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Lockout!!!

I hope the players decertify.
Hard cap + get rid of guaranteed contracts + I'll be able to focus on NCAA ball.
 
gregbroncs said:
I understood it that they could not prove undo hardship.
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I read that article too. I also thought it wasn't reasoned particularly well.

First of all, let's just say that the legal situation is for everyone involved a "best guess" kind of scenario. No one really knows how that would go down. There's simply very little precedent and the major sports leagues all have different antitrust backgrounds which they draw from. Larry Coon and others speak about this in a much more authoritative way than is actually possible.

Part of this is that everyone is mixing up different legal proceedings and potential legal proceedings. There is an NBAPA suit alleging that the owners have been negotiating in bad faith because they always intended to lock the players out to create leverage. That lawsuit is primarily concerned with the negotiations prior to the lockout and alleges that the owners engaged in surface bargaining. To be honest, I think the players are probably correct in that assessment. Whether or not the owners have made "concessions" is immaterial to the issue of whether or not they engaged in surface bargaining (and gregbroncs here is engaging in a semantics game as to what constitutes a concession; under his rubric if the owners demanded the player's play for minimum wage and then moved that up to $10/hr he would call that a concession). Either side can bargain as hard as they want to as long as they are not engaging in stall tactics designed to never reach an agreement. In fact, it is effectively the statutory policy of the united states that deadlocks at the bargaining table are broken through the economic pressure of a strike or a lockout rather than any objective test as to whether either side is objectively correct. However there is some credible allegation that the lockout was promised at least two years ago and there is no indication that the owners have ever seriously attempted to resolve the issue prior to the expiration of the previous CBA. All the discussion of "leverage" underlies a pretty significant fact: that the owners have always known that running the clock was to their advantage and they've been doing pretty much nothing else until the last month or so.

There is also an NBA countersuit alleging fundamentally similar theories against the players union. The facts (in this case the direction of concessions) simply do not support the assertion that the players are engaging in surface bargaining. This is especially relevant given that they have proposed agreements that appear to substantially worsen their position vis a vis the last collective bargaining agreement which cuts against an assessment of surface bargaining.

The last is the decertification issue. Here there's a lot of noise from heads indicating that they understand how it will play out but I don't think that's entirely clear. I'm frankly kind of amazed, for example, that players haven't tried to do something in Canadian courts to take advantage of the NBA's operation in Toronto and more union-friendly laws. The lockout itself would likely be illegal under Canadian law for example because the league didn't go through the mandatory government mediation process prior to locking out employees of its Canadian franchise.

The NBA players will have almost no cause to prove undo hardship. higher pay and better other options than the NFL. And the owners have made lots of consessions. All the players have really done is drop their pay. Owners dropped their hard and flex cap they also raised their pay during negotiations. So it seems to me that the players have not been negotiating in good faith anymore than the owners have.
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You're looking at a single factor as if it's the only factor. Keep in mind that it's questionable whether the existence of European leagues even matters as to the reach of American anti-trust statutues (many of which specify the impact of the restraint of trade as being exclusively US in scope as opposed to global in scope.

If teams were sharing money wouldn't that show they were working as one entity? Wouldn't that also make them more vulnerable to anti-trust suits? So because they have very little revenue sharing doesn't that show that they are in fact competing business entities? Are they not also competing with European teams for the services of players as well?
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Franchises are not really business competitors. The Lakers don't want to drive all other teams out of business. In fact they are worthless unless they have other teams to play. Athletic competition and business competition are separate. The reality is that they are one entity now. Even in the "separate" model that applied in American Needle v. NFL (which came about because of specific anti-trust exemption legislation enjoyed by the NFL that the NBA doesn't have access to) the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the teams operated as a cartel that was subject to anti-trust enforcement.

