NBA Labor Talks Reach Impasse: Greedy Players to Blame

To best understand the woeful state of the fractured NBA labor negotiations is to envision a tattered net clinging to a bent rim, barely bolted to a shattered backboard, teetering over a littered, slippery floor in an unlit, abandoned gymnasium. 

Not a pretty metaphor, but a poignant picture nonetheless of the painstakingly protracted labor talks between the NBA and its locked-out players.

Commissioner David Stern and NBA team owners have adopted a hard line approach. They have locked out the NBA players with the intent of negotiating a more favorable collective bargaining agreement for themselves in order to return the league and its teams to profitability. 

Stern and team owners are purposed to correct the league's current bloated and broken basketball business model to the chagrin of wildly overpaid point guards, power forwards and centers who possess little business acumen, limited or no workforce experience and who are equally deluded into believing they are actually entitled to the extravagant salaries they are paid.

Commissioner Stern and NBA team owners have reached an impasse with the NBA players' union and have canceled all games through the end of November. Players have fired back at Stern and the owners, calling them liars and dictators and rankling basketball fans everywhere, especially me.  

My personal angst, birthed out of this tiresome stalemate, has already gone a full 48 minutes and is now headed into overtime. My basketball cup of indignation is now fully directed at the players because I don't believe the players have a legitimate pivot foot to stand on.

For NBA players to bemoan their current plight while averaging nearly $5M per year is unconscionable. It's greedy, selfish and outright insulting - both to fans as well as NBA team and arena employees like ushers, parking attendants, statisticians, ball boys, maintenance and ticket office office workers, etc. who rely on income that will now be lost due to the lockout.

Too many of the NBA players over value their worth and have no comprehension of how out of balance their bloated compensation is compared to their overall contribution to society, especially during recessionary times like these. 

The NBA's most recent BRI (basketball related income) offer of 50% - 50% is an excessive gift, and the players, their equally greedy agents and certainly NBA players' union chief Billy Hunter, would be foolish to reject it.

The NBA business model with its incongruous salaries needs to be repaired, and the NBA must remedy its league operations by running the league and each team like any successful, cost-conscious corporation. David Stern and the NBA should glean from the brilliant business minds of former successful corporate titans like GE's Jack Welch, Chrysler's Lee Iacocca and Godfather's Herman Cain who enacted cost-cutting measures and restored order and profitability to the struggling companies they inherited.  

Here are my suggestions to get the players back on the court where skeptical and irritated fans like me will once again support them:

To streamline its financially strapped league, Stern should enforce an R.I.F. like any reasonable corporation. Yes, a reduction in force. No NBA roster needs 15 players. Reduce it to 12 or 13 max and dress 10 or 11 tops. The hoops world pipeline is teeming with rich, available talent in the NBA D-league as well as overseas. Make it more challenging to get to the Show. The increased competition will produce better players and subsequently, a better NBA product. And, money will have been saved.

To strengthen its overall position as a respected, sought after place of employment, impose minimum qualifications for new NBA players - like a four year college degree. Not only would such a requirement validate the importance of an education in our nation, it would also mature and better equip athletes who will eventually earn exorbitant amounts of money as NBA players. The extra years in college should also mitigate the sad money management exhibited by far too many of their NBA predecessors. 

To improve the financial solvency of the league, institute performance-based compensation. Immediately reduce, then hard cap, NBA salaries to more reasonable levels but tie lucrative incentives to measurable individual performance and, more importantly, improved team goals. Quite simply, make the players earn their money and attach the carrot of the team's cumulative success to the players' pay plan.

To better equip players for the future and help them transition into the "real" workplace after they've hung up their high tops, raise the rim, I mean the bar. Defer the players' income and tie it to compliance with the law and some measure of public service. Instill in the players a pride and a responsibility to serve those, namely the fans, who have paid handsomely to buy their jerseys and watch them play. Players need to know how privileged they are and how molly-coddled they've been, and that with that privilege comes responsibility even after they've retired off the court.

To best serve the players, teach them fiduciary and social responsibility during the playing days and as a prerequisite to lace 'em up. The NBA needs more retirees like Magic Johnson, David Robinson and Kevin Johnson who have flourished in their post basketball days and not retired athletic role models like Lenny Dykstra, Marc Brunell and Shawn Kemp.

I don't want to miss an NBA season because of this current NBA labor stalemate, but I strongly support Commissioner Stern and the NBA team owners for their stance.

Like the tattered net dangling from the bent rim, barely bolted to the shattered backboard in the unlit, abandoned gym, the NBA labor negotiations may continue to hang on before a resolution is reached.

However, my hope is that Stern and the NBA owners hold fast to their position and that players capitulate to a plan that will strengthen the financially beleaguered league and best position them to be role models for adoring kids everywhere.

Let it be said of the NBA's future: this is a place where "amazing continues to happen!"

Straight talk. No static.

MIKE - aka - Mike Raffone - thee ultimate talking head on sports!

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