Many Players Voting to Decertify may actually be voting themselves out of a job
by jmpalomo on Nov 7, 2011 11:25 AM EST
Email
PrintThe Houston Rockets have 8 players with 1 year left on their contract. This year and that's it. 6 have "Team options" for next year. 1 has a qualilfying contract (if the team offers it) and 1 is unrestricted.
Hasheem Thabeet, Johny Flynn, Jordan Hill, Terrance Williams, Goran Dragic, Patrick Patterson, Courtney Lee and Chase Buddinger. There are 2 others listed with contracts but are not guaranteed, Marcus Cousin and Marqus Blakely.
The range is from $5million (Thabeet) to $884,000 (Budinger).
Decertifying will mean no season this year. All that guaranteed money for these 8 players GONE. Because the Team has the option, if the same system rules apply, then the Houston Rockets will have the ability to waive them all. None of them seem to be superstars or even close. I like Hill and Patterson but will I be willing to pay them $3.6 and $2million respectively after they both missed an entire season. I will have 2 years of draft picks and 2 years of free agents to pick and choose if the league starts next season. Maybe I make a play for a Superstar so I just cut them all.
And that's only 1 out of 30 teams.
This represents the view of the user who wrote the FanPost, and not the entire Bullets Forever community. We're a place of many opinions, not just one.
23 comments
|
1 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Let's do a poll
Should the players accept the “best and final” offer or vote to decertify?
Decertifying is only a realistic and practical goal for a fraction of the NBPA
i.e. guys like KG who already have recieved HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS throughout their careers (and have won) and guys like Deron Williams with fairly lucrative foriegn contracts. Decrtifying = no season. Guys like LeBron/Wade/Howard/Kobe/etc. need to win championships, and you need to have a season to win a championship. End of the bench guys and role players not playing for lucrative foreign contracts need the NBA sized payrolls (even reduced NBa-sized payrolls) for a long as possible in order to maximize their earnings in the 4 or 5 years they have as NBA players. Taking one year off that is taking nearly 20% of your lifetime earnings. Not worth it. Finally, the owners have already won huge concessions and prolonging the lockout will only strengthen their position. If we miss two months, the owners aren’t going to be hurting more, the players are. And if the players are hurting more and more it is going to be harder and harder to hold the line. Holding out for longer at this point could lead to a WORSE deal for the long-term.
by Ron Carlos Jeines on Nov 7, 2011 1:28 PM EST up reply actions
On principle
Players should decertify. My impression is that the players have conceded at least a little bit on practically everything. If they want it done right, let a judge make the decisions.
But as a fan, and even from a more logical standpoint, they should take the 50/50, and all the other concessions they have made to the owners, and play basketball. A lockout WILL cost the NBA tons of fans and probably hundreds of millions of $$$ once all is said and done. So to get this victory, at the expense of the entire season might not be all that big a victory at all.
I'm a Wizards fan. We've been trying to tell you about Lebron for years. Hated the man before it was cool.
Judge's weren't too kindly to the NFLPA. That's why they settled so quickly.
What makes you think the judges would treat the NBPA any better?
No grounds to think that I guess.
It just seems like the owners won most of the battles. I was assuming that if it went to court, the goal would be to make the deal equally as fair to the owners as to the players. Which would mean more things going the players’ way than everything that is agreed on at this point. That’s a bad assumption on my part?
I'm a Wizards fan. We've been trying to tell you about Lebron for years. Hated the man before it was cool.
by returnofswagger on Nov 7, 2011 4:30 PM EST up reply actions
That's an interesting question!
I’m sure you guys know a lot about previous instances in other sports where players took the owners to court or when the players desertified. What can we learn from those and what are the dynamics that will carry over to the NBA vs NBPA situation?
"My logic fails all the time...especially when talking to females" Rook6980
by Dutch Hoopfan on Nov 7, 2011 6:08 PM EST up reply actions
Not true.
Judges ruled in favor of the NFLPA on the TV revenues (preventing the owners from using TV revenues for the 2010-11 season as an advance and lockout fund); a judge ruled in favor of decertification, but was ultimately reversed on appeal. However, even that ruling only delayed decertification.
