The owners and the players broke mediation sessions last week with some nasty rhetoric and fingers pointing at each other. It was not pretty and got everyone thinking that negotiations might be back to square one and whatever progress was made in those three days of mediation is completely gone.
Nobody is quite sure when the next meeting will be and what hope there is for saving the season — the league has yet to cancel more games.
The constant rhetoric has been simple. The owners believe they have certain core beliefs that it needs to solve one way or another. It feels like they have not left many of the offers that were on the table originally — many of their “concessions” were things the league never had to begin with. The players come across as trying desperately to stay at the bargaining table and get a deal done. They seem willing to negotiate all points still and keeping their priorities on the table — those would be the guaranteed contracts and soft cap system.
There are a number of reasons to believe the players are earnestly trying to get a deal done while preserving many of the gains their predecessors have fought for. They have come down from 57 percent to 52.5 percent of basketball related income in recognition of the owner’s financial struggles. They even said they would be willing to go to a 50/50 split depending on the system — it is the owners who will not negotiate a system without a guarantee of 50/50… so they say.
It is hard to figure out what is really going on without being in the room as each party is trying to win the public relations battle and spin the facts in their favor.
But take a step back to think about all that I have just laid out. Take a good look and think about what that actually says.
It actually says the owners have all the power and leverage. The players are trying desperately to appease them and get them to the bargaining table. They are holding on for dear life to any remnant of the previous system that they can. But in the end, this much is clear, the owners have all the leverage. It is a lockout for a reason, the owners hold all the keys.
Alex Laugan of Bright Side of the Sun lays out this, perhaps, unfortunate truth plainly:
“The parameters of the next CBA are clear. It’s a done deal. At some point in the next 12 months, the lockout will end and the NBA will resume play under a new system, the parameters of which are as clear as day.
“The next CBA will contain a 90%-pure 50/50 BRI split, a more-punitive luxury tax schedule, and various other restrictions that heavily discourage $100 million spenders from bringing in $10 million more in new players every offseason.
[…]
“It doesn’t matter that this deal is so much worse than the last one for the players. I repeat: it doesn’t matter. As long as the league is still offering a reasonable share to the players (there are anti-trust and fair labor practice laws in place, after all), the feds won’t stop it.
[…]
“But ultimately, the players have no leverage. The owners know this. Federal mediator George Cohen knows this. Union guy Billy Hunter knows this. Derek Fisher knows this. They’re not happy about it, but the owners are right that they can hold out longer than the players.”
It does not matter who is right or wrong. Business is often not about that. It matters who has the strength to make a deal. And Laugan is right, all that power rests in the owners right now. They knew that with the deadline to a lockout quickly approaching.
That might be the crux of the NBPA’s unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB. That the owners knew they could wait the players out during an extended lockout while not really offering anything in negotiations beforehand and then exert economic pressure to get a deal that favors them. That is, frankly, the point of a lockout. Whether the owners actually offered nothing before the lockout is a determination for the NLRB to look into.
And the NLRB is the last hope the players have for some leverage. The threat of an injunction on the lockout has helped bring the owners up a bit as they certainly do not want to operate under the old collective bargaining agreement.
Of course, nobody knows what the NLRB is going to do and whether it will investigate the owners actions and potentially file an unfair labor practice charge. Or even when the NLRB will release what it is going to do.
The sad fact is the players have likely seen the best deal they are going to get. They certainly hope not, but that seems likely now. There are a lot of principles the players should fight and are probably right to be fighting for. But this is not about what they should or should not get. Each bargaining session, the players have inched closer to where the owners stand.
The owners are waiting for them to crawl to an agreement. And they can wait. The players cannot.
If you take a step back and look at things, the players might just be delaying the inevitable.
