Neo
Years ago
NBA Lockout Looms
It's been suggested before on this site and is closer to being a reality ....
WITH 18 days to go before the deadline to get a new labour contract signed, the National Basketball Association appears headed for a lockout.
League deputy commissioner Russ Granik said today: "I am the pessimist. The time has just about run out to get a deal done by July 1. It is not impossible. But it seems unlikely.
"In most labour disputes once the ball starts rolling then things get more difficult."
Stern said the owners have tried unsuccessfully to entice the players' union with concessions.
"I remain optimistic, but disbelieving," said Stern. "At a time when the world is on fire and people can't sit down to divide up three billion dollars in revenues that we are going to generate. It is incomprehensible. I am not looking forward to it."
The NBA's collective bargaining agreement expires on June 30.
There are no talks scheduled between the NBA owners and the players' union, but the union brass is due to meet tomorrow in Chicago and in New York on Wednesday.
Last week players' union executive director Billy Hunter said he believes the NBA is headed for a "suicidal" labour stoppage.
The two sides cannot agree on issues like drug testing, contract lengths, a minimum draft age and the dividing up of revenues, said Stern. He added that if there is a lockout, the owners will pull their last offer from the table.
"These are the blood issues," he said. "We made our last offer.
"It has been suggested the owners are on some suicidal lockout path, and that is just not true.
"If we have a lockout we will not go this far again in another offer. It will not be on the table again."
Stern said they are afraid of the damage that would result from an National Hockey League-style lockout.
"If we don't have a deal by July 1 there will be a work stoppage no doubt about it. Once the lockout comes the damage will accelerate. The fear we have is that once a lockout takes place anything can happen," Stern said.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman wiped out the 2004-05 campaign on February 16, making the NHL the first major North American sports league to have an entire season cancelled due to a labour dispute.
Stern said they want to avoid a similar fiasco.
"We have seen the damage a lockout can do, and we think our business will slip away faster from us than other sports," he said.
