It now looks like both the NBA owners and players are digging in to their respective positions and preparing for war. Rabble rousers like Paul Pierce are banging the drum.

Suffice to say that war always looks necessary and honorable to all sides just before it breaks out. After all the damage has been done and a treaty has finally been signed, it always looks avoidable and senseless as everybody digs out of the rubble and takes stock of their profound losses. 

It is especially mind-boggling here because the remaining differences between the parties are quite petty in the grand scheme of sharing a $4 billion economic pie, and they appear much bigger than they actually are to the principal negotiators who each day have a little more trouble seeing beyond the trenches.

This is the current moment of truth confronting the owners and players, and adding to the fog are seven “super agents” who are attempting to use their clients to push what is largely their own agenda. Decertification is the weapon the agents are trying to put in their players’ hands. 

In response to decertification, the NBA would likely drop a bigger bomb by voiding all existing contracts. The owners would be within their legal right to make up their own rules since there would be no union with which to negotiate. At each step along the way, the players’ only recourse would be to counter with antitrust lawsuits filed against the NBA for each action the league takes against the players.

Concerning the agents’ push to open a new front with decertification, I offer some very specific advice to the players:

Inform your agent that you would gladly proceed with decertification if said agent would simply offer to guarantee you at least some of the lost salary from this season and future seasons. This would be a simple financial arrangement whereby the agents will provide insurance for some portion (half, most or all) of the player’s salary in case decertification or the threat of decertification does not produce the glorious victory that agents predict.

Then we will all see how quickly the agents drop their push for the players to decertify the union, and instead advocate a reasonable peace treaty.

It goes without saying that players have gobs more to lose in decertification than agents, whose careers have the potential to last dozens of years longer than their player clients and who make their living on relatively small commissions off each individual player contract they negotiate. 

You could more easily make the case that agents’ interests are lined up diametrically against their clients’ best interests than you could that they are squarely on the same side. The super agents are not overly concerned about the very brief period of earning power that their current clients possess. 

They look at this as a long-term battle with NBA owners, a way to draw a line in the sand now so that their own personal income is preserved over many years. Agents are worried about the commissions they’ll receive on contracts for future NBA players who have not yet even entered high school, or grade school, or the womb. 

The super agents are willing to sacrifice the short-term interests of their present clients in the fight to secure bigger deals sometime down the line. 

"If players don't accept 50 (percent of BRI) by Wednesday, they'll never see it again - at least not for a few years," one league source told Chris Broussard of ESPN on Monday.  As for some other parts of the league’s offer that the union dislikes – such as removing the ability of luxury-tax teams to sign-and-trade or use the mid-level exception – these are not hills worth dying on either.

As is typically the case just before battle, adrenaline is running high and common sense is in short supply. The players, many of whom believe they can win a bloody confrontation, seem on the verge of rejecting their last chance to accept the NBA’s best offer before David Stern presents a new offer to the union that consists of 47% with a flexible hard cap, salary rollbacks and the loss of guaranteed contracts. 

Decertification and the body count follow.

Louis.Roxin@RealGM.com