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For more on the Pacers, visit SBNation's Indy Cornrows
News of the end of the 2011 NBA lockout started very early this morning and has been rolling like a tidal wave since. Get your updates on the status of the final negotiations between the players and owners here.
For now, be content to know that multiple reports say the NBA players and owners have reached a 'handshake' deal to end the dreaded 2011 lockout. The agreement is tentative, and still requires the ratification of 15 of the 29 NBA owners and a simple majority of the players (430).
Indiana Pacers forward Danny Granger used Twitter to provide fans with additional information on the players' vote.
The NBA owners and players began meeting on Friday at noon and didn't stop until reaching an agreement 15 hours later at 3:00AM Saturday morning. Yes, the NBA parties have agreed to a tentative deal that will end the NBA lockout and launch a free agency and training camp frenzy so the season can begin on Christmas Day.
As Adrian Wojnarowski reports, the deal must be finalized and approved by both parties, but commissioner David Stern expects that to happen.
"We're optimistic that the [agreement] will hold and we'll have ourselves an NBA season," NBA commissioner David Stern said at a brief news conference held in New York with Players Association executive director Billy Hunter and president Derek Fisher(notes).
Free agency and training camps will start on Dec. 9, Stern said. Under the current agreement, the regular season would have a 66-game schedule that begins on Christmas Day with three games: Boston Celtics at the New York Knicks; Miami Heat at the Dallas Mavericks; and Chicago Bulls at the Los Angeles Lakers.
The Indiana Pacers will be as busy as any team with the short lead time before their season starts, presumably on December 26th. The Pacers have five roster spots to fill and expect to be heavily involved in the free agent market with over $30 million in cap space.
The NBA lockout has been in a few spots that were seemingly going to be lowpoint of the negotiations, but Tuesday may have marked a new low in the fight between the players and owners. The NBA canceled a few more games followed by the players announcing two separate lawsuits against their former employers.
The cancellation of games isn't the biggest of deals, in reality, because the plan all along was that the season would start one month after the two sides were able to come to an agreement. By cancelling games through Dec. 15, the league actually left open the possibility of a 72-game season -- if a miracle were to happen, anyway.
The players filing of their lawsuit was also a formality, really, following Monday's decision to decertify the union. The player's attorney has said they would rather not go to trial, but the allegations included in the lawsuit seem quite serious.
The plaintiffs argue that the lockout "constitutes an illegal group boycott, price-fixing agreement, and/or restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Act" and that the owners' final offer for a new CBA would have "wiped out the competitive market for most NBA players."
If the allegations are bad enough that the owners are forced back to the negotiating table, that might not be such a bad thing for the players. If it goes to court, however, odds are the lockout won't be ending anytime soon.
The little bits of hope in the NBA Lockout saga have been misleading, few and far-between. After the NBA Players Association declined the first "final" offer from the league and David Stern, they were once again given a final offer considered the league's "best," given the circumstances. On Monday, all 30 player team representatives met to discuss the deal and their options, and now the news is that the intention is to decertify as a union and file an anti-trust lawsuit against the league, rejecting the proposed deal and furthering the NBA lockout.
"We're prepared to file this anti-trust action against the NBA. We think that's the best situation for the players to achieve and get their due process," NBPA head Billy Hunter said, via NBATV. Hunter added that the players have negotiated for "over two years" and that "they've given enough." The new trade association, as it will now become, will be filing suit against the NBA in the next couple days.
Before the meeting, this new proposal from the NBA had been stressed as the last deal of its kind, with Stern saying that any forthcoming deal would include decreased percentages (from 50% to 47% in regards to the split) and even more limited bargaining flexibility. NBAPA President Derek Fisher as adamant that the decision was unanimous and made for every single player in the league, and every single player who would come into the league.
"A lot of individual players have a lot of things at stake in their careers and where they stand, so we feel its important to all our players ... that we not only try to get a deal done for today, but also for the body of players who will come into this league for this decade and beyond," Fisher said.
