Players, however, aren’t prepared to make that happen just yet.
If they choose to reject the league’s latest ultimatum, they will get a far harsher offer, one that could put the entire cheap jerseys NBA season in jeopardy.
The answer should come early next week — and Stern made it clear: Yes or no, no more negotiating.
“I would not presume to project or predict what the union would do,” the NBA commissioner said. “I can hope, and my hope is that the events of next week will lead us to a 72-game schedule starting on Dec. 15.”
The league presented the players’ association with the new offer Thursday after nearly 11 hours of bargaining, hoping it would be enough to end the lockout. Stern had previously said the original wholesale jerseys proposal needed to be accepted by the close of business Wednesday to avoid the less favorable proposal, but had “stopped the clock” while the sides were bargaining.
The clock starts again once the union has had time to meet and plot its strategy.
Union president Derek Fisher said the revised proposal doesn’t address all the necessary system issues that players are seeking before they would agree to the economic concessions owners are demanding.
“It does not meet us entirely on the system issues that we felt were extremely important to try and close this thing out, and so at this point we’ve decided to end things for now, take a step back,” Fisher said. “We’ll go back as an executive committee, as a board, confer with our player reps and additional players over the next few days. Then we’ll make decisions about what our next steps will be at that point.”
And that could include disbanding the union, too.
Union executive director Billy Hunter said the hope was to get the player reps to New York for a meeting by Monday or Tuesday, then discuss whether the new proposal was good enough to present to the full membership for a vote.
Stern made it clear that whatever they say, they shouldn’t bother to ask to meet again about this proposal.
“There comes a time when you have to be through negotiating, and we are,” Stern said.
He added if there’s another bargaining meeting, it would be off the proposal in waiting: a 53-47 split of revenues in the owners’ favor, a flex cap with a hard ceiling and salary rollbacks.
That leaves the union to decide if it can persuade its members to accept the revised offer. The league has been willing to offer a 50-50 split of basketball-related income, and Stern said the proposal put in play Thursday night attempted to meet the union on its system issues.
Hunter provided only one specific change, allowing the “mini” midlevel exception for teams over the luxury tax to be for three years at $3 million a year, as opposed to two years at $2.5 annually. The league has been trying to curb spending by the big-market teams to create more competitive balance, but players want a system like the current one that leaves them with the most free agent options.
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