The NBA thread

[Mandark]

Seriously, fuck the players. The owners offered a proposal that would have raised the average player's salary 5-7 million and STILL no deal. What the fuck.

Zuh?


Cohen:  From the Wikipedia page, I'm guessing.  The most recent year is a bit down because 2010 had a Game 7.  The funny/sad thing about that list is you can find all the Spurs appearances without having the years displayed (PROTIP: every time ratings drop 2+ points from the previous year, Greg Popovich is involved).  Anyway, it's like I said: a crater after Jordan, mild spikes with the Lakers, a low in 2007 and a recovery.  The non-Finals playoff ratings bear that out too, but really I think hardly anyone could pay attention the last couple years and think the NBA is suffering from a major decline in public interest, rather than from financial problems that affect certain teams.

[Cormacaroni]

...unless they were watching from Sacramento

spoiler (click to show/hide)

or possibly Detroit

[close]

[etiolate]

Seriously, fuck the players. The owners offered a proposal that would have raised the average player's salary 5-7 million and STILL no deal. What the fuck.

There's probably a bunch of he said/she said going on.

Here's the deal: If the NBA was being marketed and sold as professional basketball you wouldn't have those rating highs and lows. Stern's superstar model relies on a highly marketable star that continually wins. It just doesn't work as well without Jordan. I point out "professional basketball" because the NBA has the most talent of any high level basketball league, but its not the only one anymore. It's fucking up its talent advantage by pushing the jersey name ahead of the quality of the sport. The Jordan era worked because the media was prone to be a part of the star glorification. Scandal is much more a part of sports media now. You can't keep stars ridicule free now.

That's just the marketing problem. There's problems beyond that, like the way players can play the market and force smaller market teams to overpay for their talent and then those teams can get stuck with bad contracts. The players turn around and say "don't blame me for getting the most I can." I do blame them for the problems it creates. The problem is the player getting the most he can by forcing some markets to pay more for him than other markets creates a competitive and financial problem that devalues the league. So not only is he getting overpaid at the value he signs, but by continuing this practice, he hikes up what some markets must pay while pissing off the consumer and thus lowering the interest in the league, thus lowering his actual value over time. Of course, the owners can not just pay these guys and end up with small payrolls and a bunch of losses. This isn't good either.

To go back to how things were with a different player/owner split would just lead to this mess happening again.

[Himu]

Seriously, fuck the players. The owners offered a proposal that would have raised the average player's salary 5-7 million and STILL no deal. What the fuck.

Zuh?

Hmmm, I read it wrong. Source:

KBergCBS Ken Berger
Stern says owners' proposal would've raised average player salary from $5-$7m/year.

KBergCBS Ken Berger
Stern to fans: "I say that we tried awfully hard. We made, in our view, concession after concession."

[Mandark]

There's problems beyond that, like the way players can play the market and force smaller market teams to overpay for their talent and then those teams can get stuck with bad contracts. The players turn around and say "don't blame me for getting the most I can." I do blame them for the problems it creates. The problem is the player getting the most he can by forcing some markets to pay more for him than other markets creates a competitive and financial problem that devalues the league. So not only is he getting overpaid at the value he signs, but by continuing this practice, he hikes up what some markets must pay while pissing off the consumer and thus lowering the interest in the league, thus lowering his actual value over time. Of course, the owners can not just pay these guys and end up with small payrolls and a bunch of losses. This isn't good either.

I just don't understand your argument here.

[Phoenix Dark]

Meh, the NBA isn't a good product imo. There's some interesting play in the playoffs (sometimes) but that's about it. I'm not a fan of the superstar dominated play, or rules that punish defense (although to be fair, the NFL is way worse in that regard, with tonight's MNF being a major example).

NCAA
Conference tournaments
March Madness

[Stoney Mason]

I love the NBA. Don't really care about any of that other stuff. Despise college basketball. Comma inducing from where I sit. I also don't argue with etiolate about NBA stuff anymore. Nice dude but he clearly hates everything about the modern nba. In that sense I'm not sure why he bothers watching but whateve.


I also don't really have a dog in the fight versus owners and players although I generally side with unions. It was pretty clear the owners were much more united this go around and this would be a much longer and nastier lockout/strike than some of the previous ones. Personally just hoping they have a 50 game season which seems like the most realistic case at this point although it wouldn't shock me if the entire season was wiped.

Also tickled a bit at the oweners. They claimed that competitive balance was their #1 issue but it seems like the real issue was always the money split. I haven't heard dick about the hard cap recently.

[Stoney Mason]

Pointing two fingers
Henry Abbott
ESPN.com

The best efforts of Billy Hunter and David Stern have not been enough.
Anything you hear about "the owners" being one way or "the players" being another is likely wrong. Both groups are all over the damned place.

Some bloody-minded owners want to get every last penny out of players now and forevermore. Some strident players would shutter the league for the long haul rather than give up a percentage or two.

But the people on the two committees -- and more importantly the key negotiators for both groups -- know the issues, define success as a completed deal, and wanted this done before now.

And they failed.

Why aren't these groups more unified? You could blame all kinds of people, but let's point the fingers at the people whose job it is to keep these groups together.

Blame David Stern

Credibility
The entire negotiation has been about the owners wanting two things: (1) more money and (2) significant new controls over the players’ portion of the money.

Making things better for players has not been on the owners' agenda at any point, because the league has long been saying that it is now, and long has been, losing money.

And it may well be so.

