The NBA has informed its teams that contact with their players is strictly forbidden.
Any contact with a player will result in a $1 million fine.
The NBA has informed its teams that contact with their players is strictly forbidden.
Any contact with a player will result in a $1 million fine.
NBA owners voted on Thursday to impose a lockout of its players as the clock strikes midnight on July 1st.
“Needless to say, we’re disappointed that this is where we find ourselves,” said deputy commissioner Adam Silver.
Despite several meetings over the last few weeks, the two sides remain separated by several billion dollars.
“We’re going to continue to negotiate, we’ve already agreed,” Billy Hunter said. “That was sort of the closing agreement up there, that we would not let the imposition of a lockout stop us from meeting.”
Despite annual revenue of about $3.8 billion, N.B.A. officials say the existing system is broken, with 22 of 30 teams losing money, and league-wide losses exceeding $300 million a year. Silver said the owners wanted a system in which “all 30 teams could compete for a championship” and have “the opportunity to be profitable.”
Stern warned that there is no telling how long a lockout might last.
“I’m not scared,” Stern said. “I’m resigned to the potential damage that it can cause to our league” and to the people who make their living in and around the N.B.A. He added: “As we get deeper into it, these things have a capacity to take on a life of their own. You never can predict what will happen.”
Billy Hunter, chief of the players union, says owners are locking out players after failing to reach a new collective bargaining agreement, potentially putting the 2011-12 season in jeopardy.
Despite a three-hour meeting Thursday, the sides could not close the enormous gap that remained in their positions. The CBA was due to expire at midnight.
Union executive committee member Matt Bonner says "we tried to avoid the lockout; unfortunately we couldn't reach a deal."
All league business will be on hold until a new agreement is reached.
The two sides will meet again in two to three weeks.
The union will not decertify.
Executives from NBA teams have been given a long list of people connected to players that they will not be allowed to communicate with during a lockout.
The list includes agents, family members of players, employees, amongst many others.
"I'm not even sure I can talk to my own cousins," one general manager tells Yahoo! Sports.
Player’s union vice president Matt Bonner said he did not know if the union would offer a counterproposal to the owners’ latest offer. He also would not speculate on whether the players, like their NFL counterparts, would vote to decertify the union in the event of a lockout.
The owners’ latest offer would guarantee players no less than $2 billion per year for the duration of a 10-year deal, at an average salary of $5 million per player. Union officials say that represents a pay cut of $7 billion over the life of the deal, compared with the system in place now.
Owners are also angling for a hard salary cap like the NHL’s, which players view as a nonstarter.
“They’re asking for a deal that is worse than hockey’s, which is considered to be the worst collective bargaining deal in sports history,” Bonner said. “If that’s their best offer, we don’t have much choice but to fight for something better.”
Players Association executive director Billy Hunter warned NBA players on Wednesday that the league’s proposal of a “hard-flex” salary cap would have grave consequences for the future earnings and security of rank-and-file union members.
The owners’ plan “would decimate the middle class, with teams using the bulk of their hard cap room on star players,” Hunter wrote to players in an email obtained by Yahoo! Sports.
Hunter stayed on his theme of disparaging the league’s offer of a flex cap, promising doomsday scenarios over the course of the 10-year deal the NBA has proposed to players.
The letter was sent to the players as a prelude to Thursday’s bargaining session in New York that could be the final one before the league possibly imposes a lockout at 12:01 a.m. ET Friday.
Charles Barkley blames the movement of several of the game's best players to the NBA's biggest markets as part of the reason why the owners are so committed to overhauling the current CBA.
“Well I think, and I’m not saying this because I’m in the NBA, if you go back and look, David Stern has been the best commissioner in sports the last 25 years. It would take a miracle on his part not to have a lockout and I truly believe that. I think there’s going to be a lockout, I think the owners are dug in, I think they want to send a message to these players.
“I think they’re really upset by this LeBron James-Chris Bosh situation, because their teams don’t have to be really good, but I feel like if they have a star in their market they can make some money. And if all the stars want to play together . . . we’re almost becoming like baseball where you’ve got a few good teams and the rest of them stink.”
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 Sacramento Kings' season ticket sales have already surpassed last year's total, team officials said this week, thanks to NBA marketing assistance and a newfound ardor among fans after the team nearly left town this spring.
But that bonanza could slow, starting Friday.
The NBA's collective bargaining agreement expires at midnight Thursday. If the league and players don't come to a new agreement by then, a lockout may ensue, and with it the possibility that the upcoming season will be shortened or canceled entirely.
"In the unfortunate event that games are missed next season, all NBA season ticket holders have the opportunity to receive a refund of the purchase price, plus interest, for all missed games," NBA spokesman Mike Bass said.
In Ted Leonsis’s first season as owner of the Wizards, the team didn’t have much success on the court, as it finished with just 23 wins.
And in an interview on Monday with Chris Miller of Comcast SportsNet, Leonsis admitted that the Wizards weren’t very successful at the box office, either.
“We lost money last year,” Leonsis said, matter-of-factly, when asked about NBA Commissioner David Stern’s claims that 22 of the league’s 30 teams lost money last year.
Stern has stated that his goal is to make the league profitable for his owners, and the union estimates that the league is looking to make cuts of more than $8 billion over 10 years.