[McDunkin]

It’s been a rough few last days for Union prez Derek Fisher, and now it appears that some NBA players are beginning to turn on him. Jerry Stackhouse tells ESPN Radio that he doesn’t feel comfortable with Fish representing him and the other players in the battle against team owners. Per EOB: “Not to say anything against Derek Fisher, it’s not that I don’t think he’s a great guy,’ Stackhouse said, ‘But I don’t want him negotiating my contract. I want an agent who knows the lingo negotiating my contract. Derek Fisher, he doesn’t negotiate his own contract. He has an agent. So why would I want him negotiating something even bigger than his contract? This [Collective Bargaining Agreement] is something more important to everybody.’ If that wasn’t clear enough for you, Stackhouse went on to leave no doubt that he feels Fisher is outmatched in the current negotiation. ‘David Stern, he’s made this league what it is,” Stackhouse said. ‘He’s one of the greatest commissioners in sports. He’s got that title, he’s got the NBA at the place where it is because he’s a shrewd businessman and knows how to work his way, play the media, play things up to get what he wants. We don’t do that. Players are emotional. Players get emotional. So no, I don’t necessarily, particularly want Derek Fisher or any of the executive committee negotiating a contract for me.’ While Stackhouse sounded reluctant to outright accuse Fisher of disloyalty to his members, he clearly left the possibility open. ‘I don’t know [if Derek met with the NBA],’ Stackhouse said. ‘I would hope not. I don’t think Derek is that kind of guy from what I’ve seen. But at the same time, he does have aspirations to possibly be a G.M. one day. If he can be the guy to bring the sides together in whatever way, maybe there would be an opportunity for him to be a G.M. I’m not saying that he has an ulterior motive but the possibility lies there.’ If there was a silver lining for Fisher, it was that Stackhouse’s frustration with the NBPA pre-dated Fisher’s tenure as president, which began in 2006. ‘Over the course of my career, the last 16 years, it seems like the executive committee is always making concessions,’ Stackhouse said. ‘More concessions, more concessions in each Collective Bargaining Agreement and this is no different. I don’t think there’s ever been a case where it seems like we have any leverage… We need to have more people who are capable of going toe to toe with David Stern and I just don’t think players who spend most of their time playing basketball and Billy Hunter are geared to do that.’”

http://www.slamonline.com/online/nba/2011/11/jerry-stackhouse-derek-fisher-not-qualified-to-represent-players-in-lockout/

[esperanzafleet69Participant]

derrick fisher went to arkansas and majored with a communications degree… seems like a pretty good person to represent the players jerry…

[TallmanNYCParticipant]

 The first part that puzzles me is what contract is Stackhouse talking about? The man played in 7 games last year. I had to look that up to make sure he was in the league at all. Does he have a contract? Is he ever going to have a contract again?

But the basic point though is correct. Stern is a professional negotiator with 45 years of experience. I hope to God that Derek Fisher and Billy Hunter aren’t actually doing the negotiation for this deal by themselves without significant advice. You can hire lawyers, agent and bankers to do this stuff for you. Fisher and Hunter should be in the room but they should executing a strategy that they’ve worked out with their professional advisers. I suspect they are doing just that and Stackhouse doesn’t realize it. 

[torontoraptors10Participant]

On Wednesday, 16-year NBA veteran Jerry Stackhouse, who most recently had a cup of coffee with the Miami Heat in 2010-2011, torched Fisher in a ESPN radio interview, delivering arguably the harshest critique of the union president to date. "Not to say anything against Derek Fisher, it’s not that I don’t think he’s a great guy," Stackhouse said, "But I don’t want him negotiating my contract. I want an agent who knows the lingo negotiating my contract. Derek Fisher, he doesn’t negotiate his own contract. He has an agent. So why would I want him negotiating something even bigger than his contract? This [Collective Bargaining Agreement] is something more important to everybody." CBSSports.com

If that wasn’t clear enough for you, Stackhouse went on to leave no doubt that he feels Fisher is outmatched in the current negotiation. "David Stern, he’s made this league what it is," Stackhouse said. "He’s one of the greatest commissioners in sports. He’s got that title, he’s got the NBA at the place where it is because he’s a shrewd businessman and knows how to work his way, play the media, play things up to get what he wants. We don’t do that. Players are emotional. Players get emotional. So no, I don’t necessarily, particularly want Derek Fisher or any of the executive committee negotiating a contract for me." CBSSports.com

IMO, Jerry Stackhouse makes a good point. David Stern is one of the best commissioners in all of sports. He’s been holding his title for a pretty damn long time. He’s made basketball into a global sport and developed in such potential-filled countries like China and India.

@esperanzafleet69 – you really think a communications degree is good enough to negotiate a collective agreement. Does Fisher have any idea how Unions work? I mean if you look at all the owners, they have extremely good knowledge about how business’ work (because all of them are billionaires and know how to run organizations). I think the players are at a disadvantage.

 

[TallmanNYCParticipant]

I really hope that Hunter and Fisher have plenty of legal and financial advice. But the negotiations are fairly simple as the BRI split is really the most significant part. The players have basically won most of the other points, I think, as this point. They aren’t going to take a hard cap and they aren’t going to take super high luxury tax (but maybe they will take more than just a dollar for dollar tax like there is now). 

Stern is certainly big time and he should be the lead negotiator. The other owners are also probably strong (check out the bio of the Nets’ russian owner, that guy has probably done some balls to the wall negotiations in his day, and he has basically taken folks to the cleaners to the tune of billions a few times). But a lot of the owners aren’t that good. Check out Dolan and his latest negotiation for Melo. You think he wasn’t just abused on that negotiation session? If he had strong to the trade deadline, he would have had to give up only half the players he did to get Melo. Or he could have gotten D. Will, Melo or CP3 this year. No doubt about that. A good chunk of the owners are "businessmen" but only because they inheritted businesses from their Dads or Granddads that actually started it. 

[Jlv2011]

Union President, if he did have ulterior motives with the NBA this lockout would be over by now.

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