But as the league's list of loss-induced demands has grown distressingly long, a reasonable question has become: Just how bad is this financial pain, anyway? Under Stern, the league has not been careful about protecting the league's credibility. (Just a sampling.) They have smeared enemies as they have seen fit, even as it has meant stretching the truth.

Stern brags now and again about "knowing where the bodies are buried."

It appears to be entirely impossible, now, for this administration to convince players that this time there really is a wolf.

Incompetence
If the league has losses, whose fault is that?

The NBA agreed to give players 57 percent of basketball-related income starting in 1999. Since then, no one disputes revenues have more than doubled to last season's all-time high.

Late Monday night a union official laughed at Stern's talk of the state of the economy, noting "the NBA's economy doesn't stink."

Even after players are paid, the NBA now brings owners a billion or so dollars more, every year, than it once did.

If the league is financially strong, then this entire negotiation has been a sham at the expense of the players.

If the league is financially weak right now, however, is it even possible that it has been well-managed? What the hell happened to all that money?

Along these lines, back in February 2010, Stern said one reason the league needed help from the players in a new CBA was because it cost so much to open offices overseas, for instance in China and India. This makes no sense, though. The investments in those markets will either pay off long-term or not. If they will make their own financial sense, they're good investments that need not be helped along by players. If they won't pay off in the long-term ... why did Stern's office make those investments at all?

Stern's reputation as a labor negotiator has been nicked up a bit, too. As an ownership source describes it, Stern miscalculated by making the league's best offer of 50 percent of basketball-related income prematurely. Once the players rejected that, the conversation changed such that the players were at 53 and the league was now at 50, making the natural meeting point north of 51.

But sources say 50 is as high as the owners were willing to go, and Stern should have saved that final offer for the moment when players would have accepted it. The point of these years of talks is to know when it's deal time.

Meanwhile, Stern has been backpedaling in his public comments. Last week he was blustering that he could have talked his owners into 50. This week Stern said the players knocked on the door of the owners' closed-door meeting to reject the 50 split before he could complete the process of convincing his owners. The point of massaging this message was to pretend that the premature 50 offer never really happened, meaning the two sides are stuck at 47 and 53 -- numbers where the natural meeting point of 50 is in line with what Stern can actually offer.

Not all-powerful anymore
There are some downsides to life under a dictator. But the upside is that it's easy to get things done. Things don't get stuck in committee, you know?

But here's where the NBA has changed. Decades ago Stern managed a band of owners who could scarcely lose. They bought teams cheaply, spent moderately on players and could turn a profit any time they decided to sell. The whole industry benefited from decades of profit-inspiring innovations. Stern was always the smart guy who cared the most, and had a lot of leeway to do what he wanted.

Now, however, the league is no longer an ATM for owners, and Stern is managing aggressive investors and dealmakers who demand major input over their expensive enterprises. Owners paid fortunes for their teams and have been paying big bills through the recession. They're also some of the most savvy business people in the world. That's why the owners started with an incredibly hard line. By the time Stern made the league's only halfway decent half-offer, of 50 percent of BRI, he was already beyond the comfort zone of many of his owners.

Even if Stern believed going to 51 or 52 percent of BRI would enable the system changes his owners want, it's not clear he could have brought his owners along with him.

Blame Billy Hunter

Leading from behind
The key public moment of these talks remains last Tuesday's press conference where Stern announced how aghast he was that his side's best offer had been rebuffed.

Why was he so surprised?

Because Stern had been listening to Hunter and his negotiating committee (the Mo Evanses and Roger Masons) through years of talks, and they had signaled openness to that kind of deal.

But suddenly all those people were sidelined. Lo and behold the dominant voices belonged to macho men like Kevin Garnett, Arn Tellem, Steve Nash, Ray Allen, Dwyane Wade, Dan Fegan, Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce and others who had either dropped in on a session or two or, in the case of the agents, weren't even in the negotiating room.

The player storyline had been that they simply wanted to play. Now they just want to play ... for 53 percent of old BRI and a very soft cap.

That may be a fair position, but it did not come from Hunter. Until last week. Where Stern was at least willing to whip his owners into line enough to make a move to the edge of their comfort zones, Hunter appeared to be determined to move only as far as his most vocal constituents.

There will have to come a time when the union sells players hard on compromise. But it has not come yet, and the evidence is mounting that when it does come it will have to come from president Derek Fisher, and not Hunter, who has yet to show much tough love in his own camp.

Threatlessness
There are good arguments against decertification. NFL players came out of the process with the kinds of paycuts NBA players have already been offered. And no one disputes doing so costs a fortune in legal fees, mires the process in the courts while doing almost nothing constructive to build consensus between players and owners, which is the only way this can end.

However, there's no denying that decertification would be beyond a hassle for the owners. They'd have to gear up for one of the most costly legal battles in sports history, with the threat of triple damages if they were to ultimately lose an antitrust case. This is one way a fight could cost owners way more than players.

Hunter failed, however, to ever make a meaningful threat of decertification. He almost never brings it up, and when asked about it the best he can muster are comments along the lines of "it's something we might have to think about."

This matters in no small part because if Hunter had kept his meanest threat around, those powerful agents would have been unlikely to have turned their flamethrowers on the collective bargaining process. By refusing to play that brand of hardball, Hunter inspired a whisper campaign by those who point out that Hunter is one of the only people in these talks who won't miss a penny of salary no matter happens -- so long as the union that employs him does not disband.

The numbers
The lockout comes down to whether or not you believe the owners are fat cats. The NBA says 22 teams lost a combined $450 million last season.

Hunter says it wasn't that bad.

