NBA union boss ‘optimistic’ there won’t be a lockout next summer
This July, Kevin Durant decided to join the Golden State Warriors. (Y’know, in case you missed it.) That was one of many, many transactions during a month in which NBA teams flush with cash thanks to a salary cap sent skyrocketing by the league’s $24 billion broadcast rights deal spent to such a shocking degree that the league actually had to reduce its estimates for how much next year’s cap will increase.
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The combination of those two factors — of a player and organization maneuvering within the system’s bounds to create what looks like a fearsome super-team, something Commissioner Adam Silver expressly doesn’t want; and of a chaotic financial environment put completely on tilt by a ton of money hitting the system all at once rather than in stages, which the NBA proposed but the National Basketball Players Association rejected — have led many to believe that we might be on the verge of another lockout. But while both the league and the players’ union can elect to exit the existing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) this season, NBPA Executive Director Michele Roberts told Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe that the two sides have been quietly negotiating ahead of their shared opt-out date, and that she’s “optimistic” a deal can be reached before a work stoppage:
“I can’t [discuss the talks] because I promised [not to],” she said. “I’m not going to be too terribly substantive but I will say I do believe and [Commissioner] Adam [Silver], I hope he agrees, he and I continue to maintain a civil relationship. I actually like him. I think that he’s a pro.
“We’ve had discussions. Our teams have been in discussions for some months now and we have made progress and we’re inclined to continue along those lines. We have meetings this summer and we’re meeting next week and [consistently] after that. We’re trying to get a deal as quickly as we can, ideally before the start of the season.” […]
“I’ve heard Adam proclaim his optimism,” she said. “I’ve proclaimed mine, so I would like to sooner rather than later be able to have a press conference where we both stand together and announce together that we have a deal and there will be no work stoppage. There will be no lockout.
“Having said that, I gotta be ready for anything. But I am optimistic.”
The 2011 CBA is scheduled to run through the 2020-21 season, but either the league or the players can opt out after the 2016-17 campaign by giving notice of their intent to do so by Dec. 15, 2016. While Roberts shared optimism with Washburn, and has said she sees no reason for a work stoppage, she has also in the past warned the NBA not to cry poverty, especially after inking that $24 billion TV rights deal and seeing the average value of an NBA franchise soar past the $1 billion mark.
Roberts has also publicly discussed the likelihood of opting out of the CBA for years, with an eye on moving players’ share of basketball-related income (BRI) back up toward where it stood before the owners’ decisive negotiating victory on that front in 2011. Under the previous CBA, players were guaranteed to receive 57 percent of BRI, which includes money generated from gate receipts, broadcast rights deals, concession sales, parking, team sponsorships and promotions, and a host of other sources (but, depending on who you talk to, perhaps not all the sources that should be included). In 2011, the league pared that back to a 49-to-51 percent “band” in a move that was projected to shift an estimated $3 billion from players to owners over the 10-year term of the CBA.
Silver, too, has pumped the brakes on the likelihood of a labor stoppage after the 2016-17 season. He has also spoken, though, about his preference for a hard salary cap and cautioned that, before the new TV deal windfall hit the system, “A significant number of teams are continuing to lose money.” Roberts, for her part, struck a skeptical note in response to that claim: “All of the data we have access to indicates that our business is thriving and will continue to do so in the near future.”
While multiple plugged-in reporters had previously expressed optimism about the possibility that neither owners nor players will want to derail the revenue-generating gravy-train ride the NBA is on right now, ESPN.com’s Brian Windhorst recently reported that both the NBA and the players’ union “are expected to” opt out of the CBA this December. Roberts reaffirmed to Washburn that “it’s probably a safe bet that we would opt out” if a full agreement is not reached by Dec. 14.
A new round of bargaining would likely mean the reintroduction of all sorts of economic and system issues tabled in the last round of negotiations, such increasing the age minimum for entering the NBA draft, revisiting the possibility of HGH testing, a hard salary cap and various changes to player contracts, including the so-called “1+1 deals” now en vogue for superstars like Durant, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. It could mean significant changes to team salary structures, too.
All those system issues, however, pale in comparison to the big BRI issue. Yes, the NBA is making money hand over fist, and yes, it seems kind of crazy that ownership would willingly disrupt things … and yet, as NBA.com’s David Aldridge wrote in March of 2015, “Have you ever met a rich guy who said, ‘You know, I’ve made enough money. I’m good’?”
“[Owners] want one thing,” one player agent told Tim Bontemps of The Washington Post during Las Vegas Summer League last month. “They want a higher percentage than 50 percent [of BRI]. That’s it.”
If that’s what they want, they’re going to get a fight, because Roberts doesn’t seem like the kind of negotiator who scares easily. If the two sides entrench, all Stern and Roberts’ optimism figures to go out the window pretty quick … and if it does, so too could our hopes of a speedy resolution to the league’s latest labor battle.
For now, though, Silver and Roberts continue to talk. Where there’s dialogue, there’s possibility — for the good times to keep rolling, for an unprecedented bounty to be deemed good enough, and for a lengthy lockout to be avoided.
“I hope so,” former Commissioner David Stern told CBSSports.com’s Ken Berger in October of 2014. “There’s too much at stake now.”
Whether that winds up being the solution or the problem, though, remains to be seen.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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