George Cohen has seen better days
Well folks, grab some popcorn. We’re going to be here for a while.
Actually, don’t eat.
Somewhere in whatever hotel it was that hosted the latest round of largely fruitless NBA talks, Derek Fisher and Billy Hunter seethed when Adam Silver and San Antonio Spurs owner Peter Holt gave their side of what went down. Silver stood there and said
“We’re saddened on behalf of the game. …Ultimately, we were unable to bridge the gap that separates the two parties.”
Holt and Silver painted a picture that portrayed talks as an honest effort to bridge gaps that, because the players just wouldn’t move off their insistence of 53% of BRI, just couldn’t progress any further. The NBA, in its typical PR spin, said it had offered a 50-50 split and the players just didn’t want to move.
Enter Derek Fisher and Billy Hunter.
“I want to make it clear that you guys were lied to earlier. Plain and simple.”
“They were carrying out a mandate they were given. This is a sad day for fans, because someone in that Board Of Governors was sent to blow off the fans, blow us off.”
And with that, the symbolic gloves came flying off.
With venom coursing through proverbial veins and no further talks scheduled, we have reached a very real breaking point. As bad as things have been, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This is the stereotypical Old West poker game. Contentious from the beginning, we’ve now reached the point where people will reach up their sleeves for the aces they’ve tucked away. The NBA will cancel more games. The union may decertify. The PR blitzes are undoubtedly being honed and both sides are setting in for a fight.
The roots of that fight, according to the players, came from the NBA board of governors meeting, held before the bargaining session.
“Something happened in that board of governors meeting,” Kessler said. “Yesterday we thought we were moving toward a deal. Suddenly, today, they spend very little time negotiating. As soon as we got in there and presented our offer and without caucusing, they said, ‘We don’t have to do anything else. We can tell you right now we’re at 50 percent, and it has to be our way.’
Do yourself a favor and read Woj’s account. The chain of events is obvious.
Players came in willing to deal. They moved off their 53% of the BRI proposal. But owners weren’t moving. Actually, some owners want to move. But they can’t. Because right now the small-market owners are digging in. As Holt said:
“We’re still pretty far apart. … We want to get to the point where all 30 teams have the opportunity — nothing guaranteed … to be competitive and to make a few bucks.”
Parity and profitability won’t happen overnight. Small market owners are like fat people watching a Xenadrin commercial at 3 AM. They have it in their heads that there’s a magic pill that will solve everything, and they want it NOW! They’re not willing to put the actual hard work an necessary life adjustment into getting healthy. They want the pill. They want the shortcut.
But the shortcut doesn’t exist. Instant parity and profitability won’t happen. Killing a season kills the profits. And it’s hard to get them back when your team isn’t very good.
The owners can’t get on the same page, so the hard-line, small-market guys are getting their way at the moment. The players have moved significantly, but not enough to satiate the financial appetites of the billionaires who willingly dove into their vanity purchases. Last night, the spin proved too much for the players, who feel they’ve done enough to get a deal done.
Now… well, now we wait for real fight. All this other stuff was the “feeling out” process of the first couple of rounds. Now we’ll see the haymakers. Now we’ll see what each side is REALLY willing to do.
NOW… this is going to get ugly.