How bad was it? Hunter, disappointingly, can't really say.

What do the union's forensic accountants report? What about the tax returns and certified financial statements the league proudly made available for the first time in history? What are the off-book profit streams the owners have in place? How much is it that the owners really make, even when you roll in all the other benefits of ownership?

Specific theories about all of that have come from just about everywhere but the union, which as far as I can tell has not been particularly aggressive in trying to pin down the NBA's real-world bottom line. It's not clear they even have forensic accountants.

This is a small stylistic detail with huge practical implications.

The stylistic part is much like sports' "Moneyball" debate. Are you or are you not going to employ and trust aggressive Ivy Leaguers with spreadsheets and a knack for sniffing out value?

Hunter is not that kind of guy, just like a lot of NBA GMs don't trust advanced stats. Even though it's 2011, and even though these methods are commonplace in most industries, many people just can't bring themselves to believe that numbers can express the kinds of things numbers claim to express these days. Fair enough. Not everybody is into the geeky thing.

However, it's a big, real problem now as far as saving the season goes. Because the truth is that Hunter and the players are bargaining on the assumption that the losses, if real at all, are small, and that the owners will cave to reignite a promising enterprise.

Which might be right, or might be wrong.

The IRS knows precisely how much money I make every year, which makes it easy for them to decide a fair amount for me to pay them. Their knowledge makes the process of figuring out what's fair pretty simple.

But imagine if they had no idea how much I made. You know what'd happen? We'd fight. Every year. Even if I told the gospel truth they'd be suspicious. And they might, once in a while, get it in their heads to just treat me like a liar just to keep me honest.

I'm a little worried that might be what's driving this lockout right now. Without a real answer to the question of whether or not the teams need more help from players, Hunter can't say for certain what kind of a deal is fair. Instead, he has to make owners, essentially, give 'til it hurts. That could be painful for owners ... and players and fans, too.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/32415/pointing-two-fingers

[MyNameIsMethodis]

NBA 2k12 is amazing. I love the NBA Greats mode and the presentation

[Mr. Gundam]

Playing as 94 Rockets in NBA 2k12 is my favorite thing ever.

Can you play as the Sonics in it? I'd buy it if so.

[benjipwns]

Yeah, 1995-96 Sonics.

[Mr. Gundam]

Yeah, 1995-96 Sonics.

Even better!

[Phoenix Dark]

[youtube=560,345]f0sSI271MvA[/youtube]

[Mandark]

I like the idea of historical teams, but I think the traditionally shitty franchises should get Hypothetical Teams you can play as.  You could play as the late 80's Clippers if they had pulled off that 2-picks-for-MJ trade, or the team that we all hoped the '95 Bullets would become.

[youtube=560,345]xBI3gTydodQ[/youtube]

[etiolate]

You could always just play the Webber era Kings team instead.

[Phoenix Dark]

You could always just play the Webber era Kings team instead.

Sweet, I could play Dick Bavetta and make sure they don't win anything

[Cormacaroni]

You could always just play the Webber era Kings team instead.

Sweet, I play the Dick Bavetta and can make sure they don't win anything

[Stoney Mason]

The moment the talks fell apart
October, 15, 2011

By Henry Abbott
ESPN.com



October 4: The day talks to save the NBA season went haywire.

David Stern, Billy Hunter, Derek Fisher, Adam Silver, Spurs owner Peter Holt, union lawyers Ron Klempner and Jeffrey Kessler ... with various others dropping in from time to time, that crew of seven had met more than 40 times and for untold hours over the last two years. None of them had had good summers.

But all those hours in rented conference rooms, all those dishes of hotel mints, rows of water glasses and catered lunches had not been a total waste of time. They had led to some things. The league had dropped its insistence on a hard cap, for instance. The players had offered to hand over something close to a billion dollars in future earnings.

And more importantly, by last Tuesday, there was a deal in the air.

Both sides were still keeping their best offers secret ... but those in the room say they were getting a sense where things were headed. You can tell a hell of a lot about where things are headed, Stern says, "if you listen."

"We thought we could live," union head Hunter said later on WFAN, "with the deal we were close to making."

On Oct. 4, the NBA's negotiators entered a midtown Manhattan hotel with more than a little glimmer of hope.

There would still be issues to deal with, like the luxury tax, cap exceptions and the length of contracts. But even the hardest-bitten journalists in the hallway allowed that it could, finally, be deal day.

The league's negotiators had four things going for them:
A memory of Kessler suggesting, about a month earlier, in another hotel, at another meeting, that the players might go for something like a 50/50 split of basketball revenues.
Out of a meeting with owners in Dallas, little consensus about what Stern could offer the players, but nevertheless an agreement among owners to empower the league's labor committee to negotiate with players "on all points."
The league's labor committee, more than a third of the league's owners, including those from the Lakers, Knicks, Celtics and Spurs, assembled in New York ready to deal.
The scheduled November start of the regular season around the corner.

What happened next will one day be studied by students of labor, business, race relations and more.

Nobody disputes that Stern and Silver talked to Fisher and Kessler in the hallway, bringing up what they thought would be music to Kessler's ears. His offer, of splitting basketball-related income down the middle ... maybe it was time to see if the two sides could sell that to their respective groups.

Stern was confident he could talk enough owners into it, and as for the players ... Kessler was their pit bull. And this was his idea!

Having floated their big idea, the offer so sweet it just might get them in trouble with their owners, the league officials were excited to know they at least had a victory in the bag. They'd have a long night of dealing with systems issues ahead of them, but maybe, just maybe, this long summer of meetings could be wrapped up. Maybe the season would be intact.

