Cavaliers F LeBron James on Thursday indicated that with both the NBA and NBPA "jockeying for position ... he wants negotiations to start soon" on a new CBA, according to Joe Vardon of the Cleveland PLAIN DEALER. James declined to comment on the back and forth between NBPA Exec Dir Michele Roberts and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver regarding the CBA. But he said, "At some point we would like to start conversations, because you don't want to get to a point to where the deadline happens and now we're scrambling. Our game is too good, it's too popular, everyone loves our game all across the world and we don't want to get to a point where there's another lockout." Vardon notes the NBA's current CBA runs through the '20-21 season, but either side "can opt out" after the '16-17 campaign -- "following the first year" of the new nine-year, $24B TV deal. Given the added revenue generated by the TV deal, it "would behoove the players to opt out of the CBA and negotiate a new one for more money" (Cleveland PLAIN DEALER, 11/14).
A NEW FACTOR: ESPN's Pablo Torre, who wrote the article in which Roberts questioned the need for a salary cap and noted her desire for a higher revenue split, said the NBPA has "always had historically a disadvantage when it comes to both principle and when it comes to actual negotiating skill." Torre: "Michele Roberts is famed as one of the best trial lawyers in the United States. ... She is a rational outside observer with no ties to the calcified pro owner-friendly rules that the
NBA historically has enjoyed -- max contracts, rookie wage scale, the salary cap, all of the things she wants to put back on the table. That’s what the ownership might be afraid of." Torre added, "You do not hear people in that position of power be as blunt and as thoughtful about this stuff. She is obviously beginning the process of negotiation in the press.” ESPN's Bomani Jones: "We all know that pretty much everything that she is saying is correct, everything she’s saying about the dynamics. Now the trick is going to be whether or not she can convince her players. ... Can she sell people on the idea that without a salary cap you have a world like baseball where the stars get paid and then a bunch of overpaid mediocre people?" (
"Around The Horn," ESPN, 11/13).
FIRST SIGN OF A WORK STOPPAGE? In Toronto, Doug Smith writes the "outburst from Roberts" was the first public sign that a "long, hard battle for labour peace is ahead." It "might be interesting times when the union" can re-open CBA negotiations and "figure out how to get a larger share of a financial pie" (TORONTO STAR, 11/14). ESPN's Tony Kornheiser said, “Everybody believes that the owners would like to lock the players out so that they could reduce the size of the contract, they can reduce the size of the payout and all of that. This sounds like, ‘We're going to beat you to it. We're going to walk.'" ESPN's Michael Wilbon: "Maybe she's doing this publicly. If she wants to stir it up, if she wants to build a consensus, maybe this is all tactical. ... But you are not going to reinvent the public's interest in basketball because you say so" ("PTI," ESPN, 11/13). The Denver Post’s Woody Paige said, “She's saying things that lackeys and incompetents over the years haven’t said when they have been executive directors of players associations. So I think as a result of what she's saying -- and I agree with most of it -- that we're going to see a lockout or a strike or some kind of player action when the collective bargaining agreement comes up again. She's going to be powerful in her words and in her actions” ("Around The Horn," ESPN, 11/13).