The possibility that the entire 2011-2012 NBA season could be canceled is now a very real one.
After rejecting David Stern's latest offer, the NBA owners and players met again on Wednesday to see if they could work out their differences. While Wednesday came and went without a deal in place, most signs indicate progress toward a deal was achieved:
"We can get there in the next day or two," one high-ranking league official briefed on the talks said. "But it’s still a volatile process, and egos can still get in the way. …But there’s a lot of reason to be hopeful."
According to Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski, movement was made on three system issues in particular.
David Stern's ultimatum deadline was Wednesday night, but that passed and Stern said the clock was stopped while the two sides continued to negotiate matters today. While Stern hasn't presented the owners with any final draft of a deal, Stern reportedly had a briefing call set with the NBA owners' labor relations committee for Thursday night and it is believed that the momentum is swinging toward a deal getting done.
NBA players rejected David Stern's latest offer, a day in advance of the Nov. 9 artificial ultimatum that the Commissioner's set as a point after which offers would only get worse.
"The players are clearly of the mind that it's an unacceptable proposal," union executive director Billy Hunter said. "But because of their commitment to the game and their desire to play, they're saying to us that we want you to go back, see if you can go back, get a better deal."
Pacers players, whose rambunctiously competitive first-round playoff series with the Chicago Bulls last season makes them one of the most intriguing watches early on in a hypothetical NBA season, are not ready to give in either. Mike Wells of the Indy Star tweeted that most Pacers players agreed with the decision to reject the offer:
Dahntay Jones, who was in NYC with Granger 2day, said the majority of Pacers agreed with the union that the NBA's offer was unacceptable.
Players' association president Derek Fisher does not see a way of getting a deal done between now and end of business Wednesday, and hopes to meet with Stern. And once again, in the NBA lockout, news is bad news, no news is bad news, and we could really use some altogether new news.
The Indiana Pacers players have been doing excellent work around the community during the NBA lockout, but it's probably safe to say that almost everyone would rather have them playing basketball that matters. The players will likely have a decision to make on that front in the next couple of days, too.
NBA commissioner David Stern went on SportsCenter to talk about that Monday and, as Bullets Forever's Mike Prada transcribed, he is getting a little bullish about the players' options if they don't agree to the current deal on the table.
On the deadline: "We think there's a great offer on table, and we told the players, 'It's getting late.' The only rational thing is to make that deal because given what is going on in our business and our industry, it will get worse from there. We told the players ... an offer of 47% will become operative w/ hard cap in effect [if they don't accept]."
The players might vote on the current deal, as it stands, prior to Stern taking it off the table. That isn't promised, however, and decertification seems a more likely option.
Indiana Pacers fans wondering what their team's roster will look like this season and how George Hill will fit into the equation will have to wait thanks to the NBA labor negotiations on Saturday evening that failed to produce a deal to end the lockout.
The NBA owners and players met for over eight hours on Saturday, with federal mediator George Cohen trying to help, before David Stern was credited with ending the session in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Stern brought discussions to a close with an ultimatum for the players to agree to the tweaked deal the owners put on the table Saturday or see that deal pulled for a far less favorable deal for the players along with the threat of closing shop for the season.
Here are more details according to Yahoo! Sports:
If the players don't agree by Wednesday to accept the proposal - which Stern described as including a revenue split that could give the players as much as 51 percent and as little as 49 percent - then the owners' new offer would drop to 47 percent of basketball-related income for the players and include a "flex" salary cap.
"We want to allow the union enough time to consider our most recent proposal, and we are hopeful that they will accept," Stern said, after acknowledging Kessler had already rejected the offer.
So the two sides physically moved closer to a deal with the owners proposing giving the players a 51% cut, although designating 1% of that for retired player pensions. But emotionally the sides remain miles apart, which was apparent in a post-meeting outburst from players' lawyer, Jeffrey Kessler.
