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The National Basketball Players Association’s executive director Billy Hunter predicted it over a year ago, claiming he was “99 percent sure” that a NBA lockout would arise following the 2010 season. Many were aware that a lockout was a possibility, but I don’t think anybody, players or owners alike, expected the discussions to be this difficult.
We are now over five months into the lockout, and talks aren’t going anywhere. Just to add insult to injury, Celtics fans who were hopeful for one last championship run with the ever-aging big three are seeing the chances of any games being played this season slipping out of our grasps.
From a fan’s perspective, I just want to watch some basketball games. The NBA, along with the other major professional sports leagues, is extremely lucrative to be a part of. Sure, owners and players alike don’t want to sacrifice any of their earnings, but they are making millions of dollars a year just to manage or play basketball; it’s the fans that are losing the most the right now.
Although it would be easy to say that both sides just need to meet halfway and come up with some resolution, it is a little more complicated than that. Billions of dollars are being discussed, lawsuits are being filed and the rumors of Kobe Bryant playing in Italy or Chris Paul going to China are becoming a reality as the clock continues to tick, with no agreement in sight.
During the 2010 NBA season, Commissioner David Stern was projecting season losses of approximately $350 million, and in order to go from negative to positive he proposed that the league initiate a “hard” salary cap. Currently the NBA has a cap on total salaries a team can accrue, but there are some instances that allow teams to go over this cap if they don’t mind paying a luxury tax.
With the “hard” cap in place, under no exceptions would teams be allowed to spend more than the cap specifies. This would directly affect players who are looking to sign those large, long-term contracts.
An example of this would be the Miami Heat in the summer of 2010 free agency, with their acquisitions of Lebron James and Chris Bosh. They ended up exceeding the salary cap, but were granted an exception because they had to fill out their roster, and did this by signing players to “veterans minimum” contracts.
The salary cap is the main factor of argument, but there are various sub-topics that need to be smoothed out as well, including the maximum contract years a player can sign to, the minimum age a player has to be before entering into the NBA, and the possibility of getting rid of a couple teams so the talent pool of players isn’t as disbursed.
Synonymous with the salary cap is how much the players should be paid; the previous collective bargaining agreement gave the players a 57-percent share. The players were quick to reject the NBA’s original proposal of 47 percent, and are lobbying towards a less drastic cut of salary to a percent in the lower 50 percent, with a 51- to 49-percent split the bare minimum.
Even after several meetings per week between the NBA and NBPA (National Basketball Players Association), talks have virtually been at a stalemate for the past few months. It seems as though the players were willing to negotiate a decrease in revenue, but were adamantly against a salary cap with no exceptions, which would decrease the amount of money teams can spend on players.
Commissioner Stern fired back with roughly a 50-50 split in revenue, but the NBA was ultimately not budging in its proposal of a hard salary cap. Even with a mediator involved and a final ultimatum given by Commissioner David Stern and the owners, the frustrated players decided to go a different root: disband from the union and take the NBA to court.
From a player’s perspective, this may be the best way to get what they see as an acceptable offer from the owners, as the pressures and hassles of lawsuits and multiple court proceedings may lead the NBA to bend a little in their proposals. On the other hand, court proceedings usually take a great deal of time, and the more games that are cancelled from the season (so far all the games up to December 15), the more paychecks players are missing.
What it all boils down to is discrepancies in a couple percent of revenue. Yes, we are talking about 2 or 3 percent of billions of dollars, but for players and owners alike who are making more money than they would be doing virtually any other job in the world, they are just killing themselves as the cancellation of the 2011 NBA season is in sight.
Not only is the lockout emptying the pockets of NBA owners and players, those who are making a living as ticket vendors, concession workers, and parking attendants are struggling to find a job. As an avid basketball fan, I am hopeful that both sides would just agree on something like a 50-50 revenue split of basketball-related activities and meet in the middle on the salary cap, but that is most likely just wishful thinking.
Look on the bright side, some players are getting a chance to travel overseas and increase the NBA’s popularity globally, but at the same time, they are probably making a third or less of what they would make in the NBA. And for those players who have decided not to play overseas, they must find other ways to keep themselves busy and make money. Take Celtics guard Delonte West for example; what better way to spend your time off from basketball than working at a furniture store to pay off your bills.
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