The NBA Players Association held a meeting in Las Vegas to discuss the NBA lockout, and one of the guest-speakers was NFL Players Association head DeMaurice Smith. Smith was invited by NBPA president Derek Fisher to speak to the players in attendance about the importance of staying united. He also said that decertification, an option reportedly favored by many high-powered agents, wasn't going to automatically solve the problem.
NBA Lockout: DeMaurice Smith Visits NBPA Meeting, Says Decertification Not A ‘Silver Bullet’
In his remarks to the union Thursday, Smith said several times that decertification was not a “silver bullet” that would solve all problems. He pointed out that even though the NFLPA decertified in advance of the lockout imposed by the NFL last March, the two sides continued negotiations until a new 10-year collective bargaining agreement was reached in July.
The meeting was attended by only 35 players or so, according to Ben Golliver of CBS Sports. One was Phoenix Suns forward Jared Dudley, who dismissed concerns over the low turnout:
“To me, does it matter? You can spin it that way. At the end of the day, I wasn’t in a couple of the meetings in New York. Does that mean I’m not unified? I think that would be wrong to write that. At the end of the day, we all have to write papers, we all have to write stuff.”
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