"The players will not be intimidated," attorney Jeffrey Kessler said early Sunday after eight hours of negotiations stretched late into the night. "They want to play, they want a season, but they are not going to sacrifice the future of all NBA players under these types of threats of intimidation. It's not happening on Derek Fisher's watch; it's not happening on Billy Hunter's watch; it's not happening on the watch of this executive committee."
The two sides will meet again on Wednesday and we'll find out if the owners offer was truly a take-it-or-leave-it proposition since it appears the union will not be taking it. Meanwhile, player decertification remains in play on the union side against the counter of canceling the season on the owners side.
Yep, Saturday was not a good day for the NBA.
Don't hold your breath, though -- this could very well be the 2011-2012 season's boiling point [via ESPN]:
The NBA ownership group's labor committee will reopen talks with the players' side Saturday afternoon, sources told ESPN The Magazine's Chris Broussard, a meeting one general manager, who has spoken with a few owners, described as "headed straight for disaster."
The talks will follow a meeting between the NBA's 30 owners Saturday morning in which they will discuss revenue sharing and the state of negotiations, sources told Broussard.
But optimism is not running high.
Optimism is not running high for a number of reasons, but decertification of the players' union, which is very much in play at this point, could be the cherry on top to there not being a season according to labor law experts. The tactic certainly won't get the owners to budge from their stubborn stance:
Owners are determined to reshape the league by creating a system like the NFL or NHL, where spending is capped and small-market teams truly can compete with the big boys. But reforming the NHL's financial structure required a lengthy lockout, wiping out the entire 2004-05 season. And the NFL is making money, not losing it.
The players have offered to reduce their share of revenue from 57 percent to 52.5 percent, a concession they feel is more than enough to cover their end of the league's stated $300 million in annual losses. Owners have offered a 50-50 split, along with significant changes to the system that include a more punitive luxury tax on teams that exceed the salary cap, shorter contracts and a lower mid-level exception.
Like I said, don't get your hopes up about Saturday's talks. The NBA has given us nothing to be hopeful about after dashing them last weekend.
The NBA lockout was supposed to be on track to a new labor agreement with seemingly only basketball related income set to be negotiated on for a new deal to be put into place. Nothing went right on Friday, however, and Commissioner David Stern cancelled two more weeks of the NBA season.
The fact that Stern cancelled more games isn’t exactly a surprise, but it certainly doesn’t help that this happened after being so optimistic at Thursday night’s press conference.
The Indiana Pacers are one of the teams that aren’t exactly being strangled by the lockout as they have a solid core of veteran players. That doesn’t mean it’ll be any easier for Vogel’s group once the 2011-12 regular season begins, however (if it even begins).
There really isn’t any sort of guess as to when the lockout will end, but chances are it won’t happen this weekend as players union president Derek Fisher boarded a flight back to Los Angeles following Friday’s failed negotiations.
After a tumultuous conclusion to the three-day mediated talks between the owners and players last week, the two sides reconvened yesterday, determined to work out a deal and save the 2011-2012 NBA season that has already lost four weeks of regular season games.
Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski was all over the news, tweeting that "significant progress" was made yesterday on system issues, but after 7.5 hours of negotiations today, there are still "a couple sticking points" to hash out.
David Stern was back in the mix after falling ill last week, joking about how his absence led to "all hell breaking loose" last week. When Stern was asked after Thursday's negotiations if he knew what a new deal would look like, Stern responded, "Yes," but added that it's not a guarantee a deal will get done and agreed that it would be a failure if one was not reached within the next few days.
Stern reassured that it won't be for a lack of trying, though. Both sides are expected to discuss everything on Friday -- including the BRI that broke down the talks last week and was not been revisited yesterday or today -- and are willing to go as long as it takes until a deal is reached.
Keep your fingers crossed, NBA fans.
