Stern said the latest offer will be on the table until the afternoon of Nov. 9 and if the union doesn’t accept it at that time then it’ll be pulled off of the table and replaced with a worse one for the players. The NBA and players’ union recently met with a federal mediator named George Cohen and some progress was made in the talks.
Stern insisted that the league accepted five out of the six proposals that Cohen suggested, but the players’ union didn’t want to get on board with them. The commissioner has offered the players a 51 per cent share of league revenues as a maximum and 49 per cent as a minimum, depending on what the total revenues are. He said if this offer isn’t accepted by Nov. 9 then the offer that will replace it is only going to give them a maximum of 47 per cent of revenue money.
Admitting that he was getting tired of the whole process, Stern said he definitely hopes the players accept the offer before the owners pull it back. Los Angeles Lakers guard Derek Fisher, the players’ union president, said that the players tried as hard as they could to get a new collective bargaining deal done on Nov. 5, but the two sides just didn’t see eye-to-eye on enough issues to finalize anything. He added that the players made some financial concessions and he doesn’t understand why the league didn’t accept them.
He emphasized that the players made the effort to come to an agreement, but for some reason this specific group of franchise owners just didn’t think it was good enough to end the lockout. The new proposal by the owners puts a limit on free agency as well as trading options for the clubs that are spending over the salary cap and are paying the luxury tax. This is because the small-market clubs feel they can’t compete with the big spenders and they want to keep as much parity in the league as they can.
Nov. 9 now becomes a crucial date on the NBA calendar. The league was supposed to tipoff on Nov.1, but the entire month of November has been scrapped. If the new offer is accepted then part of the season could definitely be saved, but if the players turn it down there’s a good chance that the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) will decertify and this season will be flushed down the toilet.
