Deal In The Works?

Biotch-made ultimatum right there from Stern if that is true. 

If they don’t reach a set deal today, I hope they end the lockout so players can start training while they are nutting out the details. Or at least have free agency.

Let’s get a deal done and play basketball. 

M-Dymes, you even hate Stern when there is potentially good news. I believe "his" ultimatum was from the owners, who do not want to go above 50 or 51%. Hence, Stern just said, "You agree to this by a certain time, or the owners are going to take this deal off of the table." If their is progress being made, why not keep discussing it? Ultimatum’s are well and good, but you need to be flexible sometimes. In these times, if his "biotch-made ultimatum" means they get a deal done, I am all for it. 

I don’t hate Stern @ all, except over a few stupid fines.  U misunderstand me about this subject Mikey.  I like Stern, I don’t like certain things he’s done, but overall, I like him. 

I just said, his ultimatum was &$#%#&@!made…is that not true? I mean ultimatums supposedly are a final-straw concept.  Apparently it wasn’t a finality.  All im saying is it is funny to act all hard dishing out an ultimatum but then ohh we’ll keep doing this after they reject it.  Same thing with what the Vikings did with Favre a few years back.

just a question – when they do come to agreement what is the turnaround till they start playing again ? eg. will they agree, then start in a few weeks ? longer / shorter ?

Probably play in 3 weeks to a month, need time for free agency and trades.

1st game could be December 6th

Any ultimatum is just a negotiation ploy and a bad one at that. In this instance it is "if you don’t agree to this by Wednesday, then no deal . . . unless we change our minds." What kind of ultimatum is that? Here is an ultimatum, "if you don’t agree by Wednesday, we start hiring scab players on Thursday and start the league without you." Of course the Owners probably legally can’t do that since they are locking out players who they have contracts with.

If I were negotiating for the players, I would have told Stern the split is 53 – 47 for the players. If you don’t want that, don’t bother picking up the phone and calling me because there is nothing to discuss. Then you are done. Let the owners and Stern stew for a few months of not having their phone calls returned and they would have seen that the players were serious. Sometimes you send a better message by not saying anything at all. 

@TallmanNYC; sure, because the players are the billionaires with other profitable ventures who have no economic need for the NBA. Oh wait. Players have no power to make an ultimatum, because they have no alternative.

At the very least, Stern’s ultimatum brought them back to the negotiating table, and a possible resolution rather than wasting any more time leaving week-long gaps between meetings.

Omphalos,

If you think the players have no option or leverage, why do the owners pay them anything at all? The players have lots of leverage because they league can’t exist without them and it can definitely exist without the Maloof Brothers and the other owners. If the NBA locks the players out permanently, another league will start in its place and the same group of the best basketball players in the world will be hired to play in that league. Then good bye NBA, good bye Stern and the NBA owners. That is the leverage. The question, is that enough leverage to get 53% of BRI or 50% of BRI. I don’t know. I guess we are going to find out though. But don’t say the players have no leverage. 

Just to clarify, because I wasn’t clear, I’m not suggesting that the players use the shut down no discussion strategy now. I think they should have used it five months ago. They needed to send a serious message that they were ready to blow the league up and start over if the owners didn’t give them what they thought was fair. Personally, I would have had KG deliver that message using his serious face. Then walked out. Walking out is a powerful message for the players. When they walk out of the room, they are still basketball players. The owners might have lots of money from other sources (or not so much anymore, see Maloof Brothers) but they aren’t NBA owners when there aren’t NBA games. They aren’t famous and on TV and getting to hang out with famous people anymore. Those guys get a lot of value for that, especially when their team wins. They don’t want to lose it, especially since without games and a league, eventually their teams are worthless.   

Clearly it was a ploy TallmanNYC, I knew that from when it first came out.  No way were negotiations going to discontinue, and the players would never get what in their minds is a better deal.  Stern wants the NBA operating as well.  Thats why I’m making fun of his "ultimatum"…I’m trying to make the sarcasm as powerful as possible fellas.  Don’t know if you guys haven’t caught that yet.

Just feel like while it may not be an "ultimatum", if it works, I am cool with it. Plus, I feel like Stern was more the messenger of the ultimatum, the owners still are the ones that seemed to put this deadline in place. I am glad they are being reasonable and backing off their original deadline, especially if it gets the season started soon. This still has the potential to totally f*ck-up, like most signs of good news in the lockout, but I would like to think positively. Personally, while Stern is seen as all that is wrong with the NBA by some, I do not mind him and find he has done a pretty solid job as a commissioner. I do not agree with every decision he has made, or everything he has said, but I think anyone dealing with this situation would be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The continuing talks are good news as any further cancellations could have the holiday season games in peril. If Stern can get the players down to 50:50 then I reckon the majority of owners will be fairly happy with him.

The players have gone down to 50-50, but of course that’s still not enough for these owners.

I STILL don’t understand why anybody sides with them. The players have given and given… They’ve been in concessionary bargaining this whole lockout. The owners are going to be given back BILLIONS of dollars over the next ten years, BUT are still being d*ck heads about a few of these cap issues. I think it’s ridiculous and that the owners have made this personal.

I think Adam Silver made a good point yesterday, that the economic issues and the competitive issues are separate. It seems everything is all good economically for both sides, but the system issues are still being worked out and shouldn’t be affected by economic concessions. I just hope they have a deal before this deadline or we are going without a season.