NBA Labor Dispute At A Stand-Still
NEW YORK (CBSMiami.com) – The prospects of a full season of the Big Three and the Miami Heat seeking a return trip to the NBA Finals is continuing to look increasingly grim.
Over the weekend, NBA owners led by Commissioner David Stern gave the National Basketball Players Association a take-it or leave-it deal that would cap players percentage of basketball related income in a 49-51 percent band, depending on total money coming in.
NBPA leadership, union president Derek Fisher and executive director Billy Hunter, is not likely to bring the deal to a vote.
It's possible the deal would pass based on rank-and-file members wanting to get back to work, but some of the elite players are willing to risk everything and decertify the union.
If the union were to decertify, the likelihood of their being any season would be next to zero. Once a union decertifies, everything would get kicked over to the courts and the case could get lost in the court system for years.
Tuesday, the union will have meetings with all 30 NBA team player representatives to update the status of the talks and to talk future strategy.
ESPN reported that the union is also hoping to negotiate a few system issues like the sign-and-trade clause to make a deal more acceptable to the players.
Still, the hard-line owners, led by former Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan, are hesitant to make any deal that doesn't give them a complete destruction of the union's position.
It's been about greed since the beginning, and the only thing that will settle it is if the owners finally feel like they've won enough.
