Nobody in the NBA is optimistic about anything right now. Especially not after bargaining earlier this week apparently ended quickly when both sides dug in to their previous positions and got nowhere fast. Then the NBA owners filed their own complaint against the union with the NLRB and filed a lawsuit in federal court.
Many fans are beginning to pretty much assume the 2011-12 season is going to be compromised, if not outright canceled. The owners and players seem that far apart and that unwilling to make a compromise that both sides will agree upon. They are speaking a different language and not willing to do much translation right now.
And that even has NBPA executive director Billy Hunter feeling extremely pessimistic. Hunter told an audience at the National Bar Association in Baltimore that he would not bet on there being a 2011-12 season.
“The circumstances have changed among [David Stern’s] constituency,” Hunter told Jeff Barker of The Baltimore Sun. “In the last six or seven years, there is a new group of owners to come in who paid a premium for their franchises, and what they’re doing is kind of holding his feet to the fire.”
That has made Stern more steadfast in his demands and less willing to compromise. Even with the players making concessions in bargaining, it apparently has not been enough.
As Hunter said at this conference, both sides are entrenched and it will take something happening that both sides can use as leverage to save face. Right now neither side has the urgency or the leverage to get a deal done. That is the situation we are in.
Until that point, just about every statement said is going to be about posturing and winning the battle over public relations. The hope is, as Royce Young of Eye on Basketball writes, that fans will get upset over these comments and come storming on the owners’ doors to get something finished. Hunter wants the players to be the good guys in all this. They definitely were not in 1998.
Dour predictions are going to continue until there is some real good news to report. There is not a lot of it right now. And so pessimism reigns from the top of the league down to the bottom. This is a staring contest right now and we are waiting for someone to blink.
Take all statements with a grain of salt.