Denied

As Stern has recounted a dozen times since, not long after what was supposed to have been the hallway conversation that saved the season, something odd and wholly unexpected happened. There was a knock on the door where Stern was selling his owners on the idea. The players wanted to talk.

When they convened, instead of the union's head, Hunter, or their negotiating committee of Maurice Evans, Matt Bonner, Roger Mason, Theo Ratliff, Etan Thomas and Chris Paul, representing the players were Fisher, Kessler, and three superstars who had been to very few of the meetings at all: Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Kobe Bryant.

A bad sign: Pierce was still wearing his backpack.

The players had two pieces of news that shocked the league: 50/50 was not good enough. And there was nothing further to discuss.

"We had a large group of owners," remembers Silver, "who had flown in and were prepared to negotiate around the clock."

More importantly, they had made an aggressively good offer, the NBA's leaders thought, the one that might get them in trouble with their owners but surely not with the players.

And players who hadn't even been in the talks, and who seemed not to be on the same page with the crew that had endured more than 40 meetings, had been the ones to reject the best offer the league was likely to have, and to end the best day of negotiations prematurely.

What in the hell was going on? How had they so misread the situation? And where was Hunter? Who spoke for the union? Should the league have been negotiating with Garnett all along?

Later the league would suggest that the talks had fallen apart because the union happened to have some particularly strident players show up that day.

Maybe it's as simple as that. Or maybe it's much more complicated.

Patently false

Here's one explanation of why the players rejected that 50/50 offer: Perhaps they never made it.

Union vice president and Spurs forward Matt Bonner says "Kessler definitely didn't offer 50/50. There's no way."

Bonner points out that it had been a "huge ordeal" to convince players to agree to take only 53 percent, after a dozen years of earning 57. "That was a huge point of contention. Talking to all these veterans and All-Stars, they were upset we went down to 53. We had to sell them on that. I'm pretty certain Kessler didn't have the authority to offer 50, and nobody in the room would have agreed to that."

Another union official allows Kessler may have said something in the weeks prior that could have been misunderstood as offering 50, but "it's patently false," he says, that Kessler made anything like a proposal. "There's a lot of discussion back and forth that takes place, particularly in the small group meetings. It's a complete mischaracterization to say that whatever happened constituted any kind of formal proposal at that point."

In either case, nothing here can be considered remotely good news for basketball fans. The moment when it seemed like negotiators may have been all together at the same number was the most optimistic of the entire process. That it may have always been a misunderstanding, or more importantly that owners seem to genuinely have no interest in going higher than 50, and players genuinely no interest in going below 53, makes this look bad -- before even touching the thorny issues of the luxury tax, raises and cap exceptions.

Stern said Friday that he's not sure whether he can even get his owners to go for 50 anymore. Meanwhile, I asked Bonner if he thought the owners would to higher than 50, and he said "I hope so, for the sake of the season."

Now it's no longer a story of what Hunter and Stern may be able to hash out in a hotel. Now it's about big groups of owners and players, all across the globe, who are not close to seeing eye-to-eye, but do have final say.

"System changes"

There's another thing that could be happening, too.

Remember The Decision? That night in July 2010, something happened that angered basketball fans like nothing else. It can be framed as LeBron James being egotistical, or cowardly, or whatever else. But it can also be framed as a young black man just being sick of doing what old white guys tell him to do.

There was a playbook for free agency, a procedure, some decorum. And James tossed it. No, after earning Dan Gilbert the sun, the moon and the stars, he does not also owe him a phone call. No, he doesn't have to let some other, whiter, older entity control the production of his announcement. No, he doesn't have to stick to the storyline of local hero, or even player. He really does have the power to play GM, to assemble a super team, and that's what he would do.

The message to a lot of fans was that James just got it all wrong. But the message to a lot of players was that James did what 1,000 players have been dreaming of doing for years -- he acted fully empowered -- and it's hard to say he failed at it. He made his millions, and the Finals. His team is intact. His business life is sound. He'll be contending for championships for years.

It's a business revolution with young black men, basketball players, in the corner offices. A new way of doing things, long overdue, and happening now.

And maybe that's what Stern encountered in that hotel room in New York: a new generation of fully empowered players who no longer believe they have to conform to much of anything.

Just three days earlier, with James in attendance, James' teammate Dwyane Wade had yelled at David Stern. "You're not pointing your finger at me," Wade said, sources told ESPN The Magazine's Ric Bucher. "I'm not your child."

On Friday, a role player for a middling team got a surprise phone call, from just about the biggest name in the sport -- somebody who had never called him before. The message: Hold firm at 53. We're not caving. Hang in there. It wasn't the only call of its kind, and when you talk to players now there is religious fervor, around the number 53, and around not giving owners any freebies on the other issues.

Owners are indignant that they have endured dreadful losses that must be righted. Players, meanwhile, are indignant that compared to the old CBA every concession to date has come from them. The issues are sounding more religious than ever, and it's doubtful that, at the moment, anyway, either Hunter or Stern is capable of rallying his followers to build a bridge to the other side.

And if it's driven by players' blossoming and deep-rooted self-determination, then they can't be expected to budge. I just hope, for the NBA's sake, that they chose the correct line to draw in the sand.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/32504/the-moment-the-talks-fell-apart

[Joe Molotov]

something something modern day slavery

[Stoney Mason]

[youtube=560,345][/youtube]

[Cormacaroni]

[Stoney Mason]

[youtube=560,345][/youtube]

[Stoney Mason]

Apparently there is progress being made.

