The NBA should avoid a lockout with a new CBA for the first time in 2 decades

The NBA and NBA Players Association have “tentatively” agreed on a Collective Bargaining Agreement that’ll prevent a lockout from happening this summer. Assuming the final deal is ratified before the new self-imposed deadline of Jan. 13, 2017, this will be the earliest resolution to a potential work stoppage in more than two decades.

The collective bargaining agreement will end up being similar to the one agreed upon in 2011, which only happened after a six-month lockout cost the league 512 games. This time, negotiations went far more smoothly. Save for some 11th-hour alarm from Carmelo Anthony, there was little indication that a new deal was in peril.

There are all sorts of reasons for that, ranging from the leadership on both sides to the league’s fruitful financial climate. But the bottom line is that a swift resolution for labor talks is rare in recent NBA history. With some exceptions, most appear to be happy on both sides.

The NBA has gone through five lockouts, all coming since 1995. Here’s what happened in all five.

The 2011 NBA lockout was a war of wants. The owners wanted the NBA to run more like the NFL, with non-guaranteed contracts to rid themselves of underperforming players. The running example here was the floundering Rashard Lewis, who averaged a then-astounding $21 million over the course of the final two years of his contract.

The owners also wanted the players to shed a significant portion of their Basketball Related Income (BRI) — 57 percent of which went to the players — and hard salary cap for player salaries. Players, on the other hand, wanted to retain the soft cap so teams with higher cap hits could continue be competitive for their services. They were willing to concede some of their BRI, but NBPA insisted on not fully giving into the owner’s demands.

Both sides refused to budge well into November, causing training camp, preseason and eventually games to be cancelled. Finally, an agreement was reached on Nov. 26 and the deal was officially ratified on Dec. 8, allowing a brief training camp and a shortened 66-game season to take place.

The players ultimately conceded a large stake in the BRI, accepting about 50 percent in the new CBA, while retaining a soft salary cap.

In the wake of the National Hockey League’s entire 2004-05 season being canceled, the NBA and NBPA quickly ratified a new CBA at the end of July, 2005, one of the few years that involved little drama about the possibility of lockout that would cost regular-season games. Like this season, the two sides agreed in principle in late June and it took a month to finalize it.

Still, the beginning of free agency was delayed by a month because of that ratification process. There was at least a period of time where league employees could not do their jobs.

Among the changes that occurred: a one-time amnesty clause that allowed teams to waive one player and clear his onerous salary off their books. The rule was again applied in 2012.

The league also restricted the length of contracts to six years for re-signing players and five years for signing players from other teams. Each was a year less than in the previous CBA. Here is a full list of changes.

The 1998 lockout was the longest of the four lockouts in NBA history, and the first time the NBA had ever lost a game due to work stoppage.

The key issue was player salaries, which the owners wanted to cap and restrict. After watching Michael Jordan twice sign a one-year deal worth more than $30 million and Kevin Garnett agree to a seven-year deal worth $126 million, the owners were set on setting a league-wide maximum salary while limiting the power of Larry Bird rights. At the time, Bird rights allowed teams to pay players who qualified any amount. Owners also wanted to establish a new pay scale for rookies, while players wanted to eliminate restricted free agency completely.

After the lockout officially began on July 1, the two sides met periodically throughout the following months but reached no real agreements. Training camps, preseason, regular season and eventually the All-Star Game were all cancelled by then-commissioner David Stern, something that generally frustrated fans of the game who saw both sides as being greedy millionaires. When an early December bargaining meeting ended in a screaming match between Stern and NBPA executive director Billy Hunter, it looked like the entire season might be lost.

Stern set Jan. 7 as the deadline for the two sides if an NBA season was still going to be played. The NBA rejected the NBPA’s final proposal on Jan. 4, but meetings on July 6 and a strong desire by the players to avoid losing an entire season’s worth of work finally brought the two sides together. The league played an abbreviated 50-game season and San Antonio ended up as champions. Ultimately, 464 games were lost to the stoppage.

The owners were viewed as the biggest winners — they established a max contract at 30 percent of the salary cap, instituted restricted free agency for rookie deals and expanded drug policies.

This lockout lasted only a few hours, but it happened nonetheless. The players and owners couldn’t come to a decision on profit splitting from television revenue. Owners wanted to split TV money 50-50 with half the cash going toward player salaries. The players wanted more than 50 percent.

The lockout was resolved hours later, when the owners agreed to tack on an extra $14 million in TV money per year over the last four years of the deal.

The NBA’s first lockout lasted July 1 to Sept. 12 in 1995. The NBA and the NBPA had been “shockingly” close to ratifying the new collective bargaining agreement in mid-June that year, according to a New York Times article written then. Still, there were some nervous moments that were ultimately resolved before any games were lost.

The legacy of this dispute is the rookie scale. Currently, rookie salaries are slotted in by draft pick for the first four years of their careers, but that didn’t use to be the case. Rookies used to be subjected to the same sort of negotiations that free agents currently go through. They could hold out if they didn’t like the terms they were offered and re-enter the draft the next year.

While no notable rookie did that, this did lead to a series of contentious holdouts with top draft picks that usually ended with first-year players receiving mammoth salaries. Chris Webber, the No. 1 pick in the 1993 draft, negotiated a unique one-year opt-out clause in his first contract and then exercised it, leaving the Warriors little choice but to send him to Washington in a sign-and-trade scenario.

But the last straw for owners was Glenn Robinson. The No. 1 pick in the 1994 draft held out until early November, stating his goal to become the league’s first $100 million man. He had to settle for a massive (for then) fully-guaranteed 10-year, $68 million contract.

Owners were not happy with a rookie immediately becoming one of the league’s highest-paid players and pushed for the rookie scale. (Former Maverick Jim Jackson, who held out in 1992, claims the owners colluded to create an unofficial rookie scale even before 1995).

Many other issues were tabled in the name of starting the 1995-96 season on time. They bubbled back to the surface three years later in costly fashion.