Mike Monroe: It only gets harder for owners, playersThe NBA’s Board of Governors met Tuesday in Dallas and heard a report on collective bargaining from Spurs owner Peter Holt, chairman of its labor relations committee.
The league wouldn’t reveal if the board officially authorized locking out the players once the clock strikes midnight Thursday, the end of the collective bargaining agreement that’s been in place since 2005, but it doesn’t matter. As commissioner David Stern has warned already, such a vote is a mere formality and can be conducted by any means at any time.
The first lockout authorization via text message may be mere hours away.
Holt’s committee will meet with the negotiating committee of the National Basketball Player’s Association on Thursday, but no last-minute breakthrough is expected.
Here’s the truly bad news: Once the lockout begins, the standoff is going to get nastier.
According to NBA executives familiar with the league’s strategies, once the lockout is in place, the owners will push for a hard salary cap of $45 million, the elimination of guaranteed contracts and ask that the players swallow a 33 percent salary cut.
The concessions made in recent weeks, including the “flex cap” of $62 million and a guarantee of $2 billion in annual player payroll, will be off the table.
If this seems certain to guarantee the loss of the entire 2011-12 season, it is because there are owners who think it is necessary for the long-term viability of the league.
The players likely know this is coming because hints have been leaked for weeks. How they react to the old, hard line once the anticipated stoppage begins will determine the prospects for next season.
During the 1998 lockout, a settlement was reached the day before the NBA said it would cancel the entire season.
This would be the prudent course of action, but the anticipated hardening of the league’s stance may move the union to decertify, an action that has been called its “nuclear option” since under U.S. labor law, it would remove the antitrust exemption from the league.
Anyone who has followed the NFL’s labor impasse knows this is what the NFLPA chose. Jeffrey Kessler serves as outside counsel for the NFLPA and the NBPA, so it is clear which path he prefers.
And if decertification happens?
Expect another antitrust lawsuit that will take months, perhaps years, to make its way through the courts.
The two sides have been working on a new deal for the better part of two years, so you have to wonder how they’ve approached the 11th hour still miles apart from an agreement.
Stern and deputy commissioner Adam Silver will have us believe it is because the league’s business model is broken and requires a new system. The trouble with this argument is that owning a professional sports team is more of a hobby than business for many of the owners.
Do you think Mark Cuban, who has a Forbes Magazine wealth estimate of $2.5 billion, loses sleep over the money he likely will lose on last season’s Mavericks, who had a player payroll in excess of $90 million (plus luxury taxes under the soon-to-expire CBA)?
Not when he gets to sleep with the Larry O’Brien Trophy, as he admitted to after his team won the NBA title earlier this month.
That’s not part of any business model Harvard MBA candidates study.
There are owners for whom the model no longer works well for, and Holt may be one of them. If small-market teams such as the Spurs want to remain competitive, a hard cap would help, but so would revenue sharing among the league’s 30 teams. But that is something Holt’s fellow owners must agree to do, and that won’t be any easier than striking a deal with the players.
There is a deal to be struck, on all issues, because there always is.
Time has run out on the easy route.
Beginning Friday morning, the real difficulty begins.
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