The NBA is in the final hours before the inevitable begins: a
lockout. On Wednesday, team owners authorized a lockout if a new
collective bargaining agreement isn’t in place when the existing
agreement expires at midnight Thursday. The final pre-lockout
bargaining session between the owners and National Basketball
Players Association will take place Thursday in New York.
PHILADELPHIA
The NBA is in the final hours before the inevitable begins: a lockout.
On Wednesday, team owners authorized a lockout if a new collective bargaining agreement isn’t in place when the existing agreement expires at midnight Thursday.
The final pre-lockout bargaining session between the owners and National Basketball Players Association will take place Thursday in New York.
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“If no progress is made between the two sides,” union chief Billy Hunter told the Sports Business Journal, “then the NBA will impose a lockout.”
NBA commissioner David Stern told reporters Wednesday: “There is always time to make a deal.”
However, league owners voted Wednesday to give their labor relations committee the authority to take the necessary steps — one of which is locking out the league’s 450 players — in pursuit of successfully negotiating the next collective bargaining agreement.
“Not making a deal should give everybody apprehension, because the way to continue our growth is to come up with a deal,” Stern said.
The two sides remain far apart on many issues, including, but not limited to, the percentage split on revenue, which now favors the players, 57 percent to 43 percent, and the implementation of a hard salary cap.
If a lockout is indeed imposed at 12:01 Friday morning, it will be the league’s first work stoppage since 1998-99, when the NBA season was shortened from 82 to 50 games.
Because of the impending lockout, the traditional rookie summer leagues will not exist, and there will be a moratorium on all player movement. This means that free agency, which traditionally begins July 1, will be on hold until the next labor agreement.
The two sides will meet again Thursday for a final bargaining session. There is the possibility that the league and union could agree to extend the agreement’s deadline through the weekend and into next week, allowing for additional bargaining time before instituting a lockout.
But the most likely outcome of Thursday’s session is that the two sides remain far apart and a lockout begins immediately.
— Story by Kate Fagan, The Philadelphia Inquirer