NEW YORK -- After meeting for roughly seven hours, NBA players and owners wrapped up Thursday's labor talks around 9:30 p.m. ET.

The sides are scheduled to resume talks Friday morning.

Small groups from both sides returned to a hotel Thursday less than 12 hours after finishing a 15-hour meeting that went past 3 a.m. ET. Both sides acknowledged there was progress on issues related to the salary cap system, though they didn't offer any specifics.

Commissioner David Stern said before Thursday's meeting that he expected to continue discussing the system. And union executive director Billy Hunter said they might be in a better position to quantify the progress on specific issues following those talks.

Though the first two weeks of the season have been canceled because of the lockout, Hunter said he believed 82 games were still possible with a deal by Sunday or Monday.

"We're not putting a specific date on it," Stern said . "We just think we've got to do it soon, and if we could make a deal obviously we're partnered with the union in an effort to have as many games as we can."

A full season might be difficult even with a deal this week. It takes roughly 30 days from agreement to games being played, so it's uncertain if there's still time for any basketball in November even before examining arena availability. But 82 games would be a boost for the players, meaning they wouldn't miss the paycheck that seemed lost when the first two weeks were scrapped.

"We haven't been promised or guaranteed that if we get a deal done by a certain date, that we'll get a full 82-game schedule," union president Derek Fisher said. "But I think to Billy's point, the likelihood or at least the chance of that happening, although it may be slim, is still possible if a deal is reached within the next four or five days."

It was widely expected Stern would announce further cancellations this week after talks broke down a week ago. Instead, the sides were in communication the next day, staffs met Monday, and they were back at the bargaining table Wednesday, acting on Hunter's recommendation to "park" the revenue split and focus first on the system issues.

"I think that everybody realizes that the first two weeks of the season had been canceled, and I think the NBA was approaching the point whereby it would feel compelled to make another announcement with regard to when they were going to cancel additional games," Hunter said, "and if there was any hope of trying to recapture the lost games and be able to complete a full season of 82 games, then there had to be a way to get back and talk."

Both sides were cautious not to get too excited about Wednesday's talks. The revenue split emerged last week as the bigger obstacle to a new collective bargaining agreement, and they will have to revisit the issue soon.

Players were guaranteed 57 percent of basketball revenues under the last CBA and have proposed a reduction to about 52.5. Owners have repeatedly said they won't go beyond a 50-50 split, which would leave the sides about $100 million apart annually based on last season's revenues.

And there's no indication owners will relax their demand.

"They know where we stand," deputy commissioner Adam Silver said.

The players might be more open to a 50-50 split if they get to keep some of the system issues they desire. Fisher said after Wednesday's talks there were some "key principal items in our system that have to remain there" for them to consider a further reduction of income.

Stern said owners had a pretty good idea of what those items were. Whether they were doable could determine if they would keep talking into the weekend.

"We've been trying very hard to reach for them," Stern said. "We are united on the NBA side in wanting a system that makes all teams competitive. We have some strong views on what the best way to do that is, and we're trying to unify those views. The owners themselves are all of a mind that we have some overarching goals, and it's our job to give a voice to those and to see whether we can make the best possible arrangement for them."

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7157736/nba-lockout-sides-wrap-talks-night-meet-again-friday

[Cormacaroni]

Man I am gonna be

    

if they get a deal done by Friday and preserve the 82 game season. I miss it SO BAD.

[Smooth Groove]

Cormac, check out ballislife if you haven't already.  I've been using it to relieve my basketball jones ever since the season ended.  There're lots of interesting footage, including a young Iverson dominating in a pickup game straight out of jail. 

[pilonv1]

Man I am gonna be

    

if they get a deal done by Friday and preserve the 82 game season. I miss it SO BAD.

Me too. Feels so weird to not have basketball at this time of year, I feel so empty

[Cormacaroni]

We've already been denied all the offseason trades etc. It's gonna be the wildest few weeks of trades/signings ever once they announce the start dates.

Anyone remember the last lockout (Knicks/Spurs asterisky finals)? I wasn't following the league back then. Did they allow a moratorium on the trade deadline or something?

[benjipwns]

They moved it to sometime in late March or something. It was pretty much in the same "position" as the normal one in terms of where it was located in the season.

EDIT: It was March 11th, season started February 5th.

[Stoney Mason]

Three reasons for the new mood
October, 27, 2011

By Henry Abbott
ESPN.com

Derek Fisher declared, "It gets tougher towards the end."

Adam Silver said "we remain apart on both" systems and economic issues. "So from that standpoint," he added, "we're disappointed."

But who will remember one more dose of gloom when, for the first time in a long time, it came with some sunshine.

David Stern and Billy Hunter started cracking smiles Thursday night.

Stern invaded Hunter's news conference and literally yukked it up from the back row.

Hunter spied him there and called him out with a grin. Their back-and-forth included each proclaiming to the other, "Tomorrow!"

It's the first time either side has been this jolly and the first time either side has declared a day as the day. Friday is the day, and no one's afraid to say it.

"There are no guarantees that we'll get it done," Stern said, "but we're going to give it one heck of a shot tomorrow. I think that Billy and the union's negotiators feel the same way." He later added, in a notable softening of earlier public tones: "We're prepared to negotiate over everything. We're looking forward to it."

We're looking forward to it? That does not sound one bit like war. What is the source of all this?

One part of the story is that federal mediator George Cohen was effective. While he was not able to inspire final consensus last week, he did force meaningful progress on several of the trickier issues.