All we really know is that decertification would be a long process and that it risks fundamentally blowing up the league as we know it. It's a double-down move by the players that is designed to attack franchise values and should be taken seriously by the owners. How it would play out along the background of everything else is a little unknowable and the resolution of such questions is effectively immaterial because legal resolution wouldn't occur until after a second NBA season was in jeopardy which would effectively be a threat to the league's existence in its entirety. As a result, the conflict will be over before the decertification issue fully resolves legally or the league (and as a result probably jazzfanz) will cease to exist. That's pretty much where we're at.
 
Yeah what Kicky said, except with more stupider words and stuff.
j/k

Really I believe the only reason (most) jazzfanz posters appear to be on the owners side is because of the hope of "parity" and easing the disadvantage of being a small market team. So to be honest I'd be perfectly happy if the players got 56% but had the hard cap unguaranteed or partially guaranteed contracts, a franchise tag, losing bird right on trades and no extension trades to benefit players. I'm sure I missed a few but y'all get the idea.
 
Sirkickyass said:
I read that article too. I also thought it wasn't reasoned particularly well.

First of all, let's just say that the legal situation is for everyone involved a "best guess" kind of scenario. No one really knows how that would go down. There's simply very little precedent and the major sports leagues all have different antitrust backgrounds which they draw from. Larry Coon and others speak about this in a much more authoritative way than is actually possible.

Part of this is that everyone is mixing up different legal proceedings and potential legal proceedings. There is an NBAPA suit alleging that the owners have been negotiating in bad faith because they always intended to lock the players out to create leverage. That lawsuit is primarily concerned with the negotiations prior to the lockout and alleges that the owners engaged in surface bargaining. To be honest, I think the players are probably correct in that assessment. Whether or not the owners have made "concessions" is immaterial to the issue of whether or not they engaged in surface bargaining (and gregbroncs here is engaging in a semantics game as to what constitutes a concession; under his rubric if the owners demanded the player's play for minimum wage and then moved that up to $10/hr he would call that a concession). Either side can bargain as hard as they want to as long as they are not engaging in stall tactics designed to never reach an agreement. In fact, it is effectively the statutory policy of the united states that deadlocks at the bargaining table are broken through the economic pressure of a strike or a lockout rather than any objective test as to whether either side is objectively correct. However there is some credible allegation that the lockout was promised at least two years ago and there is no indication that the owners have ever seriously attempted to resolve the issue prior to the expiration of the previous CBA. All the discussion of "leverage" underlies a pretty significant fact: that the owners have always known that running the clock was to their advantage and they've been doing pretty much nothing else until the last month or so.

There is also an NBA countersuit alleging fundamentally similar theories against the players union. The facts (in this case the direction of concessions) simply do not support the assertion that the players are engaging in surface bargaining. This is especially relevant given that they have proposed agreements that appear to substantially worsen their position vis a vis the last collective bargaining agreement which cuts against an assessment of surface bargaining.

The last is the decertification issue. Here there's a lot of noise from heads indicating that they understand how it will play out but I don't think that's entirely clear. I'm frankly kind of amazed, for example, that players haven't tried to do something in Canadian courts to take advantage of the NBA's operation in Toronto and more union-friendly laws. The lockout itself would likely be illegal under Canadian law for example because the league didn't go through the mandatory government mediation process prior to locking out employees of its Canadian franchise.



You're looking at a single factor as if it's the only factor. Keep in mind that it's questionable whether the existence of European leagues even matters as to the reach of American anti-trust statutues (many of which specify the impact of the restraint of trade as being exclusively US in scope as opposed to global in scope.



Franchises are not really business competitors. The Lakers don't want to drive all other teams out of business. In fact they are worthless unless they have other teams to play. Athletic competition and business competition are separate. The reality is that they are one entity now. Even in the "separate" model that applied in American Needle v. NFL (which came about because of specific anti-trust exemption legislation enjoyed by the NFL that the NBA doesn't have access to) the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the teams operated as a cartel that was subject to anti-trust enforcement.

