The NBA Player’s Union and Owners concluded three intense days of meetings (over 25 hours of time together) and they are no further along than they were three days ago. Today, the discussions abruptly ended and there are no plans for a future meeting as of this writing.
The two sticking points:
- The division of revenues
- The structure of the salary cap system
I’m not sure what is more amazing: how much time was wasted with no progress and how it is even possible to talk for that long and get nowhere on the main issues or the fact that they can’t decide on how to split basketball related income.
The player’s want more money since they put their bodies at risk to play the game that makes the owners money. The owners want more money because most of them are operating their teams at a loss.
Several things stand out to me. Players say that the owners make money outside of the basketball related activities – well I guess the players have never heard of endorsement deals? Also, there is no way, no matter how good you are, any basketball player can deserve to make $12 million for playing 82 basketball games.
In retrospect, the owners are at the fault for this mess. The owners sign the ridiculous contracts that cause the teams to be operating at a loss. Now, they can’t decide not to offer the contracts because they basically created a norm.
What it all boils down to is the NBA will almost certainly not play at all this season – killing the very big momentum boost they gained last season. Hopefully, the NBA will be able to recover and improve similar to how the NHL has done after missing a season a few years ago.
[Photo Credit: Bettor.com]