Also, having blown through chances to prevent the lockout, the cancellation of the preseason and missing the first weeks of the regular season, both sides appear to be genuinely motivated to meet the next deadline, coming any day now, which is the latest possible day to make a deal while preserving the chance of an 82-game season.

A third contributing factor, according to multiple sources, has been the absence this week of one of the union's most feared negotiators, lawyer Jeffrey Kessler.

Owners make no bones of the fact that Kessler, the first name in American sports law, is a bear in the bargaining room.

Some point out that the NFL players got a deal only after Kessler left the room. (Kessler might point out that the NFL players didn't get the best deal.)

Much was made of Portland owner Paul Allen's appearance in last week's mediated session. The suggestion was that he was there to send a message that owners were holding a hard line.

NBA sources, however, say it was nothing of the sort. In fact, they say, he was there at the invitation of the NBA's negotiators to watch Kessler. Allen was one of several owners who thought Stern and Silver had made players an overly generous offer of 50 percent of basketball-related income. The league's lead negotiators essentially replied: Go see for yourself. You think you can get Kessler to go for 47 percent? Good luck to you.

In the ongoing dance between Hunter and NBA agents -- many of whom feel Hunter is soft, risk-averse or ineffective -- Kessler has been seen as something of a shield for Hunter. If a tough lawyer such as that will go for Hunter's deal, who are the agents to complain?

But that shield has been out of action and not, sources insist, because he is in the doghouse.

Kessler is a partner at Dewey & LeBoeuf, where he handles many kinds of complex litigation beyond sports and chairs the global litigation department. That work has taken him to Russia for a few days, a period that happens to coincide with Stern and Hunter remembering how to laugh.

The joke making the rounds is that politically connected Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov ought to have Kessler detained there.

What's not a joke, however, is that Kessler has been absent just two days, and for better or for worse, as far as the players are concerned, already there's anticipation of the announcement NBA fans have been craving for four months.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/32927/three-reasons-for-the-new-mood

[Stoney Mason]

 

With talks between the NBA's locked-out players and owners breaking off Friday without a deal, commissioner David Stern has announced the cancellation of games through Nov. 30th and that the NBA will not play a full season "under any circumstances."

"It's not practical, possible or prudent to have a full season now," Stern said.

Stern made the announcement after a third consecutive day of meetings ended without a deal in sight. While the two sides made progress on system issues during talks on Friday, progress screeched to a halt when the topic turned to revenues, he said.

Reiterating the league's offer to go as high as a 50-percent split of basketball-related income with the players, Stern said union executive director Billy Hunter "said that he was not willing to go a penny below 52 (percent)."

"He closed up his book and walked out of the room. And that's where we are," Stern said.

No further talks have been scheduled.

The players will not accept a 50-50 split, Hunter and union president Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers said.

"Derek and I made it clear that we could not sell the 50-50 deal to our membership. Not with all the concessions that we've granted," Hunter said. "We've got to have some dollars."

"We feel like we've made concessions," Fisher added. "Right now it's not enough."

After two days of making some progress on salary-cap issues, the two sides turned their attention back to the revenue split Friday, the 120th day of the lockout. Talks broke down last week over that issue, and they had not attempted to deal with it since.

The players last formally proposed getting 52.5 percent, leaving them about $100 million apart annually. Players were guaranteed 57 percent in the previous collective bargaining agreement.

Hunter said the league initially moved its target down to 47 percent during Friday's six-hour session, then returned to its previous proposal of 50 percent of revenues.

"We're not quite sure if they're at 50 or if they're really at 47," Fisher said.

But Stern challenged that characterization, saying the league's offer was 50 percent.

Either way, the league's financial losses will mount as games are lost.

"We've lost 200 million dollars, we're going to lose several hundred (million) more," Stern said. "We're going to have to recalculate how bad the damage is. ... The next offer will reflect the extraordinary losses that are piling up now."

Discussions about the salary cap system also proved problematic, Hunter said.

"We've told them that we don't want a hard cap. We don't want a hard cap any kind of way, either an obvious hard cap or a hard cap that may not be as obvious to most people but we know it works like a hard cap," Hunter said. "And so you get there, and then all of a sudden they say, 'Well, we also have to have our number.' And you say, 'Well wait a minute, you're not negotiating in good faith."

Though they will miss a paycheck on Nov. 15, Hunter said each player would have received a minimum of $100,000 from the escrow money that was returned to them to make up the difference after salaries fell short of the guaranteed 57 percent of revenues last season.

The sides met for 7½ hours Thursday following a 15-hour marathon the previous day.

"We're not sure when we're going to meet again, but we're hopeful that soon enough we can get back at this and try and close this out," Fisher added. "Today wasn't the day."