All we really know is that decertification would be a long process and that it risks fundamentally blowing up the league as we know it. It's a double-down move by the players that is designed to attack franchise values and should be taken seriously by the owners. How it would play out along the background of everything else is a little unknowable and the resolution of such questions is effectively immaterial because legal resolution wouldn't occur until after a second NBA season was in jeopardy which would effectively be a threat to the league's existence in its entirety. As a result, the conflict will be over before the decertification issue fully resolves legally or the league (and as a result probably jazzfanz) will cease to exist. That's pretty much where we're at.
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Good post. You are obviously better read than me about this. However TIS asked the question if there was any reason for the players to not decertify. I gave a worst case senario to the best of my knowledge.

I am not a lawyer. I followed the NFL case a lot closer than this case. I understand that there are some real potential benefits to the players by decertifying.

So a few questions for you. If the players do in fact decertify, do you see anyway they play a single game this season? It took months for the courts to rule in the NFL case and the NBPA has waited so long to decertify or not it seems to me that decertifying now is the death of this season. The NBA does not have months they have weeks. And if the owners lose the initial hearing they are sure to appeal(just like the NFL did) that is more time they don't have. Am I wrong?
 
//r00t 4 Jazz said:
Yeah what Kicky said, except with more stupider words and stuff.
j/k

Really I believe the only reason (most) jazzfanz posters appear to be on the owners side is because of the hope of "parity" and easing the disadvantage of being a small market team. So to be honest I'd be perfectly happy if the players got 56% but had the hard cap unguaranteed or partially guaranteed contracts, a franchise tag, losing bird right on trades and no extension trades to benefit players. I'm sure I missed a few but y'all get the idea.
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This.
 
Sirkickyass said:
All we really know is that decertification would be a long process and that it risks fundamentally blowing up the league as we know it.
Click to expand...

I'll take that risk. The NBA has frustrated me for years. Who cares what percentage BRI the players/owners get. Fix the system or blow it up.
 
Sirkickyass said:
I read that article too. I also thought it wasn't reasoned particularly well.

First of all, let's just say that the legal situation is for everyone involved a "best guess" kind of scenario. No one really knows how that would go down. There's simply very little precedent and the major sports leagues all have different antitrust backgrounds which they draw from. Larry Coon and others speak about this in a much more authoritative way than is actually possible.

Part of this is that everyone is mixing up different legal proceedings and potential legal proceedings. There is an NBAPA suit alleging that the owners have been negotiating in bad faith because they always intended to lock the players out to create leverage. That lawsuit is primarily concerned with the negotiations prior to the lockout and alleges that the owners engaged in surface bargaining. To be honest, I think the players are probably correct in that assessment. Whether or not the owners have made "concessions" is immaterial to the issue of whether or not they engaged in surface bargaining (and gregbroncs here is engaging in a semantics game as to what constitutes a concession; under his rubric if the owners demanded the player's play for minimum wage and then moved that up to $10/hr he would call that a concession). Either side can bargain as hard as they want to as long as they are not engaging in stall tactics designed to never reach an agreement. In fact, it is effectively the statutory policy of the united states that deadlocks at the bargaining table are broken through the economic pressure of a strike or a lockout rather than any objective test as to whether either side is objectively correct. However there is some credible allegation that the lockout was promised at least two years ago and there is no indication that the owners have ever seriously attempted to resolve the issue prior to the expiration of the previous CBA. All the discussion of "leverage" underlies a pretty significant fact: that the owners have always known that running the clock was to their advantage and they've been doing pretty much nothing else until the last month or so.
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Please elaborate on the evidence for "surface bargaining."

