[Bmore_DCParticipant]

 Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reports:

For the first time in two years of labor talks, NBA owners made a modest push from their rigid stance on implementing a hard salary cap, league sources told Yahoo! Sports.

The owners proposed at Tuesday’s negotiating session an idea similar to the current system that allows teams to pay a luxury tax for going over the cap. Only, now there would be ultra-punitive measures against higher-spending teams. The current system has teams pay a dollar-for-dollar tax for exceeding the cap.

Players Association executive director Billy Hunter has called the hard cap a “blood issue” for the union, and insisted the players would never agree to it.
The owners’ proposal on Tuesday “would still have the affects of a hard cap,” one source with knowledge of the talks said.

The owners didn’t budge on a desire to change the basketball-related income percentage (BRI) to a split that takes the players from 57 percent to the mid 40s, sources said. The players had offered to drop from a 57-43 split to 54-46 at a meeting last week in New York.

 

PROGRESS?????

 

[PlatParticipant]

Good stuff…always nice to see positive news regarding the lockout

[Charlie SheenParticipant]

 http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/215738/Owners_Make_Concession_On_Hard_Cap

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7027843/sources-nba-owners-move-slightly-hard-cap-demand

1. I like it its fair to small markets and big market because big markets can keep all their top names if their over the cap by just Maxing them out but they also get a huge penalty teams like NY and LA would be fine paying the tax anyway this is all great news I think by Friday a deal will be in place and honestly if the players wanna play then this is the best deal I’ve seen so far and with the Salary reductions the players should jus stake it because you lose out on a lot more if the season is lost.

 

[PlatParticipant]

One part of me wants there to be ZERO games missed but another part of me wants for the NBA fix that BS

 

Hope I have it both ways

[NYK2010Participant]

57 percent to the mid 40’s no way the players agree to that nor should they. Its taken over 3 months for the owners to budge from the hard cap stance. I’m curious how long it takes for them to budge on the BRI.

[JunkYardDogParticipant]

 all that shit to come back to the most evident and equal solution : 50-50, and a soft but tough cap…

[IndianaBasketballParticipant]

LOL I’m sure the big gun owners like Jerry Buss would rather be given a tougher luxury tax THAN sharing their revenue with all of the bum small market teams since that’d be the lesser amount of the two.

I really do think this hard cap issue wasn’t liked by all of the owners, which is why they came up with this idea to please the Dan Gilberts of the group.

As far as the BRI split, the owners are playing hard ball to see how close the players will get to it. Perfect world says the players go 50-50. I say the lowest they go is 52-48… Afterall, the players are the driving force of this league and SHOULD be given the larger cut in my opinion. FIVE percentage points my not seem like a lot, but that’s a ton of money.

[M.GarveyParticipant]

If I was an owner I would say 51-49 (in players favor) split on BRI, but Owners pay 5% to a retirement fund on salaries, maxed at $9M ($450k), so the average NBA salary is $5M, that works out to $250k on average, players get it at 45. We all know these guys blow their money and broke within 5 years out of the league.

[BothTeamsPlayedHardParticipant]

Asked if more cancellations will be forthcoming if no progress is realized this week, Stern opted for a dodge made famous a decade ago by Portland forward Rasheed Wallace when, after a playoff game, he was mandated to meet with reporters but had no interest in the exchange.

"Both teams played hard," Stern said with a smile.

Then the commissioner repeated what he said a week ago, on the eve of : "And the calendar is not our friend."

————————————————-

Everyone always forgets the God bless and good night part. It would have fit perfectly with the exit statement.

[IndianaBasketballParticipant]

@BothTeamsPlayedHard

What do you think about the owners’ latest proposal?

• The "Larry Bird exception," which allows teams to exceed the cap to retain their own free agents regardless of their other committed salaries, is limited to one player per team per season.

• The mid-level exception, which the league valued at $5.8 million last season and could be extended by as many as five years, is reduced in length and size.

• The current luxury tax, the $1-for-$1 penalty a team must pay to the league for the amount it exceeds the salary cap, is to be severely increased.

And also the fact that, according to reports, David Stern is planning to threaten players with the cancellation of season if the sides haven’t made major progress toward a deal by the end of the weekend…

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7031637/nba-lockout-david-stern-threaten-cancelation-season-sources-say

[BothTeamsPlayedHardParticipant]

I want a deal that can make both sides an equal mix of miserable and content. Right now, they are moving by inches towards that point. They are still feeling each other out and trying things out. I can’t imagine the players will accept the offer, nor should they, but there is movement and proposals from both sides.  The fact that Stern is not taking the full scale hard line stance makes me believe that they’ll get something done. A lot of things can get done quickly once the split gets set. If they keep inching towards the middle, it will eventually get done. If Deron Williams gets hurt in Turkey this weekend and Prokhorov puts out a hit on Dan Gilbert and the hard liners, we will have a deal by Monday. 

I think setting the MLE at a fixed number (1/12 or 1/13 the cap) makes sense. I never fully understood the point of the "average player" number. What Kobe makes should have no impact on what James Posey gets. The Bird alterations would hit OKC hard when Harden, Ibaka, and Maynor hit free agency. The luxury tax will matter less given the changes in exceptions, and its not like it will impede the Lakers, Heat, Mavs, Knicks, or Bulls. Geez, the Knicks and Bulls were ATMs already and both have raised ticket prices significantly for this coming year. As long as their fans pay contender prices, they’ll have the money for the tax.

[IndianaBasketballParticipant]

And apparently the owners want to roll back player salaries, despite the fact they’d be under the old CBA agreement.

I feel like the players are getting punked in this argument. This isn’t even a fair fight… It’s a bloody struggle. Billy Hunter/Derek Fisher are getting their asses whooped.

The players are facing:

– 57 to 46-48 drop of the BRI split

– A hard cap OR a salary cap that has certain exceptions significantly reduced/altered

– A tougher luxury tax, which will make even the big time owners think twice about going over the luxury tax line

– Their salaries being rolled back for the next handfull of seasons

And the players are put in a position where they’re either going to make a deal OR start losing money (that they’ll never ever get back) once Novemeber comes and the checks aren’t direct deposited.

[HitsterParticipant]

Teams with rookies coming off deals could do one player a year early to help negate this issue a bit. I’ve always wanted a structured luxury tax system where the more you go over, the hgher the penalties become. The players have offered 54-46 for a while so if the owners are looking for 50:50 or better then they are only a few points away from each other. 53-47 offer from the players maybe 51:49 from the owners would perhaps then pave the way for a 52:48 handshake deal.

This way the owners can clam they have got 5% worth however many million dollars off the players and the players can clam they still keep a majority of the revenue so both sides could claim victory. As the clock to the season ticks down and more games get cancelled then I could see both sides looking to get a deal done.

MLE could be cut, maybe the league does not pay so much of veteran’s minimum pay scales to help reduce ther costs.

 

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