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Peter Vecsey Blasts Billy Hunter
[New York Post]
SPORTS
BILLY BALL ISN'T WORKING
By PETER VECSEY
--------------------------------------------
VETERANS on the downside of their careers
and disadvantaged free agents should think
about this (as the harmfully inexperienced
and/or, destructively incompetent Billy
Hunter wastes valuable time and gamble
precious money, none of which is his own)
as they set their Thanksgiving table:
Not only are the players seriously risking
the permanent loss of one season and one
full salary, but they're jeopardizing their
careers (NBA life expectancy is
four-to-five years) as well. Should their
leader and their stumbling staff screw
things up any more than they have,
resulting in the season's cancellation,
they'll be two crops of rookies and two
groups of free agents vying for jobs next
summer.
Roughly 100 current players would find
themselves out of the league; none of them,
I suspect, David Falk would have time to
represent.
Judging by Hunter's repeated (supposedly)
misunderstanding of a critical mechanism
(specifically the escrow fund) and sinful
inaction over the last five months, the
union's executive director obviously thinks
dragging out negotiations will somehow
translate into a better deal.
Oh, really? Guaranteed, the same agreement
(54 percent for the players, 46 for the
owners) that inevitably will be reached as
early as next Wednesday, it says here -
despite the bitterness that abruptly
engulfed the stalled negotiations over the
last three days - could've been easily
struck last June, early September, a month
ago, whenever, had Hunter wanted to make a
remotely fair deal.
Instead, Hunter seems intent to prove,
above all else, he's making it up as he
goes along and he's not cowered by David
Stern.
Perish the perception!
That's why this mess has lingered in limbo
so long. Clearly, Hunter's primary strategy
was to delay, delay, delay. That way he's
in charge, not at Stern's beck and call.
How many times did we read that he was
supposed to get right back to the league
and waited a week or more?
Hunter's secondary mission was to incite
his constituency in order to maintain
solidarity. How many times has he faked the
players into believing the owners were
disrespecting or deceiving them by making a
mountain out of molehill issues?
Remember when negotiations got positive in
late October and league officials had the
audacity to show their optimism? Hunter
fixed 'em good. First chance he got he
recanted a comprehension of the framework
that had been established.
Now we're informed that the framework again
was misunderstood by Hunter! How can this
be after 10 hours of negotiations last
Friday and all the highly paid lawyers
surrounding him? Hey, Billy, who's on
first? Maybe Hunter and henchman Jeffrey
Kessler should just get it over with and
change their names to Abbott and Costello.
Or is this, as Stern suggested last time
around, the ultimate Falk Pas?
Naww, I can't believe David Falk is behind
Hunter's gradual mood swings and mind
alterations. Come on, if the agent for the
mindless had that much influence, he
would've cracked the Top Ten of The
Sporting News' most powerful people in
sports list versus having to petition
editors in person for an a slight upgrade.
The truth is, at the time of the first
misunderstanding, 78 percent of the players
were repulsed by the word work, while the
remaining 22 percent declared the owners
would never get away with framing them.
Not that I didn't find Hunter's statement a
month ago mournfully incriminating. When a
report surfaced in this space that the
season might begin Dec. 1, he quickly
lowered expectations to meet his comfort
level and coordinate with his game plan or
lack thereof.
As far as Hunter was concerned, he couldn't
visualize it starting until early January -
as if to punish NBC, depriving it of its
showcase Christmas doubleheader. That'll
teach the network to subsidize the owners
during the lockout. If not for NBC's
commitment, the owners might've been forced
to borrow money from Sonics team rep Jim
McIlvaine (if anybody should be seated on
the side of ownership it's this stiff) or a
car from Kenny Anderson.
This has been the situation throughout. The
capacity to cancel the season belongs to
Stern, who can't be expected to hold off
owners indefinitely from doing what a
number of them wanted to the moment Pious
Patrick Union began preaching about the
sanctity of marriage, er, the players'
suffering.
On the other hand, there's no doubt the
players' blind allegiance and the time
table to tip off the season belong to
Hunter. Larry Fleisher, Charlie Grantham,
Simon Gourdine and Alex English may have
been pushovers for the commissioner - which
is why the players only managed to pocket
57 percent of the 1997-98 and average $2.6
million but Stern will never dominate him.
Meanwhile, Hunter, Kessler and Falk's
foolish followers already have cost union
members $350M (there's plenty more where
that came from) in deleted games. So much
for the league's Stay In School Campaign.
It's not healthy, I submit, to see players
using their degrees from Wharton's School
of Business to their detriment.
No one, of course, has taken a bigger hit
than Rita Ewing, er, Patrick, who losses
$219,512 or so per missed national anthem.
So why aren't I impressed? Because Patrick,
Michael Jordan, Alonzo Mourning, Juwan
Howard, Dikembe Mutombo and other
self-styled, penthouse revolutionaries have
had plenty of time to accumulate a fortune.
They can afford not to sweat. The ones
hurting are the silent, shouted-down,
Kool-Aid-sipping majority.
As if anyone really cares about anybody but
themselves at the bargaining table (the
players negotiating committee will sell out
the under-represented rookies in a wink if
it can sweeten the next contract of those
in the room, er, league.
Someone can throw out the greatest abstract
concept ever heard, but the reality is, all
the players really want to know is how it
affects them now and in their next deal.
Mark it down as one more step backward in
the Age of Entitlement; which began,
researchers have discovered, when athletes
started to refer to themselves in the third
person in order to remove their
fingerprints from the crime scene. That way
no one can hold them responsible for impure
thoughts, word and deed. It's always the
fault of their evil twin.
This just in: Abe Hirshfeld has offered
Hunter $1M if he agrees to a new collective
bargaining agreement next week.