CHICAGO—If you want to see Most Valuable Player Derrick Rose and the Bulls take on Dirk Nowitzki and the defending National Basketball Association (NBA) champion Mavericks on November 1, you’ll have to fire up a video game.
That delicious matchup—as well as all teams’ regular-season games from November 1 to 14—were wiped off the schedule late Monday, casualties of a lockout that could get uglier by the day.
When a seven-hour negotiating session failed to bridge significant differences over a new collective-bargaining agreement, Commissioner David Stern canceled those games and warned any future negotiations with the players association would have “to account for the losses we are incurring.”
Along those lines, Stern said owners have dropped a proposal from last week’s talks offering players a 50-50 split of basketball-related income to 47 percent. Worse, Stern and Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said Monday’s session centered on system issues such as the salary cap, luxury tax, contract lengths and annual raises, and “a gulf” separates the sides on all.
“We remain very, very apart on all issues,” Stern told reporters in New York. “With every day that goes by, there will be further reductions on what’s left of the season.”
Monday’s events make the 2011-12 season just the second in league history to lose regular-season games to labor woes. In 1998-99, 50 of 82 games were played.
“It’s disappointing,” Bulls swingman Kyle Korver said.
Korver said he planned to attend a regional players association meeting on Thursday in Los Angeles. Stern and Billy Hunter, executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, said no further negotiations are scheduled.
“I continue to believe that we’ve been more than fair and reasonable in our approach,” National Basketball Players Association President Derek Fisher said.
Beyond the major differences on system issues, the union also is seeking 53 percent of league-related income. Players received 57 percent under the previous collective-bargaining agreement. Dropping their take by 4 percent, players would give back roughly $160 million to owners who claim that 22 of 30 teams lost a combined $300 million last season.
Stern said any future cancellations would come in two-week increments. This represents a pay cycle for players, who typically receive their first paychecks November 15.
Most observers speculate the league would need three weeks from the time an agreement is reached to prepare for the regular season. This would involve lawyers signing off on the deal, players voting for it, a hectic free-agency period and a brief training camp with possibly an exhibition game or two.
All of that seems miles away after Monday’s events.
“Everybody’s waiting for the players to cave,” Hunter told reporters in New York. “I’m saying that’s going to be a horrible decision.”
The cancellation includes all games scheduled to be played through November 14—exactly 100 games.
Based on last year’s average announced attendance leaguewide (just over 17,300 per game) and the average ticket cost last season, those now-canceled 100 games represent nearly $83 million in lost ticket sales—before the first concession or souvenir is sold and before the first car pays to park.
With another work stoppage, the NBA risks alienating a fan base that sent the league’s revenues and TV ratings soaring during the 2010-11 season. And the cost of cancellations would be staggering. Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said the league would lose hundreds of millions of dollars, while union Executive Director Billy Hunter estimated players’ losses at $350 million for each month they were locked out.
Now ushers, security personnel, parking lot attendants, concession workers, restaurant employees and others all stand to have their hours cut or join the country’s 14 million unemployed. A few teams also have either trimmed their staffs or instituted sharp pay cuts—some did that as the lockout began—and more layoffs could be forthcoming.
Hunter said he didn’t think the full season was in jeopardy yet and stressed it would be a mistake for the NBA to risk it coming off a season when revenues and TV ratings soared.
“I think it would be foolish for them to kill the season, and we’re coming off the best season in the history of the NBA and I’m not so sure in this kind of economy that if there is a protracted lockout whether the league will recover,” he said. “It took us a while to recover from the ’98 lockout, and I think it will take us even longer to recover this time around.”
Players reacted quickly—and in some cases, strongly—on Twitter within minutes of the cancelations being announced.
Miami guard Dwyane Wade said the situation “just got real” after he learned the first two weeks are now gone, then lashed out at Stern’s comments in a second post by saying they hurt employees at arenas around the league, other businesses that thrive off NBA business and the league’s fans in general. Minnesota rookie-to-be Derrick Williams, the No. 2 pick in this year’s draft, tweeted that going overseas may now be an option for him.
The success of last season, on the court, at the box office and in the headlines, convinced many that the sides would never reach this stalemate.
But small-market owners were hardened after watching LeBron James leave Cleveland for Miami, Amare Stoudemire bolt Phoenix for New York, and Carmelo Anthony later use his impending free agency as leverage to secure a trade from Denver to the Knicks. They wanted changes that would allow them to hold onto their superstars and compete for titles with the big-spending teams from Los Angeles, Boston and Dallas who have gobbled up the last four championships.
In 1999 the sides didn’t reach an agreement until January 6, just before the deadline for canceling that entire season. The league ended up with a 50-game schedule, often plagued by poor play as teams were forced to fit too many games into too small of a window. With AP
They could keep meeting now and agree to a deal much sooner this time. Or perhaps the divide is still too great and they will decide there’s no reason to rush back to the table.