Some David Aldridge Tweets

Tweets


daldridgetnt David Aldridge
Stern: these are not punitive announcements, they are calendar announcements...
32 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

daldridgetnt David Aldridge
Stern: both sides are very badly damaged. The $ lost to the owners is extraordinary, and the $ lost to players is also extraordinary
33 minutes ago

daldridgetnt David Aldridge
Stern: you can assume our (next) offer will change to reflect the changed economics from missing games.
36 minutes ago

daldridgetnt David Aldridge
Stern says league has moved to five year contracts for Bird FAs, four on non-Birds.
38 minutes ago

daldridgetnt David Aldridge
Stern; we think at 50-50, we'd be in a profit situation.
41 minutes ago

daldridgetnt David Aldridge
Games officially cancelled thru Nov 30. Stern: "...there will not be a full NBA season under any circumstances."
42 minutes ago

daldridgetnt David Aldridge
Stern says owners were willing to go to 50, and that Hunter sId he couldn't below 52, and left the room.
43 minutes ago

daldridgetnt David Aldridge
Stern: we've had, until this afternoon, some good days..
45 minutes ago

daldridgetnt David Aldridge
Union looking for lux tax payees to be able to still use exceptions to sign FAs.
1 hour ago

daldridgetnt David Aldridge
Source confirms cancellation of games thru 11/30, as reported by ESPN, Yahoo!
1 hour ago
»

daldridgetnt David Aldridge
To summarize: sides still can't make last 2.5 pts (league 50, union 52.5). Almost there on tax. Exceptions 4 lux tax payers major issue.
1 hour ago

[MyNameIsMethodis]

just go to a football/soccer schedule of one game a week. I don't see why that's so bad. It adds excitement to the league and doesn't stress the players.

[Beezy]

So fucking annoyed. I feel like I've been lied to.

[Stoney Mason]

So fucking annoyed. I feel like I've been lied to.

[youtube=560,345][/youtube]

[pilonv1]

Hunter is the problem here. He fucked up not taking the deal a month ago and he can't accept a worse deal now or look like a moron.

[OptimoPeach]

Oh well. I hope they whole season is canceled and everyone involved eats shit

[Cormacaroni]

Hunter is the problem here. He fucked up not taking the deal a month ago and he can't accept a worse deal now or look like a moron.

I think there is a lot of blame to go around, but let's face it, most of it belongs with the incredibly bad GMs who made the shitty contracts that got everyone into this situation of not being able to make money in a golden age of talent. I have complete confidence that no matter what the terms of the new CBA, GMs will still trip over themselves to hand out deals that anyone ITT could spot as throat-slittingly dumb.

My two-point solution for owners:
1) STOP HIRING EX-PLAYERS 'CAUSE THEY'RE 'COOL'.
2) HIRE SOME SHARKS WITH SOME ANALYTIC SKILLS AND TAKE A FUCKING BACKSEAT

For Hunter and Stern, stop thinking about how to split up the pie you already have in a manner that makes more people happy. This is fundamentally IMPOSSIBLE (as giving pie to one side means taking it from the other) and should not be the goal.

INSTEAD, YOU NEED TO MAKE MORE PIE. Focus on how to grow the league sensibly into China and Europe, how to poach more talent (both players, coaches and managerial) from those areas. Focus on how to get more people watching from home via the net, cable, whatever - regular folks only pay attention to grudge matches that prefigure playoff battles, the All Star Game, and playoffs. Make more of those by making the top teams play more against each other, cut down on meaningless regular season games and make the playoffs crazier. Use the lighter schedule to allow travel time for games overseas, which have league-seeding consequences. Create new championships to compete for like in soccer! Make every game mean something, and have every outcome in play. Then we'll be back to the golden days of everyone rolling so deep that no-one will need to bitch.

[benjipwns]

I love how I went to bed with the news that "Stern was smiling" and we were about to have a deal. Then later on Friday I remembered there was supposed to be a deal (so used to not even bothering looking at NBA websites) and checked the news and it was all "ALL OF NOVEMBER CANCELLED, IS DEREK FISHER INCOMPETENT?"

[Stoney Mason]

The me it looks like the owners want the players to bend over and get fucked. And the players have to decide whether getting fucked in this situation is worth it. Dropping down from 57% revenue to 50% and not getting anything much in return for it is indeed getting fucked imo.

[Mandark]

Does anyone know the enforcement mechanism for the BRI split?  Is the percentage of money the players get used in a formula to set the salary cap/luxury tax threshold?  Are there bonus payments made if the total salaries in a season are less than the players' share?  I just realized I have no idea what a 50/50 split would actually mean.

[benjipwns]

Under the current system a % of player salaries are held in escrow (8-10%), if at the end of the season the share is below the % of BRI the players get it back, if not it's given to the teams. With teams under the luxury tax getting a full share.

If that escrow doesn't cover the split, it's deducted from player salaries the next season.

EDIT: I think I misread your question, if the players share is still lower than the % they're guaranteed even after the escrow is returned then the league will give all players an extra payment to make it meet the share. I don't remember if this is based on salary or if they just all get a check for the same amount.

The salary cap and luxury tax are set by percentages of BRI. 51% and 61% I believe.

Currently the players are guaranteed 57% of BRI.

[Mandark]

Thank you

[benjipwns]

It's also worth noting that BRI has all these exceptions like running the arena and stuff. So if the Mavs earned $2 billion winning the title this year, theoretically $1.9 billion of that could have been exempt and thus only $100 million goes into BRI. It's not really a huge amount like that, but is still enough that the union has complained about it from time to time.

If you think this is bad, wait for when the TV deal is up for renewal in a few years. I am, of course, assuming that they won't be agreeing to something that goes beyond that date.

[Stoney Mason]

I think symbolism is a big part of the revenue split between owners and players. Which is not to boil it down to something so stupid when I know a lot of smart people and lawyers are involved and what it means in real dollar terms. The players do not want an even split after not having an even split in the prior contract. And the owners are absolutely fixated on an even split because it means the players don't run the show symbolically. It's also about saving face for each side now that the numbers are public. When a deal is done we'll know which side "won" based on that split and neither side is willing to give in. It will take some creative thinking to solve this problem.

