As you’d expect, late Friday NBA lockout flarfnoogle has produced additional whizzamarole. Union sources told numerous reporters late Friday that the league had refused a players’ request to meet on or by Monday to get this stoppage done. The reason: the players’ union told the media that the NBA had demanded that as a condition for the meeting, players had to accept a 50-50 split. So, no meeting. (Or at least the threat of no meeting.)
NBA Lockout Talks: League Claims To Be Open To Negotiate Non-Revenue Split Items
But NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver has a different way of telling it, and he did so on the record with the New York Times’ Howard Beck:
What we told the union was that we were not prepared to negotiate over the B.R.I. split beyond the 50-50 concept that had already been discussed,” Silver said, referring to the N.B.A.‘s acronym for basketball-related income.
Silver added, however, that the league was “prepared to continue negotiating over the many other issues that remain open” - such as the salary-cap system, the luxury tax and the length of contracts.
If either side is intractable on the revenue split -- the union is at 53-47 -- then there really is no reason to negotiate. But given the relatively small gap in between the two sides and the stakes, with Monday signifying the last day to get a deal done that will preserve an 82-game schedule, there is really no reason for either side to be intractable.
Stay tuned. I see more whizzamarole on the way.
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