Players invariably say that they would play the game for free. Therefore, they should have no fear of the owners threatening to call off the entire season. By contrast, this would clearly amount to the owners – who are businessmen first and foremost – cutting off their nose to spite their face.
This is why the players should (and I believe they will) call the owners’ bluff. For to cave now would suggest that they really are nothing more than hired hands; i.e., instead of the indispensable partners they purport to be in the billion-dollar business that is the NBA.
Stay tuned….
(Gumbel calls Stern a plantation overseer, The iPINIONS Journal, November 7, 2011)
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, as indicated in my opening quote, 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.
By contrast, the owners have demonstrated bad faith by attempting to grossly undervalue the players’ worth with their drop-dead demand for a 50/50 split. Frankly, it would seem far more equitable if the players were the ones demanding a greater take; a 60/40 split for example.
If you’re in a poker game, and you run a bluff, and the bluff works, you’re a hero. If someone calls your bluff, you lose. I think the owners overplayed their hand. They did a terrific job of taking a very hard line and pushing the players to make concession after concession after concession, but greed is not only a terrible thing, it’s a dangerous thing.
(David Boies, lead lawyer for the players’ antitrust lawsuit against the league, Associated Press, November 16, 2011)
Incidentally, there’s a principled difference between playing for free when your game is generating zero dollars and playing even for $2 billion when your game is generating $4 billion. After all, the players know full well that they possess such unique money-generating skills that without them the owners have nothing.
One gets the impression though that the predominantly white owners look at the players as a bunch of predominantly black kids who would be either unemployed or in jail if it were not for the NBA. And they’re probably right. Except that the genie is now out of the bottle. 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.
Of course nobody is going to shed a tear for whatever financial loss these millionaire players and billionaire owners suffer. Indeed, I suspect many of you will be thinking a pox on both their sides for forcing you to endure this winter without the warmth that comes from cheering on your favorite team. All the same, I urge you to reserve a thought for the thousands of people whose livelihoods depend on the ancillary businesses each NBA team generates for its host cities.
There may be no underdogs in this NBA fight, but there are victims….
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