The owners and players alike have an economic interest to get a deal done, and the owners might be stalling only to get a better deal at an even lower player percentage (or by starting the league over), which is entirely possible. But the players didn't even put it to a vote, so it's not like they could accept a deal. Furthermore, it appears that DF and Billy Hunter are listening more to the player committee and representatives than the journeyman. I am skeptical that the representatives of each team represents the true desires of the players. Many journeymen (not named Steve Blake)--for whatever reason, such as fear of retaliation or simply being ostracized--might be reluctant to speak up, even though not doing so could cost them 6, 7, 8, or even 9 figures in both the short and long run.

I, too, am not a lawyer, but it simply doesn't seems to me that there is sufficient basis to successfully claim that the owners didn't want a deal. The negotiation might have been a giant clusterf___ on either or both sides, but the owners offered a deal that appears to be in line with what the NFL players got--a 6% to 7% drop, at around 50%, with still a much higher average salary.

There is also an NBA countersuit alleging fundamentally similar theories against the players union. The facts (in this case the direction of concessions) simply do not support the assertion that the players are engaging in surface bargaining. This is especially relevant given that they have proposed agreements that appear to substantially worsen their position vis a vis the last collective bargaining agreement which cuts against an assessment of surface bargaining.
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Wouldn't the fact that they haven't put the offer to a vote possibly suggest that the players are engaging in "surface bargaining"--or that their decisions to this point don't necessarily represent the majority sentiment of the league, given that players (especially journeymen or bordeline players) with short NBA lifespans are risking a large portion of their NBA careers with even one lost season?

The last is the decertification issue. Here there's a lot of noise from heads indicating that they understand how it will play out but I don't think that's entirely clear. I'm frankly kind of amazed, for example, that players haven't tried to do something in Canadian courts to take advantage of the NBA's operation in Toronto and more union-friendly laws. The lockout itself would likely be illegal under Canadian law for example because the league didn't go through the mandatory government mediation process prior to locking out employees of its Canadian franchise.
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These irrational NBA-player hacks who are negotiating against themselves probably are the same irrational hacks who didn't think of such a basic legal strategy as optimizing venue. Or maybe it's a sign that the NBAPA really isn't in full force of playing hardball and are merely stonewalling out of pride or seeking more respect (despite the notion that 50-50 and the top average salary among major team sports is arguably plenty respectful).

You're looking at a single factor as if it's the only factor. Keep in mind that it's questionable whether the existence of European leagues even matters as to the reach of American anti-trust statutues (many of which specify the impact of the restraint of trade as being exclusively US in scope as opposed to global in scope.
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Given that some NBA players already did go overseas, it seems to me that it flies in the face of the notion that NBA players don't have options, though. And again, SKA and other legal minds have more background on this, but wouldn't the availability of traveling exhibition squads, promotional endorsements, etc. have some place in this anti-trust discussion, or do these alternatives fall outside the scope of antitrust law, given that they could be treated as separate activities?

Franchises are not really business competitors. The Lakers don't want to drive all other teams out of business. In fact they are worthless unless they have other teams to play. Athletic competition and business competition are separate. The reality is that they are one entity now. Even in the "separate" model that applied in American Needle v. NFL (which came about because of specific anti-trust exemption legislation enjoyed by the NFL that the NBA doesn't have access to) the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the teams operated as a cartel that was subject to anti-trust enforcement.
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As others have stated, more alternatives exist (overseas, starting their own league) than seem to exist in American football. I agree that franchises are more a single entity than business competitors, but I don't see how that helps the players' case much.

All we really know is that decertification would be a long process and that it risks fundamentally blowing up the league as we know it. It's a double-down move by the players that is designed to attack franchise values and should be taken seriously by the owners.
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If the decertification blows up contracts and allows the owners to rebuild the league at a much lower cost basis, then I could see that process boosting or preserving franchise values better than the current 50-50 offer, even if the reinvented league doesn't attract some of the highly paid stars that refuse to join the restructured league--which inevitably will have much lower salaries than the current 50-50 offer would imply.

