[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
NY Times: Implications of Players' Concessions
January 3, 1999
Union Concessions Have Implications as NBA Talks Enter
Final Week
By MIKE WISE
When players and lawyers from the National
Basketball Players Association sat down last week
and devised their final proposal to management, they
finally gave up on the notion of a luxury tax and gave
in to the owners' desires for an absolute maximum
salary limit.
As concessions in the league's labor dispute go, the
$15 million figure was much higher than the league's
offer of $12.25 million; privately, league officials
wondered whether that nearly $3 million gap -- and
several other economic differences -- could be closed
in time for Thursday's deadline for canceling the
season.
But there was also a feeling that dramatic changes
could be ahead for the league's salary structure.
The players had previously agreed to capping the
salaries of players with less than 10 years of
experience. Billy Hunter, the union executive director,
said the two sides are less than $500,000 apart on
players with less than six years of experience and
players with seven to nine years of experience.
"We've done something that no other major professional
sports league has done," Hunter said. "We've said, in
effect, you can only make so much for what you do in
this game. Even with some players grandfathered in
under their previous deals, it's an unprecedented
concession."
It is a compromise in exchange for the owners' letting
the players keep the Larry Bird exception rule, the
clause that allows teams to compensate their own free
agents above and beyond the team's salary cap. It is
also a compromise that may have a wide-ranging effect
on salaries the next 10 years.
Under the new deal, for example, a player such as the
San Antonio Spurs' Tim Duncan -- perhaps the preeminent
big man for the next 10 years -- could never approach
the riches of a Kevin Garnett, whose $126 million deal
with the Minnesota Timberwolves last season set off
widespread alarms. The most Duncan could make under the
proposed plan would be about an $11 million average --
$3 million less than what Garnett will make this
season. Players such as the Portland Trail Blazers'
Damon Stoudamire and the Philadelphia 76ers' Allen
Iverson, who have a lot to do with the fan bases in
their respective cities, could make no more than about
$9 million in the first year of a deal.
With 12.5 percent annual raises, there will be an
occasional $100 million contract signed. But the
plethora of exorbitant deals that the owners claim has
crippled their ability to make profits should be
reduced significantly over the next six to seven years.
With market value having already been predetermined and
only a set of numbers to be plugged in, there is also
concern among the NBA agents. The bidding wars may be
just as fierce and negotiations tense for the most
prominent free agents, but general managers will no
longer be frightened off by what another team can pay a
player. They will already know.
"The idea of going to an agent with more clout because
he can somehow help you get the best deal may not be as
prevalent anymore," said one league official, on
condition of anonymity. "If you know there is only so
much you can get, well, how much more is that special
agent going to get you?"
The maximum salary proposal is still at least a few
days away from being tinkered with, along with several
other economic issues that are unresolved.
A standoff between lawyers on each side late last week
over how the union's proposal would be delivered to the
owners -- the union requested a meeting, the league
officials said they would not guarantee one until they
had seen the proposal -- characterized the stare-down
state of negotiations entering the expected last round.
Hunter is expected to quell the recent skirmish and
have the proposal delivered to the league's office
early this week, a person familiar with the
negotiations said Saturday. It may not stop the
last-minute campaigning by each side and may not
immediately get the two sides closer to salvaging
perhaps a 45-game season that would begin the last week
of January at the earliest.
Russ Granik, the NBA deputy commissioner, has said the
chance of a settlement is remote given the union's
reported concessions.
And limiting what each player can make is only half the
battle. The most important negotiation may be over
shared revenue percentages over six years.
In the fourth year of a proposed six-year deal, the
union wants 55 percent of revenues to go to player
salaries while the owners have proposed a figure no
higher than 53 percent. In the fifth year of the deal,
the union wants 56 percent and the owners want to pay
out only 53.5 percent. The last year, the union wants
57 percent and the league wants to pay only 53 percent.
Because each percentage point is roughly equivalent to
$20 million, the gap is only $40 million in the fourth
year. But with more revenue, a three percent gap in the
final year of the year could represent anywhere from
$75 million to $90 million.
Aside from several other sticking points, with less
than four days before Stern and Granik recommend to the
board of governors that the entire season be scrapped,
they have a long way to go.
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company