NBA Lockout: Billy Hunter and the NBPA Should Have Taken the Offer

After mulling the offer over the weekend, the NBA Players Association opted not to take the owners' offer that was on the table, and plan to decertify. 

This is a critical mistake by the players.

This offer is the best the players could have ever hoped for. Let's take a look at the main issues.

BRI Split

Obviously the players wish they could have gotten more money; after playing this season with a 57-43 BRI advantage, they now are down to 50-50.

However, we KNEW this would happen. What you have to keep in mind is that the owners at the beginning offered a deal with rates sub-40 percent!

Keeping the rate above the 50-percent line is at least modest. It's a compromise, as we knew it would have to be. It should not be a main issue of contention at this point—it is what it is.

Luxury Tax

The players are not fans of the newly proposed system that would be far more punitive for going into the luxury tax. They claim that it would discourage teams from going into the tax.

However, this is not an issue that should prevent a deal. The players will STILL get 50 percent of the money. It doesn't matter who spends it. And in some ways, this will create more competitive balance, which the players should not be opposed to.

But in the end, it's just an issue that's not as big of a deal as it looks. There is no reason to turn down the deal just because of this, even if the union thinks differently.

Escrow

So for anyone who does not understand escrow, a certain amount of money is deducted from the players' paychecks each time they get them. At the end of the year, the league calculates how much total money the players earn in total based on the BRI for the year.

After that happens, an appropriate amount of money is distributed back to the players so that the players get exactly 50 percent of the BRI. I hope that made sense.

The qualm is that the owners want a higher percentage of money to go into escrow so that they would be guaranteed their BRI split number. It may be a hassle for the players to get more of the money deducted from paychecks, but is this really something that should stall negotiations? I think not.

NBA D-League

Perhaps the most draconian-sounding rule was that a team could send a player down to the D-League and pay them a pro-rated version of a $75,000 salary instead of their salary. That is ridiculous.

Let's put this into perspective. Derrick Rose was the MVP of the league last year. He was on a rookie deal, so he made around $5 million. On the other side, Hasheem Thabeet was drafted No. 2, but has been a total bust.

So what this rule is implying is that Derrick Rose is at the mercy of the team; since he signed the contract, he can't go and try to earn a fair deal right when he deserves it.

However, with these new rules, the team could cut Thabeet's salary into a fifth of the league minimum! That's not even taking into account that Thabeet signed a contract with the team for $5 million a year!

If the best young players cannot earn their money because of their contracts, then the owners should not be allowed to cut already existing salaries. That just is not fair. Unless you can reward players for performing, you can't punish players for being signed to bad deals.

Other Issues

There are a variety of other minor issues that the players and owners are arguing over: sign-and-trade rules, annual raises, cap holds and trade exception rules, among others.

But that's the thing—they are all relatively minor issues in the scope of things. The sign-and-trade rules would really be a non-factor. Cap holds aren't a huge factor in the year-to-year workings of teams unless they're drastically under the cap.

Annual raises is something, but the players still have to remember they're making 50 percent of the BRI either way, no matter what. In the end, these are just minor issues.

Conclusions

Why don't we have a season? There are some bad rules in this deal, we know that. But they are so close! If each side makes just a FEW more concessions, then we're having this season.

But the foolishness of the players means that they just bargained themselves likely out of a whole season. That's $2 billion right off the top! Is there any CBA out there that could possibly be worth that much? I doubt there is. So why couldn't we get this done?

That will be the question haunting fans as the lockout heads to the courts.