Basketball_Romantic23
Banned
Chris Sheridan of Sheridanhoops.com: My gut feeling: We will have a settlement of the NBA lockout within 36 hours. Why? Because, folks, they are 99 percent of the way there. (You don’t pile all of the kids into the station wagon, tell them you are driving to DisneyWorld and then stop in the outskirts of Orlando and say you are turning around.) The owners are at 50 percent on the revenue split. The players are at 51 — or ” fifty plus one” as they put it when talks broke off Saturday night, with that extra 1 percent representing $40 million that would be earmarked for improved pensions for both current and retired players. If David Stern throws them some crumbs — say $20 million for improved benefits, plus a few tweaks to the system changes that players find so objectionable — they are 99.9 percent of the way there. I said all this on the radio yesterday, and I feel as strongly about it today as I did then. Player reps from the 30 NBA teams have a 1 p.m. EST meeting scheduled today in Manhattan, and the smart money says they’ll emerge asking for one more meeting with the owners to try to move to a place just a little more palatable. Stern has nothing to lose by taking the meeting, everything to gain by taking it and sprinkling a few crumbs toward the players. And if the players emerge from a bargaining sessions saying they are now prepared to put the offer up for a vote, voila! The season will start in the second week of December. Yes, it’s that easy. There was always going to be an endgame in this fight, and it has arrived. There was always a secret watch in Stern’s pocket that showed when the true 11th hour would arrive, and it is here. As I said during that radio interview in Detroit: Are the players really going to walk away from $2 billion in guaranteed money of the upcoming season? Hell, no. If they let that money fly out the window, it will be gone forever. The owners have been ruthless, hardheaded, stubborn and disciplined in this negotiation, and they won it a long time ago. But they still have to get it to the finish line, and that is why there is still has to be a little extra give left in their arsenal after keeping it in reserve for more than four months.
Entire blog can be found at https://hangtime.blogs.nba.com/2011/11/08/labor-talks-time-to-make-a-move/?ls=iref:nbahpt1
Entire blog can be found at https://hangtime.blogs.nba.com/2011/11/08/labor-talks-time-to-make-a-move/?ls=iref:nbahpt1