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Leagues and Governing Bodies

NLRB ORDERS VOTE ON NBPA DECERTIFICATION

     A vote to remove the NBPA as the collective bargaining
representative for NBA players will be held by secret ballot in
four to five weeks, the NLRB said yesterday."  According to Mark
Asher and Ken Denlinger in today's WASHINGTON POST,  "any player
whose service included more than one 10-day contract in the NBA
last season will be eligible to vote."  NBA Deputy Commissioner
Russ Granik said the number of eligible voters "is approximately
420 to 425," and that -- even though the call for a vote can be
appealed to the full NLRB board by August 9 -- "he did not expect
the league to appeal."  NBPA Exec Dir Simon Gourdine:  "How the
balloting is going to be conducted was always my number one
priority.  Number two is who would be eligible to vote and number
three would be when the election is held."  Attorney Jeffrey
Kessler:  "It was a terrific victory for the players who support
decertification.  Our main priority was to get an election by the
end of August or early September.  That's exactly what we have"
(WASHINGTON POST, 7/27).
     LEAGUE REAX:  NBA Commissioner David Stern:  "The people who
have their lives invested in our league are our owners and our
players and they darn well better talk, they better negotiate,
and they better do the right thing on this decertification vote,
otherwise what they have been working toward together is going to
go up in flames"("SportsCenter," ESPN, 7/26).  More Stern: "I
think that the players will vote to play the season, which means
that they have to reject decertification because if there is a
decertification, you can be sure there will be chaos and no
season"("Sports Tonight," CNN, 7/27).  Granik:  "We will now set
about the task of getting accurate inforamtion to our players so
they can make a properly informed choice" (NBA).
     FROM THE UNION:  Gourdine:  "We're hopeful that some of the
players who signed these renunciation forms early on are now
rethinking that.  We won't know that though, that's why it is too
early to tell, it's a secret ballot and we'll only know this when
we have a decertification election.  We could find that with all
of this effort and all of our assumptions, that we were totally
wrong, in which case we will be like politicians, we will find
that we lost an election, and when politicians loose an election,
they go out of office" ("Sports Tonight," CNN, 7/27).  In an
interview with Bryant Gumbel, to air on HBO's "Real Sports" on
July 31, Gourdine said he believes they will be able to re-
negotiate and get a deal ratified before decertification vote,
thus avoiding any loss of games (HBO Sports).
     FROM THE PLAYERS:  Michael Jordan: "Decertification can
assure the season will be played, because there will be no union
to lock out" (Lacy Banks, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 7/27).  More Jordan:
"The message is we just want to be treated fairly.  We're not
trying to be greedy here, we're not trying to make sure the
league starves or doesn't become successful, because if the
league is not successful, we can't be successful.  We would
endanger our own position here" ("SportsCenter," ESPN, 7/26).
Patrick Ewing:  "I'm glad we're going to have the opportunity to
vote quickly.  I just wish the vote wasn't necessary and the rest
of the players and the union would jump on board so we can get
the kind of leverage we need to get a deal done"("Sports
Tonight," CNN, 7/27).  Cavs Player Rep Danny Ferry:  "I think we
all knew that there was going to be a vote (on union
decertification) at this point.  So, none of this really
surprises me.  Hopefully this will serve as a referendum for the
association and the union leaders as to the direction we want to
go. ... I'm not sure how the vote is going to come out, and I
don't want to speculate on it."  (L.C. Johnson, CLEVELAND PLAIN
DEALER, 7/27).

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