in a schoolyard -- your lunch gets taken every day until you figure out that you need to stick up for yourself.

Baseball players' fights united generations of players. They fully understand from 45 years' experience that they have an obligation to the players who came before them (and who made huge sacrifices to make the game better for them) as well as those who will come after them.

Bottom line: At some point every union needs to demonstrate its strength and, unfortunately, the basketball players have not yet accomplished that. Even the football players made a big step in the right direction this year. The basketball players are going to need to demonstrate their solidarity before their relationship with NBA owners can reach a mature level. I hope they can stay together and reach that point.

 

No argument up to the last sentence. If that last sentence is correct, then all the players have to do is to tear up their guaranteed contracts and go start their own league. If you last sentence is right, there is no need for "ownership" outside the players themselves.

I suggest - - because I do not know for sure - - that a league owned and operated by the players would not be an enterprise that paid out something like $2.0 - 2.5B to the player-owners. But if you are right, then the players are making a mistake by even participating in these negotiations.

Imagine how badly the agents would take news of that kind of action. There would be no role for them at all; how do you represent the player to the owner when the owner is the player...?

Bottom Line: When this is over, the players will continue to be hugely overpaid folks with a sense of entitlement that will alienate them from plenty of fans. AND when this is over, the owners will continue to greedily continue to extort from local taxpayers - - via their elected politicos - - outrageous sums of money to make them yet wealthier.

 

I understand that the owners do provide valuable resources to make the NBA work, I do not think that a barnstorming tour run by the NBA will provide the same salaries.

My point was that the owners have launched an effective PR campaign that has resonated with the public that leaves the impression that the players are something less than essential and the players (in any sport) need to reframe the conversation to give them due credit.

 

qtlaw:

If the owners' PR campaign has convinced anyone that the players are "something less than essential" then the listener/reader who came to that conclusion is a certified dolt.

There is no league without star players. That is self-evident ...

My point is that there is also no league without rich owners who bankroll the "ancillary costs" and then gouge the fans on ticket prices while simultaneously getting handouts from local pols.

That is the dynamic that created the NBA and it is the dynamic that will exist as the NBA goes forward.

 

I have a question related to this topic:


The NBA players have been locked out for over 100 days now.

Are they entitled to file for unemployment benefits? [I know, they are not going to do this and they would get a ton of scorn heaped on them if they did...]

I was wondering if this lockout qualified them for the benefits and if there is any sort of "means testing" applied to the receipt of unemployment benefits.

 

One of the hilarious talking points the owners and their nut-slurpers in the MSM keep pushing is that the owners are "taking all the risk."

Particularly preposterous in football where the average life expectancy of former players appears to be somewhere in the early 60s. Although former athletes in all pro sports suffer a high frequency of lifelong debilitating injuries.

Yes, caviar-munching silver-spooners in the luxury boxes (most of whom inherited most if not all of their money) are "taking all the risk." You betcha.

 

Not quite right:

1. Players are wiling to play right now but only on the contract terms they have proposed. There is no CBA at the moment. Everything is negotiable from both sides when hammering out a new one. Players have no more right to the terms of the old deal (57 percent of BRI) than the owners have a right to the terms of their latest proposal (now back to 47 percent). The players are, in essence, refusing to play for what their employer is offering in compensation.

2. Good contracts or bad contracts, it doesn't matter. The system requires the owners to pay a certain percentage of BRI to players. Whether it's to the right or the wrong guys, doesn't matter. Dollar amount ends up the same in what is a zero-sum game for the players. The problem as cited by the owners is that 57 percent is too high, period, given costs of operating business.

3. See No. 1.

4. Rollbacks -- which certainly would have been despicable, breaking mutually agreed-upon contracts -- were proposed but quickly set aside. Owners knew they'd lose a big PR battle on that one.

Players had a chance to accept a 50-50 deal, build on the momentum of last season and grow the money pie enough to boost the average NBA salary from $5.5M to $7M. And they passed on that, fighting with their egos for 53 percent because ... uh ... "we're more important than you owners." Right. So now they're losing $170 million for every 2 weeks canceled and shrinking the money pie not only by games lost but by damage to NBA fan interest once this thing is settled.

Geniuses. Obviously they'd be raking in millions annually as rocket scientists and brain surgeons, which still wouldn't quite replace their basketball pay.

 

the owners' latest hostage: the Christmas Day games.


http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7097830/nba-commissioner-david-stern-doubts-christmas-games-no-deal-tuesday

And, a new deadline!!! Yesterday, it was MONDAY that it was crucial-critical-cataclysmically necessary they had to have a deal done by, or else something AWFUL was going to happen.

Now it's Tuesday!!! We get a deal done by Tuesday or the Christmas Day games get it!!!



DO WHAT HE SAY!! DO WHAT HE SAY!!!

 

1) Except that when in pretty much any contract dispute the parties agree to continue the working relationship while negoitiating they go by the terms of the old contract until a new one is agreed upon.

 

+1. I learned how easily I could live without a major pro sports league. The NBA and NHL both could just make a habit of playing every other year for all I'd care. I might actually miss the NFL, for a few weeks. I'm still a little bitter about baseball in '94, but only because that was my first year working at a metro paper and I felt like I had been personally cheated out of the fun of covering a postseason. I'll get over it eventually.