The owners are doing some venue shopping by trying to get the first battery of cases judged in Manhattan; however, in the event of decertification, suits could likely be brought by players jurisdictions that are likely to view their claims more favorably.
The NFL brought things to a resolution more easily in part because they were much closer to begin with in their negotiations. However, both sides saw an upside in getting a deal done before the Fall — (e.g. when a spate of player suits were being cued up in addition to the ones brought in the Spring). Considering where things started, the players ended up doing pretty well.
Appeals overtuned the Minnesota lower rulings
by jmpalomo on Nov 7, 2011 7:57 PM EST via mobile up reply actions
The appeal only . . .
temporarily restored the lockout, it had no impact on the victory that the players scored with respect to the owners proposed use of TV revenue during the lockout.
The ruling doesn’t prevent the (decertified) union from continuing pursuit of its $12 billion antitrust suit.
IUPUI Dean of Law Gary Roberts said on NFL Network: “Both sides here are handed further incentives to try and get a deal done. … The bottom line is that there’s a lot of uncertainty still remaining — both sides have some legal risks, both sides now have a lot of incentive to get the deal done so that we can get the season started. And I think that’s probably what the 8th Circuit was trying to do is send a signal that both sides, that neither of them really wants to litigate this any further because both have significant risks. This will probably be the impetus for them to go back and finalize what they’ve been trying to get done the last few weeks. I would not be at all surprised to see a deal get done now that we know what the law is.”
The 8th Circuit also opened the possibility that a bench ruling could allow unrestricted free agents and undrafted rookies to sign with teams, which could create another hornets’ nest of problems.
Really? So why did the Union cave in?
Because for the first time in the history of sports lockout/strike negotiations, the Union had lost a ruling. The NFLPA was counting on the fact that they would win their court cases, like they have always done.
Not this time. Not this year.
The 8th Circuit ruled that the lockout was legitimate and did not force the Owners to open the gates. Huge lost for the players.
The Bench Ruling was a foregone conclusion that they would have favored the Owners. Conservative 8th Circuit was not going to overturn the 3 Judge ruling. That’s why the NFLPA did not even attempt to go there.
Not much of a "cave" . . .
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/6791346/winners-losers-nfl-labor-deal
The owners and the players. Call it a tie. Each got a little something they wanted, and most important, each will get a lot of money. The owners now will keep 52 percent of the revenues, not the 47 percent from the previous collective bargaining agreement that so rankled them, but they also will have to operate with a $120 million salary cap, with an additional approximately $20 million for benefits, and have a guaranteed spend. That guaranteed spend was important to the players, and they got it.
In the end, the owners and players are splitting more than $9 billion. No one is losing.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmoney/2011/07/24/an-analysis-of-the-proposed-nfl-labor-deal/
Analysis: The owners will have forged the change in the system they were seeking, albeit more limited than they had hoped. Coming off a net revenue share of 50/50, owners were determined for change, initially hoping to reduce the players’ share by $1 billion. The final deal will result in approximately $200 million in positive change for them, with the savings growing in the future.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/2011-07-26-labor-deal-analysis_n.htm
Brandt says that while the economic benefit of work rules changes can’t be precisely quantified, the economic impact for players could be realized with longer careers and reduced long-term healthcare costs.
Although players gave back a share in the revenue split, they achieved a victory, Brandt says, in getting the method for sharing revenues changed to include all revenues — which eliminated many of the cost credits owners previously received.
“Once they got over that bridge, it was clear that they would be able to strike a deal,” Brandt said.
The deal that the players netted was substantially better than what was on the table prior to their litigation and move to decertify.
The 8th Circuit’s willingness to leave open a door to litigation for unrestricted free agents and rookies also offered another litigation track had the labor dispute dragged on.
As far as the TV revenues go, maybe the favorable ruling would have been overturned, maybe not. At the end, as part of the final resolution, the owners provided a more favorable revenue split of TV deals.
