Ken Berger of CBS Sports has covered the NBA lockout like a fire blanket, and he’s got quite an interesting nugget in the aftermath of Wednesday’s talks: part of the league’s conceptual proposal offered on Tuesday included salary rollbacks for players under contract.
NBA Lockout Talks Have Included Salary Rollback Proposal, According To Report
Needless to say, this is a controversial concept. The rationale Berger presents is that major decreases in the players' share of revenue going forward that are likely to be a part of a new collective bargaining agreement will unfairly impact stars just coming up for free agency, like Chris Paul, Dwight Howard and Derrick Rose. Players who have already locked in long-term contracts would be relatively safe from the new economics for a few years at least.
To make it more equitable across all players -- locked-up stars and pending free agents alike -- existing contracts would be docked a certain percentage while the cuts are phased. Rob LeBron James to pay Chris Paul, in other words. It does not appear that this concept went over very well; Berger reports that union officials deemed the idea “alarming” on Tuesday.
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