Union: NBA tears up proposal after heated meeting

Every time he read an inflammatory comment about how the league was
going to crush the union in collective bargaining talks, Billy
Hunter e-mailed it to every NBA player.
Some of basketball's biggest names definitely received the
message.
Fortified by the presence of All-Stars such as LeBron James,
Kevin Garnett and Carmelo Anthony, the players' association on
Friday let the league know that its proposal for a new deal was
unacceptable, seemingly putting a stop for now on negotiations
toward a new agreement.
"The players came in there and said, 'We hope you don't want
to go that way. We don't want to fight, but if we're not given any
other choice, we're not going to run from a fight,"' Hunter said
after a press conference.
The union's executive director said the league tore up its
proposal after a "contentious" 90-minute session. But he stressed
that doesn't mean the league is closer to its first lockout since
1999 when the current deal expires on July 1, 2011.
"No, I think that everybody has a different sense of things
and nobody wants to see this thing that David Stern has worked and
built, the NBA, the successful entity that it is, the brand, we're
not out to damage it or destroy it," Hunter said.
"So we're going to make every effort to get an agreement
done, we just want an agreement that's a lot more equitable and one
that doesn't have a structure that's oppressive."
The sides began informal talks last summer and things were
going well, so Hunter said the players were caught off guard by the
strength of the league's proposal they received on Jan. 29. And he
was annoyed by some comments he read from sources on the other
side, which he made sure his players saw.
Garnett and fellow Boston teammate Paul Pierce were among the
players who then called Hunter and said the players needed to show
they were united during All-Star weekend.
"We should be involved," Anthony said before the meeting.
"It's not only going to affect the players with the lesser
contracts, it's going to affect us, too.
"When you walk into one of those meetings, one of those CBA
meetings, and you see myself, you see the LeBrons and the Kobes and
the Kevin Garnetts, it's a stronger presence. So I think we should
go in and make our presence felt."
The union will submit its own proposal, but offered no
timetable for when that would happen. Though Hunter said the league
wants a deal before James and a star-studded group of players
become free agents on July 1, he's in no rush, since the players
believe the current system is working for both sides, and it
doesn't expire for another 16 months.
"It's going to be incumbent on the owners to try to convince
us of the urgency of getting a deal between now and July 1," Hunter
said. "And the way they started, they made a false start and so
what they did was they kind of set things back a bit. So we kind of
righted the ship."
The league's proposal calls for dramatic financial changes,
with Hunter saying the league seeks a "hard" salary cap which would
eliminate the Bird and midlevel exceptions that teams over the cap
can use to sign players if they are willing to pay a luxury tax.
Los Angeles Lakers guard Derek Fisher, the union president,
said the players made clear there was "not any way that we were
going to be able to use (the proposal) as a starting point for
future collective bargaining negotiations."
"I think what we made clear today is that where they are is
not relevant to where we are. We're not going to begin where they
say begin," Fisher said. "I think that was the purpose of going in
today, to make sure they understood that their proposal was not the
beginning of the conversation."
Deputy commissioner Adam Silver, who heads the league's
negotiating team, said in a statement that, "While we do not agree
with the players association's characterization of today's meeting
or the status of the NBA's bargaining proposal, David will address
the subject of collective bargaining during his media availability
prior to All-Star Saturday night."
A person who had seen the proposal told The Associated Press
on Thursday that it called for first-round picks to have their
salaries cut by about one-third, would reduce the minimum salary by
as much as 20 percent, and would guarantee contracts for only half
their value. Also, the total value of a maximum salary would drop
sharply, as would the total years players could sign for.
The proposal rallied the players, especially after Hunter
forwarded them comments from an executive who recently told
CBSSports.com that, "if they don't like the new max contracts,
LeBron can play football, where he will make less than the new max.
Wade can be a fashion model or whatever. They won't make squat and
no one will remember who they are in a few years."
"I think that maybe they underestimated the response, the
blowback that they were going to get to the proposal," said Hunter,
who added it would affect "every player at every level in the NBA"
and included "everything that (management) could ever think of."
The players' share of basketball-related income would also be
slashed from the current 57 percent to well below half. Hunter
countered that instead of players giving up so much, the NBA needed
to expand its revenue sharing so larger market teams could help the
smaller market ones.
"Our position was it was a nonstarter," Hunter said of the
proposal, which he added also seeks "retroactive modification,"
meaning contracts signed under the current deal would then have to
conform to the rules of the new one.
