Ira Winderman: Is the Vote Legit?

[Josh Ozersky <josh_ozersky@yahoo.com>]

This is from the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel.  It raises two troubling
points:  1) how will guys get to New York on 36 hours notice, given
the state of the airports in the midwest and northeast?  and 2) the
vote is not technically on accepting the league's offer, but a vote of
confidence/no confidence in the league.  None of that should matter,
but what if it does?



Votes loom on union support Wednesday, NBA season's end Thursday  

 
By IRA WINDERMAN, Staff Writer
       
     The bombshells were dropped one after another, making Monday the
most explosive day in the 6-month-old NBA lockout.
     X -- Finding little substance in the union's final proposal, the
NBA's Labor Relations Committee unanimously forwarded a recommendation
that the board of governors cancel the balance of the season at its
Thursday meeting in New York.
     X -- Commissioner David Stern followed up that 9-0 recommendation
by vowing that a lost season could lead to a restructuring of the
league through the use of replacement players in 1999-2000.
     X -- And the union invited its entire rank-and-file to New York
for a Wednesday ballot not on the NBA's standing offer, but rather on
a vote of support for the union.
     Using the forum provided on Monday's broadcast of CNN's Larry
King Live, Billy Hunter, executive director of the National Basketball
Players Association, made his startling announcement of his
rank-and-file vote.
     For days, a growing number of players have clamored about the
union's insistence that its 19-player negotiating committee sign off
on an NBA proposal before it be presented to the general membership.
     However, Hunter's invitation to New York came not with the
opportunity to vote on the league's final offer, but only the chance
to "accept the recommendation of the negotiating committee."
     The response was swift.
     "This is bull," said Heat forward Keith Askins, a low-salaried
player who had pushed for a rank-and-file vote on the league's final
offer. "Who's going to fly to New York on two days' notice after a
blizzard? You want to vote on something and they tell you that you can
only vote on something else."
     Askins said the union offered no financial assistance to make the
trip, even though it has claimed players at the low end of the salary
scale have been facing financial peril.
     "This isn't a vote. This is out of control," Askins said. "A vote
is when you go to the federal building and cast your ballot. This is
wrong. I feel ashamed to be part of this."
     After assessing the union proposal at a meeting in midtown
Manhattan that lasted less than an hour, Stern and Deputy Commissioner
Russ Granik deemed the divide too severe.
     "We're far apart on every issue," Granik said.
     At first glance, that would not appear true. Paramount to the NBA
from the start of the lockout has been Stern's plea for "cost
certainty." In its final offer, the union, for the first time in
major-league sports, agreed to an ultimate ceiling for individual
salaries.
     But the NBA rejected the union's position out of hand, stressing
the union's ceiling that reached $15 million a year did not achieve
the desired objective.
     "Just because you have certainty doesn't mean you have a
business," Stern said. "It's at too high a price."
     It is a price deemed so high that Stern viewed replacement
players as a more viable alternative.
     In raising perhaps the most repugnant term in sports
negotiations, one that hearkens ugly memories of the NFL's experiment
with replacement players for three games in 1987, Stern seemingly took
posturing to a new level.
     "We've been directed by the committee to make plans for the
1999-2000 season," Stern said. "It's not necessarily going to be a
pretty sight early on. But, obviously, if we have to rebuild the
league, we will rebuild the league."
     With less than three days until the board of governors' vote that
could create the first cancellation of a season by a major North
American professional league, the groundswell continued among players
for a rank-and-file ballot on the league's proposal.
     "Individual players should have the right to decide their own
fate," Houston Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon said. "You can't take
that away."
     Said Rockets free-agent swingman Mario Elie, "I don't feel good
about being an NBA player now. I'm hoping they put it to a vote. I
guarantee guys are going to vote to play."
     The only vote, however, apparently will be a referendum on union
support, one to be made only by those able to get to New York, one
that could come without an anonymous ballot, one the union said was
being offered, "to assure that the owners understand the level of
player resolve and the degree of opposition to the NBA's onerous
demands."
     "They've chosen their leadership," Granik said. "That's what we
have to deal with. They have their rules."
     When he spoke of "replacement players," Stern brought up a
similar abstract notion, the union's threat of a start-up rival league.
     "Our players have been sold a bill of goods by a new league,"
said Stern, who claimed the proposed operation would do little more
than cater to the clients of selected agents.
     Of salvaging the season before the board of governors convenes,
Granik said, "There's always hope, but right now we don't have any
meetings scheduled. Based upon how far apart we are, there's a lot
more needed to be done than simply tweaking the offers." 





_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com