NBA Digs In for Long Cold Winter

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright November 18, 2011
All Rights Reserved.                                         

     When Mark Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks won their first NBA title June 12, the celebration abruptly ended June 23 when NBA Commissioner David Stern announced an indefinite lockout until a new Collective Bargaining Agreement could be reached.  It didn’t take long for both sides to dig in, especially Billy Hunter’s NBA Players Assn., who rejected out of hand the owners’ demand to get a bigger share of league profits. While the league reportedly makes $4 billion a year, it’s the percentage split that’s fueld so much controversy.  Players Assn. reps couldn’t fathom dropping down from the current 57% to the owners’ proposed 47%.  Players chief Billy Hunter talks of owners like they’re slave owners, not businessmen looking to turn a healthy profit.  Players’ chief Hunter showed no sympathy for 22 of 30 NBA owners currently running NBA franchises in the red.

            Hunter announced Nov. 13 that the NBA Players Union would disband and file antitrust actions in U.S. District Courts in California and Minnesota.  Retaining 71-year-old Washington litigator David Boies, the NBA players union hoped to maximize leverage on the owners.  When Stern offered the players a 50/50 split last weekend, there were high hopes of a resolution.  Owners wanted to retain the change a number of features in the old CBA that left small market teams hemorrhaging.  Without lucrative TV contracts, small market teams can’t generate enough profit through ticket sales to compensate for the king’s ransoms paid to marquee players.  Negotiations broke down last weekend when Players’ Assn Atty. Jeffrey Kessler calling the players “plantation workers,” raising racist questions to NBA’s best.  Too much emotion and too little logic prevailed at the table.

            Comparisons to other unions or oppressed groups of people doesn’t characterize professional sports where the minimum yearly salaries exceed $5 million a season.  Over the last 10 years, salaries inflated to historic levels, leaving teams hard-pressed to make up the difference in alternative revenue streams.  NBA players Carmello Anthony, Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard and Leon Powe filed an antitrust action on behalf of players, claiming the NBA does not hold the antitrust exemption seen in Major League Baseball.  “By overplaying their hand, by pushing players beyond any line of reasonableness, I think they caused this.  You don’t give up hundreds of millions of dollars unless you want to make a deal and that’s what the players were doing,” said Boies spewing half-truths and propaganda.  Boies knows that NBA salaries were inflated over the last 10 years to the breaking point.

            Sure, NBA players appear to be giving up millions from the past CBA where they received grossly inflated salaries, breaking even well-run franchises.  Point fingers at owners, Boies shows not one shred of objectivity of how NBA owners were backed into a corner with unprofitable businesses.  Boies specifically blamed NBA Commissioner David Stern for giving the players the ultimatum that the players either take the deal or face more draconic cutbacks.  Boies saw Stern’s threat as proof of anti-competitive practices warranting the filings in U.S. District Court.  Saying the ultimatum “turned out to be a mistake,” Boies insisted that Stern engaged in non-competitive practices but couldn’t see that the failure to make a deal was in the players’ hands.  No NBA franchisee should be allowed to lose money while players rake in unprecedented profits at the expense of the league.

            Boies’ tough talk of antitrust suits smacks of t he kind of hardball that rarely results in deal-making.  Saying that the league and NBA owners called their bluff, Boies sees the NBA’s front office as behind the failure.  He shows now appreciation for how Billy Hunter refused to see the owners’ dilemma of making a profit when they give away much of the leagues profit.  “They did a terrible job of taking a very hard line and pushing the players to make concession after concession, but greed in not only a terrible thing—it’s a dangerous thing,” said Boies in a classic case of the kettle calling the pot black.  Boies knows that inflated NBA salaries cause the current dilemma that leaves 22 of 30 NBA teams running in the red.  While it’s true that the Players Union was forced to give back years of inflated gains, it’s also true that NBA owners have had their backs to the wall for some time.

            No professional sports franchise has made players rich more than the NBA.  Accusing the league office of exploitation, the now defunct Players Assn. went over the top characterizing NBA owners as “plantation owners.”  NBA players have been some of the most overpaid athletes on the planet.  No one has done more to protect players’ fiscal and medical health than the NBA.  Players Assn. chief Bill Hunter overstepped his boundaries and pushed negotiations to the breaking point.  While Atty. David Boies wants to blame the NBA, he should look no further than his client to see the blinding excesses, grandiosity and recalcitrance in the negotiating process.  Suing the NBA under antitrust laws fails to acknowledge the union’s blackmail, essentially telling the Stern and the league office to jump in a lake.  To break the stalemate, Boies needs to go back Hunter and tell him to get real.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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