After labor talks between the owners and players broke down late last week it was likely that more games would be canceled during the 2011-12 season. That will be confirmed tomorrow as the league is expected to announce the cancellation of all games through November 28:
According to the Daily News' source, this latest cancellation would total at least 102 games and run through Nov. 28.
The source told the Daily News that the NBA will announce the latest cancellation of games on Tuesday.
There are no new rounds of negotiations scheduled. Already all games through November 14th have been canceled, but now the first four weeks of the season will be gone. With all games now canceled through November 28th it will affect the following schedule games for the Indiana Pacers:
Nov. 15 vs. Orlando
Nov. 16 at Atlanta
Nov. 18 vs. Portland
Nov. 20 at Detroit
Nov. 22 vs. Detroit
Nov. 23 at Cleveland
Nov. 25 vs. Chicago
Nov. 27 at Phoenix
Over 30 hours of negotiations with a Federal mediator starting on Tuesday have failed, and it is likely that the 2011-12 NBA season is headed toward another round of cancellations. That means more empty dates at Conseco Fieldhouse in downtown Indianapolis and more nights without the Indiana Pacers.
Both sides failed to reach an agreement, as the owners presented a 50-50 revenue split with the players, but the players refused to go lower than 52.5%. That is already a departure from the last labor agreement, in which the players received 57% of the revenue:
Union executive director Billy Hunter said players essentially were given an ultimatum — take the 50-50, or there was no reason to further discuss the system.
“We’ve made concession after concession after concession, and it’s just not enough,” Hunter said. "No way, we fought too long, we made too many sacrifices to get where we are.
Commissioner Stern missed today’s negotiations with the flu, and has gone on record as saying that there will be no games before Christmas if this latest round of negotiations failed.
The NBA Player's Union and Commissioner David Stern have yet to reach an agreement, but there is hope that the Indiana Pacers will soon be playing in Conseco Fieldhouse after both sides had a marathon 16-hour session with a mediator yesterday. both sides met until 2am this morning, and they are already in a second session of mediation today. Stern has gone on record as saying that games through Christmas are in jeopardy if a resolution cannot be reached in this session.
"WoW, 16 hours… I PROMISE we are trying!!!" New Orleans Hornets' star Chris Paul(notes) said via Twitter shortly after the meeting ended.
Mediator George Cohen asked both sides to stay mum on the details of any progress made during the meetings.
Already two weeks of the regular season as well as all preseason games have been lost. Each side is asking for 53% of the revenue in a multi-billion dollar package. It would be a concession from the players, who received over 57% of revenue in the last collective bargaining session.
Today marks the 111th day of the lockout.
Tuesday is a critical day when it comes to the NBA Lockout, as both sides began meeting with a mediator in the hopes of resolving their differences and saving the 2011-12 season. Already the first two weeks worth of games, starting on November 1st, have been cancelled as a result of the lockout. There have been dire warnings that if this session with a mediator does not work it could cancel all games through Christmas as the sides remain far apart:
"If there's a breakthrough, it's going to come on Tuesday," he told NBA TV. "And if not, I think that the season is really going to potentially escape from us because we aren't making any progress."
For the hometown Pacers, this lockout comes at a time when the franchise is struggling financially and at the box office, but the team is coming off of a promising season in which it broke a long playoff drought. The Pacers have been mentioned as a potential candidate for contraction, but that is a radical measure that David Stern has been adamant about avoiding.
When he was in high school, Lebron James was an all-state receiver in the state of Ohio before quitting football to concentrate on basketball. With his size and athleticism he would be an almost unstoppable threat in the red zone as a tight end or receiver. He's 6'8, 250 pounds of pure athleticism.
So today, when he created a stir on Twitter about possibly going to the NFL with the NBA locked out, there was at least a precedent behind it:
"When is the deadline for a team to sign a free agent?" James asked ESPN's John Clayton on Tuesday in a tweet.
James, one of the NBA's major stars, suited up with the football team at his high school last week. Fuzzy math has produced an equation that James might be interested in part-time employment with the NFL since NBA collective bargaining is stalemated.
