NBA Negotiators Meeting Wednesday
NEW YORK (CBSMiami.com) – While the prospects of seeing LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh take the floor for the Miami Heat remain slim; the NBA and the National Basketball Players association will meet in New York Wednesday.
Perhaps the best news for NBA fans came from former ESPN writer Chris Sheridan who reported that sources have told him that the owners have dropped their insistence that players agree to a 50/50 split of revenues.
This was the major point that caused last Thursday's negotiations to implode into a round of name-calling and petty attacks. The NBA owners refused to go past 50/50 in that meeting, led by hardline owners like Dan Gilbert of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Paul Allen of the Portland Trailblazers.
Allen walked into last Thursday's negotiating session and became the face of the hard-line movement saying that the owners have given up enough and need to make more money.
It's ironic that Allen was demanding to make more money given that he's worth $13.2 billion as of September.
Once the session ended, both sides retreated and began calling each other the real culprit behind the disintegration of the regular season.
The meetings Wednesday will likely be used as a gauge to figure out if there's an immediate need to cancel more games or if the two sides are coming closer together.
The NBA may choose to cancel all games until Christmas soon. It wants to keep the Christmas Day games as a national showcase. Still, neither side is flinching yet, though the owners may have blinked just a little by backing off the 50/50 split demand.