Those holdout superstars probably are capable of forming their own touring team(s)--a modern-day Harlem Globetrotters--but they might find it more difficult to pull down the eight-figure salaries that they would have enjoyed in the union deal that they refused to accept.

This seems a lot different from, say, the Wisconsin union-busting, where the workers were still employed and were losing bargaining rights. In this case, the NBAPA retains their (poorly used) seat at the table. I wonder if the high salaries at stake weakens the players' standing.
 
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It's laughable how transparent the players are in all this. All I hear at these press conferences are how "We won't back down." "We won't be backed into a corner." "We won't accept ultimatums." "We are not intimidated."

All retarded, ego-driven, bull****.

Guess what players, you're ****ed. You have no leverage and all this posturing is exactly that, posturing.

Let's play some god damned basketball for ****s sake.
 
BabyPeterzz said:
It's laughable how transparent the players are in all this. All I hear at these press conferences are how "We won't back down." "We won't be backed into a corner." "We won't accept ultimatums." "We are not intimidated."

All retarded, ego-driven, bull****.

Guess what players, you're ****ed. You have no leverage and all this posturing is exactly that, posturing.

Let's play some god damned basketball for ****s sake.
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/clap
 
carolinajazz said:
.....it OVER! No NBA season! Fantastic! NBA players are as dumb and stupid as the jailhouse tats that cover there bodies!
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Very well could happen but i am also wondering if this is a last minute straw on both sides to get the last bits done. Sounds like there are some owners ready to give in. I would rather know either way so i don't get my hopes up for nba anymore. If there is no deal tomorrow i am all for getting rid of the whole season. This is just a joke and I am starting to hate this league more then I did before. Even when it is all said and done I will have no desire to watch all these players who have turned this league into a joke to begin with. Reason why the players are doing this is they figure they have enough owners on their side and this is all a chess match going back and forth. I am starting to wonder if there is a deal if it is going to be the same it started out with to begin with.
 
I hope the players reject the deal but don't decertify. Eventually when they continue to not have any income I want them to come back and accept the hard cap, the un-guaranteed contracts, a franchise tag - whatever just so they can start collecting checks again. Give 'em 52% BRI to throw 'em a bone. I don't care about that.
 
Thanks freakazoid. Your link led me to this article. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/wizards/nba-lockout-rhetoric-escalates-as-deadline-looms/2011/11/08/gIQALY1Y2M_story.html

At the bottom was a reader's comment that I'm including because I thought it was quite good:
The players are killing themselves with the slavery/plantation comparisons. Claiming victimhood in an economy that has been underwater for 3+ years is a sure way to lose the support of the fans and strengthen the owners' position. Not the brightest guys, the players, and the people they've chosen to represent them. They are out of options, are about to lose a year of salary and now risk alienating fans, putting all of their future earnings, endorsements, etc. - and those of future players to come - in jeopardy. The arrogance of entitlement has crept into the NBA. Players have no idea how lucky they are, how good they have it, or the responsibility they have to the cities and fans who pay for their exorbitant lifestyles. The players are in dire need of humility, and only losing the season, their money and prospects of future earnings will restore it. This has long been coming, and every true NBA fan should see the loss of the season as a positive development capable of bringing integrity, humility and sportsmanship back into league.
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Does anyone know, who determines the projected revenues of upcoming seasons for the CBA contract? The team owners or someone else?
 
Sources said that the union did not conduct a formal vote of the players assembled in the room Tuesday, opting instead for an informal "everyone agrees" consensus that authorizes Hunter and Fisher to accept a 50-50 split of basketball related income in future negotiations as long as the league makes some concessions on some of the remaining system issues. But sources briefed on the owners' thinking insisted to ESPN.com that there will be no further budging from the owners, no matter how close a deal seems on paper.
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The tax penalties and other rules for tax-paying teams, one source told ESPN The Magazine's Ric Bucher, are where the two sides remain at complete odds.
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https://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/...avid-stern-ultimatum-offer-want-further-talks
 
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