Taking snaps as a wideout with Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary is one thing. Playing in the pros seems a stretcht
But James opened a can of worms with his post-practice post on Twitter.
"Just got done practicing with the St.V Varsity football team, full pads and all," he wrote. "Felt great being back on the field. Should I?"
As reported here at SBNation: Indiana earlier tonight, there is no deal to end the NBA Lockout and there will not be a full 82-game regular season. Commissioner David Stern has now officially announced that at least the first two weeks of the season have now been cancelled in addition to all preseason games. This comes as both sides in the labor battle met extensively on Monday in one last ditch attempt to start the season on time.
Locally, this affects the Pacers, who have been rumored even as a possible contraction team due to the amount of money the franchise has lost in recent seasons:
The Pacers have officially lost money in 26 of the last 28 years.
That also includes ten of the last 11 seasons inside Conseco Fieldhouse. The Pacers are currently losing more than $6 million annually.
There is also a clause in lease of the Conseco Fieldhouse that states if the team is experiencing financial losses after it’s eighth season, the franchise can renegotiate the 20-year lease after 10 years.
With the season now not beginning until at least November 15th the following games for the Pacers have been lost:
November 2 at Detroit
November 4 at Oklahoma City
November 5 vs. Boston
November 8 vs. Houston
November 9 at Milwaukee
November 11 vs. Phoenix
November 12 at New York
The day all NBA fans have been dreading is finally here, as the players and owners, despite extensive meeting over the weekend and today, have failed to reach an agreement that will start the season on time on November 1st. The news does not come as a surprise to many, as the sides remained far apart on Sunday night according to Indy Cornrows:
So the luxury tax structure was apparently the sticking point last night (yawn) while the BRI % split also remains a big issue. The players are publicly demanding their share go no lower than 53% and Derek Fisher was trying to organize a Twitter campaign for today with players tweeting : LET US PLAY #StandUnited. I’m on a layover in Denver but at last check none of the Indiana Pacers players have complied, although those on the West Coast may not be up and tweeting as of yet.
David Stern continues to maintain he will cancel the first two weeks of the regular season if a deal isn’t struck today. Hopefully they’ll at least be close by the end of the day and keep the Commish from chopping games.
Earlier in the weekend the sides were even further apart:
The NBA owners and players may appear close, within two or three percentage points, of a deal but fittingly they are literally about as far away as possible from getting together to hammer out a deal and end the NBA lockout.
Late last week there were reports of informal talks between the league and NBPA heading toward a more formal meeting today or tomorrow to prevent cancelling regular season games. Those reports were soured by further reports of the league not wanting to meet unless the players would consider the 50-50 proposal for BRI split.
So now after several big names played in a charity event in Miami on Saturday, the players are reportedly meeting in Los Angeles on Monday, about as far away from the league in New York as you can get in the 48 contiguous states. I will say that all of the negative reports seem to surface from the players side with the owners remaining quiet over the past couple of days.
One of the major sticking points is the possibility of a 50-50 revenue split. Under the previous agreement players received 57% of revenue, but Commissioner Stern has stated his desire for a harder salary cap and a 50-50 split with many of his teams losing money.
ESPN’s Jeff MacGregor has a scathing critique of both sides based on today’s deadline:
This mutual suicide pact among NBA owners, for example. They had another meeting Sunday night to suss out the details. Slow poison, or a quick bullet to the brain? We’ll hear more about it Monday afternoon once NBA commissioner, executioner and grief counselor David Stern starts canceling regular season games. At least that’s what we’ve been told. Or threatened. It’s just the latest phony deadline in the absurd story of a nonsense lockout.
We’re on the brink! The whole apparatus is at risk! Save us!
Idiots.
