I keep hoping that the players are just throwing out this Disclaimer of Interest to see if they can get the Owners to budge quickly, but are still willing to 'blink first'.
Everyone seems to be saying that with the proposal currently offered by the league, it's the players who are making all the concessions.
From my point of view, it seems as if the Owners made more concessions than the players with the last proposal.
Here is why:
1.) Revenue Concessions
The players' slice of the pie was going to go from 57% to 50%. While that could end up being a billion dollars over the full 10-year contract, it still leaves the players as having the highest average salary of any athlete in the world.
It's odd. You have one party who have the highest average salaries in the world and are guaranteed that money. Then you have the other party which claims that 2/3rds of them are not even making a profit. (Yes, you can cook the books to some extent, but the owners are not making a profit of 2 billion a year like the players)
So the players are making concessions, but it's a 7% paycut, and still allows them the guaranteed profit to be the highest average paid players in the world, plus all the perks (charter jets, hotels, world-class training factilities, ect) that come with the position.
So from a revenue standpoint:
Slight Edge to the Players as far as making the most concessions
2.) System Concessions
Here's my problem with the players. Fisher basically said, "We broke our backs to go down to a paltry 50% split of Income. Because of that undue hardship, we demand that all system issues remain status quo."
Here's my question to all of you: In looking at the system changes presented in the most recent proposal, which of the 'A' list items are bad for the game of basketball?
I personally don't see any. There some slight restrictions for teams over the salary cap. But then there's amnesty and the stretch proposal which are great for both players and owners, as well as the minimum salary a team has to have on the team which is a clear win for the players.
The system changes the owners are asking for will help a little bit as far as competitive balance. I haven't seen anyone (other than players who care only about themselves) look at the proposals and say "That system change is bad for basketball, the Owners are crazy to be pushing for it."
Now if the owners had the ability to start from scratch you know what they'd do?
They would have a hard cap or something similiar, perhaps with limited bird-right exceptions.
They would have unguaranteed contracts.
They would have a franchise tag.
None of those items are in the current proposal, but we know that the 1st two were in the initial proposal, and you can bet they would have put in something for a franchise tag if they felt they had any shot at all.
(There was talk today of the Buffalo Bills ending Ryan Fitzpatrick's contract at the end of the year. They signed him to a new 6 year 59 million dollar contract a month ago. At the end of the season, they could drop the contract and only end up paying him about 10 million dollars. Don't you think the NBA owners would love to have the ability to do the same thing, especially since a single player and large contract can destroy a team for years?)
So for that reason, I feel that the owners are making major concessions on system related issues. It doesn't matter that those items aren't in place right now. What matters is that the owners really want them, and backed off of them in order to try and get a deal done.
When you look at the last deal, then see what the owners want, then see what they finally proposed, it's clear that the owners took most of what they wanted off the table, and kept the system far closer to what we last had year.
So as far as system changes I think that the Owners were the ones to make the major concessions to get a deal done, and the system concessions made by the Owners far outweight the revenue concessions the Players made.
So at this point I don't expect the Owners to back down.
If it's true that 2/3rds of the owners lost money last season, then they can survive a year with-out basketball.
In their minds the system isn't anywhere near where they want it to be, but they made the current proposal so that there could be basketball this year.
The players rejected it, and if the players aren't willing to blink, then we are going to miss this season, and possibly the season after, and ultimately, I don't think the players win this litigation.
Interestingly enough, if we do lose the season it could end up being great for the Kings.
As recently discussed in another thread the Kings would be big winners in just about any system put in place to determine draft position. And the upcoming draft will be absolutely stacked.
But not only that, if this really gets dragged out, at the end of the day I think the Owners are going to get a lot of the system issues that they want, and those system changes should be small-market team friendly.
I don't want to lose a year of basketball. I want to wake up tomorrow, find out that the players realized that the Owners are not going to yield, and accept the last proposal by the League so we can have basketball by Christmas.
I'd say we have at most 5-6 more weeks before the season is cancelled. I'm not very hopeful at this point that the players will cave to save the season, and I'd be very surprised if the Owners did.
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