End Of NFL Lockout Deprives NBA Its Legal Snowplow

For the NBA, the problem with the NFL lockout is that it is over.

I’m not talking about the NBA’s squabble taking center stage as a problem, though it doesn’t help that “those selfish pro athletes” now becomes “those selfish basketball players”. We can count, and we know that the NBA lockout is still 110 days behind the NFL version, and that the stakes right now for the NBA are much different than they were on Monday for the NFL. This week was something like the NFL’s last chance to get a deal done and preserve a relatively normal preseason. (Just ignore that free agency will now be condensed to a couple days just before camps open.) The NBA has two more months before reaching that sort of do-or-die deadline.

What kills the NBA about the resolution of the NFL lockout is that nothing was resolved, not in a legal sense. The NFL’s players’ union showed off a whole new repertoire of tricks -- decertification, lockout insurance, bringing retired players to the table, blocking owners from collecting TV revenue -- and none of it really directly led to the players’ victory. We don’t know if decertification and an anti-trust suit will work, because the NFLPA didn’t need to let it get that far. We don’t know if the owners felt pressure because DeMaurice Smith and the NFLPA board secretly purchased lockout insurance months ago (though we have a pretty good idea it provided a strong nudge toward the end of negotiations). (Regardless, we have no idea if the NBPA did the same. The two boards do share an attorney, Jeffrey Kessler.) We don’t know if the Doty ruling, in which federal Judge David Doty put an injunction on $4 billion of TV revenue the owners were scheduled to claim even during a lockout, will stick for the NBA, who is due $900 million from ABC, ESPN and TNT.

The advantage of the NFL lockout going first was that some of the legal issues would possibly get worked out. The union would know its position a little better, and the league would know what to expect. But the NFLPA so thoroughly dismantled most of the NFL’s demands -- except for the rookie scale and an adjusted revenue split, really -- that it’s hard to transfer any lessons to the NBA lockout. De Smith was just too good.

That’s not a knock on Billy Hunter, who has looked tons better this time around versus 1998. It’s just become a different animal. And now, the agents are starting to pipe up. All reports suggest last Friday’s meeting between Hunter and a number of top NBA agents -- where decertification was a topic of discussion -- was completely amicable. But how long will that last? Don’t forget that when players don’t pull in paychecks, agents don’t pull in paychecks -- or at least new ones. There’s a pretty direct correlation between players getting desperate to get a deal done and agents getting desperate.

Hunter’s in the unenviable position of being forced to listen to the agents, for they could potentially go around union leadership to force a decertification vote. David Aldridge reported Monday that by getting 30 percent of the union -- less than 200 players -- to sign a petition calling for a vote on decert, a majority decision would then decide the course of action. Such a ploy would neuter Hunter. So long as agents keep the option open, Hunter has to play ball with them. At some point, that may mean calling for decertification -- a course of action already authorized by the full union -- to save his own power.

That could open up a whole new can of worms, and we could find ourselves with the players forced to either strike or play under rules unilaterally set forth by owners. There’s a reason Hunter has been cautious with regards to decertification while the NFLPA did it immediately, as soon as it was clear no agreement could be reached before a lockout was called. There’s something in the NBA that may worry Hunter. I mean, it’s not as if the sides are close to a deal and decertifying the union would flood the room with acrimony. There hasn’t been a bargaining session since June 30. Something has kept Hunter for seeking decertification, and I have to imagine it’s more than a strategic ploy.

Now again, it isn’t as if decertification was the magic bullet that got the NFLPA a favorable deal. But an initial legal victory that threatened to end the lockout changed the early outlook for the union, and may have gotten the NFL anxious enough to be more amenable to an eventual deal. Again, the NBA’s a different animal. We’re a month in and the NBA hasn’t gone there yet. How much longer can they last without making a major legal move?

Time for another Battleground Basketball! battle. B-Ref’s Elo Player Rater has gifted us a doozy: Charlie “Heisman” Ward vs. DJ Rony Seikaly.

Both were solid contributors. Seikaly was a decent scorer and strong rebounder, but was a bit Bosh-y in terms of relying more on a face-up game than traditional paint-pounding. Ward was pretty erratic, even in Jeff Van Gundy’s slowdown system.

Off-the-court contributions: Charlie Ward entered the NBA after winning the Heisman Trophy at Florida State. The Heisman is a football award. That’s pretty impressive! He was also drafted by the Brewers and Yankees (those are baseball teams!) and, according to Wikipedia, “shined in in the Arthur Ashe Amateur Tennis Tournament in 1994.” Neat!

Rony Seikaly is a well-known club DJ. He has released a few tracks. You can book him for your next event!

Winner: Rony Seikaly, landslide.

The Hooks runs Monday through Friday. See the archives.