Sorry. I had a whole polite thing worked up. Lots of statistics. Reasonable. All points of view represented. But this is just deeply, impossibly stupid. In fact, the more I think about it, the angrier I get, and the more I realize that any owner who can’t break even on professional sports in this country is a moron. Or a liar. Honestly. If you can’t manage a pro team at a modest profit in the United States of America in the early years of the 21st century, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote or operate a motor vehicle. You shouldn’t be allowed near the stove.
At a time when the production and consumption of distraction are the only healthy sectors of the American economy, and when city, county, state and federal tax dollars pay for the arenas and the stadiums, to lose money on the operation of a pro sports franchise has to be grounds for involuntary psychiatric commitment. Or prosecution.
And if any of this sounds familiar, consider where we’ve heard it before.
The NBA, too big to fail!
The NBA Lockout is now on the verge of some serious casualties as the league announced this evening that the remainder of the preseason has been canceled. The league is set to open the regular season on November 1st, but even if a deal is reached today (unlikely) there are still multiple steps that need to be taken if games are to be played, including free agency. Therefore, it is now highly likely that regular season games will soon be cut:
The NBA canceled the remainder of the preseason Tuesday and will wipe out the first two weeks of the regular season if there is no labor agreement by Monday.
Commissioner David Stern and deputy commissioner Adam Silver made the announcement after owners and players met for about four hours but came no closer to a deal.
“We were not able to make the progress that we hoped we could make and we were not able to continue the negotiations,” Stern said.
No further meetings are scheduled, making it even more likely the league will lose regular-season games to a work stoppage for only the second time.
Tuesday's full bargaining session in New York failed to provide a resolution to the NBA Lockout, and it now appears to be a near certainty that the 2011-12 season will not start on time, if at all. Both sides have been meeting since Fridays, but player's representative Derek Fisher is reporting that there was no way to bridge the gap between the players and the owners:
"We engaged in more intense discussions today to see if we can close what remains a very large gap," Fisher said Tuesday evening.
"Today was not the day to get this done. We were not able to get close enough to close the gap."
"There has been no discussion about next meetings," added union executive director Billy Hunter. "Maybe a month. Two months. Your guess is as good as mine."
The players, who received 57 percent of basketball-related income in the last year of the expired agreement, said they made a new proposal of 53 percent of BRI on Tuesday.
According to the players, the owners countered with 47 percent, a slight increase from the 46 percent they had previously offered.
When the league offered 47 percent, "that pretty much ended (the meeting)," Hunter said.
The Pacers are scheduled to have their home opener on November 5th against the Boston Celtics, but that is very likely not going to happen now. Indy Cornrows has their own take on the lockout:
At games and parties I attended this weekend, I heard from several casual NBA fans who would enjoy going to Pacers games but who also don't care about the labor issues. At all. It is considered a "bummer" because they'd like to see the team play, but oh, well. Forget moving quickly from anger to apathy, there was no anger in the first place.
As for the players,it is a tough time as they wait and wade through the fluctuating reports on the negotiations. While going back to school for the weekend at Fresno State, Paul George expressed his frustration.
2011-2012 NBA Schedule: Season Will Start On Christmas Day
Now that the NBA lockout is over and a tentative agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement has been reached, the Indiana Pacers will be back on the hardwood playing regular season NBA games within a month. A 66-game regular season will start on Christmas Day and will run until April 26, 2012. The playoffs, where the Pacers were last seen pushing the top-seeded Chicago Bulls, are scheduled to begin on April 28, 2012.
Each team will play 48 in-conference games and 18 non-conference games. The full breakdown of these games is as follows, via NBA.com:
The heavier dose of in-conference games should treat the Pacers well, considering the Central Division was the worst in the NBA last season outside of Chicago and the Eastern Conference is generally considered to be weaker than the Western Conference. And the mostly young Pacers should be suited reasonably well to handle the busier NBA schedule.
The official, full team schedules have not been released, but the Pacers were originally scheduled to host the Detroit Pistons on Dec. 26 and it is possible that they will still do so.
Nov 28 10:45p by Alex Boeder