It’s definitely not an NBA court
NBA BASKETBALL:
WHAT’S THAT? by Steven Wear
I
t’s been so long since I’ve seen an NBA game that I’m starting to forget what the sport of basketball is. You hear about a bunch of “babies” complaining about money so much that people are going to forget that there’s an actual reason these athletes and coaches get paid. Every week there’s reports of “progress”, but since the lockout began on July 1st, the story has been the same. The situation is one of greed and unaccountability. The finger pointing between NBA commissioner David Stern, National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) President Derek Fisher, and NBPA Executive Director Billy Hunter is Busch league. After every meeting you can expect one of these three characters to claim that one of the other two isn’t willing to negotiate. For those of you living under a rock, or those of you who turned on your television November
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1st expecting to see the Bulls play the Mavericks, here is a summary of what has happened. In June 2005, a six year Collective Bargaining Agreement was reached that guaranteed players 57 percent of basketballrelated income (BRI). Only a year after the agreement was reached, owners started to complain to NBA commissioner David Stern about the disparity between small-market and large-market teams. That is one of the main issues of the current agreement. Negotiations for the current agreement have been going on since the beginning of this year with the owners claiming that they were losing over $300 million dollars a year and the exorbitant player salaries were to blame. Originally, the owners wanted to reduce players’ salary by 40% and create a salary cap of $45 million per team.