The NBA locked out its players at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Friday after
talks again failed to lead to a new collective-bargaining
agreement. The current CBA expired at midnight without a new deal
in place. And yet there didn’t seem to be much disappointment on
either side.
NEW YORK
The NBA locked out its players at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Friday after talks again failed to lead to a new collective-bargaining agreement. The current CBA expired at midnight without a new deal in place. And yet there didn’t seem to be much disappointment on either side.
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“As we’ve indicated before, it’s something we’ve prepared for, we anticipated it was coming,” union executive director Billy Hunter said when Thursday’s labor talks, held at the Omni Berkshire Hotel in Manhattan, ended around 3 p.m. “The problem is the gap in terms of the numbers — where they are and where we are — we can’t find any way to bridge that gap.”
Commissioner David Stern expressed “sadness” for the move, which, he said, “has a very large impact on a lot of people, most of whom aren’t associated with either side.”
For instance, the lockout could result in the loss of jobs within the league and its franchises. Stern said the league will “have to go back and look at everything with our expenses.”
It is the NBA’s first work stoppage since 1998, when the lockout carried into the regular season and resulted in a 50-game season. While there is still a lot of time before the Nov. 1 start of the 2011-12 season would be threatened, Hunter said “obviously the clock is now running.”
The sides did agree on one thing after Thursday’s meeting: to take a short break for the July 4 holiday weekend and then get back into discussions within the next two weeks. Despite what both sides view to be a large divide in philosophies, both agree the talks have been relatively harmonious. Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said Thursday’s meeting was a “very friendly, conciliatory session.”
Hunter joked, “It was almost like we were going to start singing ‘Kumbaya.”‘
A year ago, the league opened one of the biggest offseasons in its history, with LeBron James leading a long list of superstar players on the market. Now, the league has closed its doors.
“I’m not scared,” Stern said of the precarious situation. “I’m resigned to the potential damage it can cause to our league . . . as we get deeper into it, these things have the capacity to take on a life of their own. You can never predict what will happen.”
The league would like an agreement that includes a hard salary-cap system — the latest proposal had a system similar to the one employed by the NHL — and a reduction of players’ salaries, which Stern says will help the league’s teams be profitable for its owners. “It’s time for there to be a return on the investment that has been made,” Stern said after he pointed out that the average salary has grown from $450,000 to $5 million annually during his quarter century at the helm.
But the union believes the league can find other ways to fix its financial issues, with revenue sharing as the main point.
Hunter shrugged off the league’s rejection and again said there was little doubt the day was going to end with a lockout. And he said he was “glad” it did.
“I said to them, ‘Now maybe we can really begin to negotiate,”’ he said. “I don’t know why I feel that way, I just do. We’ve been waiting for the lockout, now there’s a lockout. Now let’s get down to business.”
— Story by Alan Hahn, Newsday