To the extent that their were big concessions, most of those are going to come out of the earnings of players who aren’t yet in the league. For players already in the league, the deal took an already favorable deal, limited some of the upside, but also improved the downside risk going forward. The splits of revenue were more favorable to the owners, but the expansion of the definition of what constituted league revenue, also served to off-set the impact of those splits. In the case of the NFL, the litigation track likely helped to strengthen the players position. The 3-judge panels ruling on de-certification was just one battle in a larger litigation war, just as the earlier victories for the players were qualified victories. The 3-judge panel didn’t foreclose the litigation track. There was talk of venue shopping in labor friendly jurisdictions with additional suits lined up for the Fall. No way to know how those would have turned out. In the end both sides sought certainty, made concessions from their original bargaining positions and struck a deal that both sides could live with.
The NBA deal is a different story, as all of the concessions are being asked on the players side, and the owners are simply offering to cross some items off of their wish list.
by Vegas010 on Nov 9, 2011 8:21 PM EST up reply actions 3 recs
We might have a little more agreement . . .
The NBA counsel isn’t stupid, but the players union seems to be a lot less on its game than the NFLPA. The NFLPA had counters for pretty much every move — when they had the set-back with the three-judge panel, they still had arrows left in the quiver. Even going back to the American Needle case — that litigation was about laying the foundation for 2011.
I don’t get that same sense with the NBPA. Billy Hunter has had some wins in the past, but this time around, I don’t get a clear sense of a unified strategy. A lot of this seems to be done on the fly without much coordination or forethought. The upshot, however, is that the NBA owners seem to be a lot less sophsticated than their counterparts in the NFL. Unfortunately, that probably increases the likelihood of an impasse and difficulty in finding an agreement.
Plus the NFL was going to win their case with the NLRB
The United States Government’s Commerce Department filed a brief with the NLRB supporting the Owners assertion that the NFLPA’s Decertification was a “SHAM.”
On top of that the TV money aspect and Anti-Trust cases were in the hands of David Doty in Minnesota. One problem with that: Every ruling he makes would have been appealed to, guess where?, the 8th Circuit.
If that's the case . . .
then why didn’t the owners stick with their original offer from March? Why did they move significantly in the players direction by July?
If the players held no cards and were simply at the mercy of the owners whims, then why did the owners even bother to relent on their initial $1 billion demand in the first year?
A reasonable interpretation of the facts would probably point to the reality that the 3-judge panel in a 2-1 decision only foreclosed on one avenue of litigation providing a single set-back. An appeal to the full court was still on the table, as was an appeal to the Supreme Court, which had sided with the players 9-0 in an earlier ruling in American Needle v. NFL. The ruling also opened the door for litigation by unrestricted free agents and rookies (suits that could have been brought at the time and place of the players choosing), the players still had the option of bringing the case back to the federal court and forcing the owners to open their books and suing for triple-damages. On top of this the league faced the prospect of losing several hundred million over the course of the pre-season as well as lost revenue from the season itself.
If the players had zero leverage, then the owners would have been just as well off continuing the lockout into the Fall until such a time as they could have extracted the first $1 billion of revenues as they initially demanded. Instead they settled for less than 80 percent of that in the first year of the deal along with providing the players a number of concessions on other aspects (including a salary cap floor that was pretty close to the actual cap itself).
You’re entitled to your opinion of course. However, it’s not clear to me that your opinion is really grounded in a clear reading of the facts. If the NFLPA was on its knees in July, why concede 80 percent of the original offer? Why not push for the March deal and then capitalize on the failed maneuver by the players asking for even more concessions? There is a reason that the owners didn’t push for the original offer and it wasn’t because they were simply feeling charitable.
by Vegas010 on Nov 9, 2011 11:57 PM EST up reply actions 4 recs
Come on man. The whole Union strategy was to win in court. I didn't say zero leverage. Alot less leverage.
Didn’t happen.
They had to do the next best thing.
Get a deal done. Now.
The union strategy was to get the best deal . . .
possible and give up as little as necessary.
