Stern's proposal to players

["Jim Meninno" <jim_meninno@hotmail.com>]

Before leaving for vacation, David Stern sent the players a copy of the 
league's latest proposal.  There are excerpts at

http://espnet.sportszone.com/nba/news/1998/981217/00999279.html

Included are a gurantee that salaries will grow by 20% over the first 
five years of the CBA (and a projection that they will rise by 50%), and 
a guarantee that NBA players will remain the highest paid in 
professional sports.  

Salaries as percentage of BRI drop, but only gradually over a 5 year 
period from 57% to 53%, while real salaries increase from $3m to $4.5m 
on average.  I tried to do some fancy (for me) calculations to see what 
that means in dollars.  This is all based on the calculation that 
salaries will go up by 50% and revenues by 61% (which I extrapolated 
from their figures).

Player salaries projected to go from $1B    to $1.5B
Revenues        projected to go from $1.75B to $2.8B
What's left for everyone other than the players
                projected to go from $0.75B to $1.3B

Clearly the money left to run the teams and make a profit increases 
faster than salaries over the 5 years, 73% vs 50%.  However, everyone 
wins in this proposal, except the fan who will still be expected to fork 
out 61% more over the next 5 years.

On top of this, I'm sure the 53% could be pushed to 55%, meaning even 
greater gains for the players.  I fail to see why the technical issues 
would hold up the deal at this point.  The owners dropped the hard cap 
request and the players have agreed to limits on certain salaries (other 
than Falk's clients, that is), so finding a middle ground shouldn't be 
that difficult.

Most interesting, to me, was that the maximum contract that Antoine 
Walker could be given would be 7 years $74,593,750, which most of us 
wouldn't mind.  100 Mil contracts could only be given to players with 10 
years of service, but who's going to give 7 years to a 30-32 year old?

I only wish we had access to the player's proposal in such detail.

Jim

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