Johnson: NBA Deal Not Close
(WSCR) Four full weeks of the NBA season have been canceled by commissioner David Stern, and while early reports indicate the league and Player's Association are "95 percent" finished with a deal, one NBA insider doesn't think it's that close.
"The reason why you can't say it's 95 percent done is because the money is tied into the syste," K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune told The Mully and Hanley Show. "You can focus on all the system issues -- the luxury tax penalties, the length of contracts, that kind of stuff -- but until you agree on the BRI, the split of income, it's not done. The league may offer a 50-50 split with the system how it wants, but if the union doesn't agree to all the system issues the way that they are, then the league might drop that income split back down to 47 percent. They are intertwined. That's why any time the talks have blown up, the trouble has been when they tried to solve the two issues simultaneously.
"This lockout will end when the league wins and when (the league) wants it to. ... My feeling and my take and my guess is that the league knows exactly when this is going to end. They know when they want it to end and at what point they want it to end. They just aren't making a deal right now."
LISTEN: K.C Johnson on The Mully and Hanley Show
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