Litigation is a tactic that is used to achieve an objective. it is not a strategy. (A strategy is the end point, a tactic is one of the bridges that you use to get you to where you want to end up).
If the tactic had backfired, then the players would have been in a weaker position in July than they were in March. Instead they got a much better deal than what was on the table in March. If they had won the 3-judge ruling outright, they may have given up even less, but in the end, the qualified defeat was still enough to compel both sides to forge an agreement that they could live with.
If the players had simply rolled over, they wouldn’t have ended up with a good deal. If the litigation had been an unqualified failure, rather than a partial success, they would have lost ground in the negotiations and ended up in a worse place than they were in March. That wasn’t the case.
Additionally
Both sides recognized that missing games = losing money. Neither side wanted that to happen and they reached an agreement they could both live with while rolling around in piles of money. For some reason, both sides in the NBA seem to thinking much more emotionally than rationally. I don’t understand or know the reason for this. But from a financial standpoint, both sides are being idiots.
Games = money. No games = no money. Super duper simple. And this is true for ALL of the teams, even the ones claiming losses, as it’s pretty much been established that these losses are paper losses, not real losses.
Well, I didn't believe the losses were a lie and the hardline owners pushing hard to cancel the season rather than a 50-50 deal is confirming it for me
"My logic fails all the time...especially when talking to females" Rook6980
by Dutch Hoopfan on Nov 12, 2011 6:11 PM EST up reply actions
I would think that among the hard line owners
there are hard liners who want a better system, but would have a season, and Ted would be in that category. If the NBPA was ok with the flex cap back in June, we’d probably be playing right now because he’d vote for it immediately, especially in light of the color and uniform changes. I’d think that we’d lose more money (paper or real) without a season than with one, even with the old system.
Then there are hard line owners who would probably do better (lose less money) without a season than with one. MJ and the Maloofs would likely do better without a season than with one.
But either way, no team’s owner would just want to cancel a season to lose less money. Playing games is in their interest too, but the system must work for them, and they won’t budge until it does, not to mention they need better economics too.
Owners' losses per game are increasing
Most fans don’t pay too much attention to the NBA until later in the season, so lost revenue from sales of tickets and merchandise will accelerate as the lockout drags out.
If the entire season is canceled, the playoff teams stand to lose a ton of money. For playoff games, revenues are high, while costs are low- players get almost all of their salary for the regular season with only small bonuses for the playoffs.
The stakes are much higher in the NBA . . .
because the demands are even more outrageously one-sided, and the division between the owners is much harder to bridge than it was in the NFL. The NFL dispute was more of a two sided dispute. This one could split into at least four directions or more based on factions within the owners and players sides.
The super duper simple calculation misses the key fact that there’s a lot of money at play and that the owners and players are thinking not just about this next year, but about the next 6 or 10 years. Sure teams may lose money in the short term, over the next year, but from the owners side is it worth it to shut the season down if you can force the players to work for say 47 percent of the revenue? That’s perhaps a $400 million a year concession for the ownership as a whole from where they were before (even more so in future years, as the claw-back increases in value).
If you’re one of the owners who is operating near the edge of profitability, you may shut down the business for a year, but within two years of the new deal you’ve made up the losses. By year three and four, you’re making much more money than you would have before. In 6 years, it gets even better. Maybe within 10 or 15 years that team you bought for $500 million you could even flip for $1 billion. That’s not a bad ROI.
By the same token, for the players, many won’t be around in 6 years, but quite a few will and realize that settling for a bad deal now could put then in an even weaker position in 6 years. Also for some, I think there’s a recognition and a sense of obligation to players that come into the league later out of recognition that players before them made sacrifices and took risks to put the league where it is now.
There’s a lot at stake. However, I don’t think either side is being stupid. I do think that many of the owners are being too greedy and short-sighted. But at the end of the day, you get what you are willing to fight for, provided that you pick your battles wisely. We’ll see how this goes.
by Vegas010 on Nov 12, 2011 11:18 PM EST up reply actions 3 recs
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
Related FanPosts on Bullets Forever
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
