NBA Lockout: With Time Running Out, Will Both Parties Come to Their Senses Soon?
The NBA lockout has killed the preseason, and now there is a threat of cutting the first two weeks of the regular season if there is no new labor agreement by Monday.
The chances that games are lost is looking very good right now, which is why it's very doubtful either party comes to their senses anytime soon. The NBA is coming off a tremendous season, but it's as if it just doesn't care.
The players and the owners tried to get it done, but the discussion failed when neither side would budge on how much percentage of revenue sharing they would take.
NBA commissioner David Stern told reporters that he hasn't seen the progress he would have liked. Per ESPN:
""We were not able to make the progress that we hoped we could make and we were not able to continue the negotiations.
By Monday, we will have no choice but to cancel the first two weeks of the season."
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The lockout has reached the point where fans are really fearing the loss of games, which is why both sides need to work something out as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that will happen because both sides have no clue when they next time they will meet for negotiations, according to ESPN.
"There has been no discussion about next meetings," NBPA executive director Billy Hunter said. "Maybe a month. Two months. Your guess is as good as mine."
That's not a good sign moving forward, which is truly a shame. Back-and-forth negotiations about splitting income hasn't gone exactly as they hoped it would, but that doesn't mean both sides should take such an extended break before trying to complete a deal.
There was talk of a 50-50 split, but both sides say the other is the one to blame for the reason it didn't occur.
The players received 57 percent of basketball-related income in the last year of the expired agreement, and their proposal of 53 percent for the new labor agreement was shot down and countered with an offer of 47 percent.
That tells you that the players and the owners are still very far apart, and the likelihood of them getting a deal before Monday is very slim.
Deputy commissioner Adam Silver added that they know they're not going to get what they want.
"We're long past the point where we're trying to get 100 percent of what we were looking for," Silver said. "We haven't made a secret of the fact that we'd very much like to make a deal."
If that's the case, why didn't they try to come closer to what the players were offering? Stern said the league will suffer a $200 million hit from missing the preseason, and one can only imagine how much they'd lose if regular season games drop like flies.
Part of the reason either side won't budge is because the players know they all still have a ton of money and they can go play overseas to get an income for this season if they want.
It would appear that missing the beginning of the season is no big deal to them—and the same goes for the owners because a lot of them lose money by running their teams. That's the owners' fault for being involved with less-than-stellar teams and thinking they could turn it around, but that's a whole other argument for a different day.
Neither party will come to their senses and get this deal done, so go ahead and prepare for the loss of some regular-season games.
But hey, it's the playoffs that are the most important, right? Just hope your team doesn't take forever to get it going because digging yourself into a whole in a shortened season will doom you from the start.
