Just ten days ago contract negotiations between NBA players and owners became so deadlocked that both sides retained lawyers to settle their claims in court. This put the entire season in doubt, which led me to comment in part as follows:
Many commentators were surprised when NBA players called team owners’ bluff by refusing to accept their take-it-or-leave-it offer of a 50/50 revenue split by the end of business on Wednesday. Those commentators reasoned that the players would not risk losing paychecks that amount to an average of $5 million per year… [But] I was not at all surprised. Not least because I reasoned that the owners had far more to lose – an average of $100 million.
Now the courts will decide how best to split their $4 billion in annual revenues. And I am convinced that the players will be vindicated – primarily because they have demonstrated good faith by agreeing to cut their take from the 57 percent they got last year all the way down to 52.5 percent.
The players clearly know their worth. They could even start their own league with new team owners who are prepared to accept a more equitable split and leave the NBA owners holding a bunch of worthless contracts.
Again, this dispute is not as much about the failure of the collective bargaining process as it is about the insult to the players’ collective pride, which is why this season is lost – barring an appropriately humiliating change of heart by the owners before the end of this year.
(NBA players call the owners’ bluff, The iPINIONS Journal, November 18, 2011)
Boy was I wrong.
Because far from holding out for the more equitable 52.5 share, the players were the ones who had a humiliating change of heart and caved to the owners’ demand for a 50/50 split.
Basketball is back in business, with a new labor deal that heavily favors the owners… The league wanted an overhaul of its $4-billion-a-year enterprise, and it got it, with a nearly $300 million annual reduction in player salaries and a matrix of new restrictions on contracts and team payrolls. The changes mean a $3 billion gain for the owners over the life of the 10-year deal.
(New York Times, November 27, 2011)
Which clearly begs the question: why would the players agree to a deal that will cost them $3 billion just to avoid losing an average of $5 million this season? Especially since it’s very likely that the court would have awarded them treble damages that could have amounted to almost $9 billion (i.e., three times the $2 billion-plus they would have earned from their 57-percent share of revenues this season).
Both sides have withdrawn their respective lawsuits pursuant to this new deal. But the players look like unruly kids who were given a very public spanking by their parents and are now doing as they were told. Indeed, it’s humiliating enough that the owners played them for fools on revenue sharing. But these players made themselves look like fools by taking the owners’ take-it-or-leave-it offer, which they rejected only 10 days ago as a paternalistic insult.
At the early-Saturday press conference announcing this new deal, the picture of the three blacks representing the players and three whites representing the owners spoke volumes not only about the management-labor issues involved, but also about the racial tensions that permeated these negotiations.
I appreciate how hard it might be to think of these (predominantly black) players as losers considering that they will still be making an average of well over $4 million a year. It is worth remembering, however, that it’s a bunch of (predominantly white) billionaires who outplayed them and sucked millions out of their pockets. In other worlds, the rich just got richer as management snookered labor and the whites screwed the blacks … yet again.
If this is what the players calling the owners’ bluff amounts to, perhaps the NBA should also stand for the “No Balls Association”.
In any event, an abbreviated season will begin with a triple header on Christmas Day featuring the Boston Celtics at the New York Knicks; the Miami Heat at the Dallas Mavericks; and the Chicago Bulls at the LA Lakers. Clearly this is the NBA’s way of trying to make up the lost games.
So Merry Christmas basketball fans!
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NBA players call the owners’ bluff