[Stoney Mason]

In New Book, Shaq Explains How Kobe’s Sexual Assault Charges Destroyed The Lakers
Shaq Uncut: My Story, the Diesel's new autobiography written with noted Around the Horn personage Jackie MacMullan, comes out November 15 and it dropped on our desk today. There's some juicy stuff in there, most obviously about the beef between Shaq and Kobe. We had always known that the feud took a turn for the worse during the 2003-04 season, but we never before knew what caused it. Now we have some insight.
Here's Shaq, on the Kobe feud:

So I'm on edge because I don't have a new deal, and Kobe is on edge because he might be going to jail, so we're taking it out on each other. Just before the start of the '03-'04 season the coaching staff called us in and said, "No more public sparring or you'll get fined." ... Phil was tired of it. Karl Malone and Gary Payton were sick of it. ... So what happens? Immediately after that Kobe runs right out to Jim Gray and does this interview where he lets me have it. He said I was fat and out of shape. He said I was milking my toe injury for more time off, and the injury wasn't even that serious. (Yeah, right. It only ended my damn career.) He said I was "lobbying for a contract extension when we have two Hall of Famers playing pretty much for free." I'm sitting there watching this interview and I'm gonna explode. Hours earlier we had just promised our coach we'd stop. It was a truce broken. I let the guys know, "I'm going to kill him."

Kobe stands up and goes face-to-face with me and says, "You always said you're my big brother, you'd do anything for me, and then this Colorado thing happens and you never even called me." I did call him. ... So here we are now, and we find out he really was hurt that we didn't stand behind him. That was something new. I didn't think he gave a rat's ass about us either way. "Well, I thought you'd publicly support me, at least," Kobe said. "You're supposed to be my friend."

Brian Shaw chimed in with "Kobe, why would you think that? Shaq had all these parties and you never showed up for any of them. We invited you to dinner on the road and you didn't come. Shaq invited you to his wedding and you weren't there. Then you got married and didn't invite any of us. And now you are in the middle of this problem, this sensitive situation, and now you want all of us to step up for you. We don't even know you." ...
Everyone was starting to calm down when I told Kobe, "If you ever say anything like what you said to Jim Gray ever again, I will kill you."

Kobe shrugged and said, "Whatever."
[...]
From that day on, I was done dealing with Kobe. I was done dealing with Jim Gray, too. What goes around, comes around. When he got fired, he actually had the nerve to call me and ask me to help him out. What, did you lose Kobe's number?

On Young Kobe, braggart and tattletale:

He was so young and so immature in some ways, but I can tell you this: everything Kobe is doing now, he told me all the way back then he was going to do it. We were sitting on the bus once and he told me, "I'm going to be the number one scorer for the Lakers, I'm going to win five or six championships, and I'm going to be the best player in the game." I was like, "Okay, whatever." Then he looked me right in the eye and said, "I'm going to be the Will Smith of the NBA."

My first Lakers season we had a couple of rookies, and we hazed them pretty badly. We were dogging them out constantly. It was "Go get my bags, go get me something to eat." It was kind of a rite of passage in the NBA that a lot of teams do, but we probably went a little too far with it. One of the rookies—Derek Fisher—just took it. The other rookie—Kobe Bryant—ratted us out to Jerry West.

On Pat Riley:

My ticket out of Miami was punched in mid-February 2008. There was a lot of tension between Pat and the players. So we're about to start practice and Jason Williams comes in about ten seconds late. Pat being Pat, he starts swearing at him and screaming, "Get the hell out of here!"...

I tell Pat we're a team and we need to stick together, not throw guys out of the gym. Pat is screaming at me and says if I don't like it, then I should get the hell out of practice, too.

That's when I said, "Why don't you make me?"

I start taking a couple of steps towards Pat. Udonis Haslem steps in and I shove him out of the way. Then Zo tries to grab me. I threw him aside like he was a rag doll. Now it's me and Riley face-to-face, jaw to jaw. I'm poking him in the chest and he keeps slapping my finger away and it's getting nasty. Noisy, too. He's yelling "Fuck you!" and I'm yelling back, "No, fuck you!"

Zo is trying to calm us both down and he has this kind of singsong panic in his voice. He keeps saying, "Big fella, no big fella, big fella!" I finally turn around and tell him, "Don't worry, I'm not going to hit the man. Do you think I'm crazy?"

On Halle Berry:

I remember being in the dorm room one night and we were watching the movie Jungle Fever with Halle Berry in it, and I thought she was so stunning, so I wrote her a letter. I was just kind of kidding around, telling her I was a big fan and I'd love to meet her sometime. The guys totally goofed on me for doing it, but I didn't care. A few weeks later, no lie, Halle Berry wrote me back. She sent me a signed picture that I still have hanging in my office. Turns out she's a basketball fan. She wrote, "I'm a big fan of yours, too. I can't wait until you get to the NBA."

On retired life:

"They've already got some things cooking in Hollywood for me. Adam Sandler called me in June 2011 and said, "I want you to be in some of my movies."

I've stayed fairly low-key about what I own. For instance, out of the fifteen twenty-four-hour fitness places I own, only three have my name on it. None of the Five Guys I own have my name on it. None of the clubs I own in Vegas, either.

http://deadspin.com/shaq-vs-kobe/

[benjipwns]

"Will Smith of the NBA" is my new favorite quote. I plan on overusing it for a long time.

[pilonv1]

But there already was one

[Cormacaroni]

ARE WE THERE YET

[Phoenix Dark]

Brian Shaw chimed in with "Kobe, why would you think that? Shaq had all these parties and you never showed up for any of them. We invited you to dinner on the road and you didn't come. Shaq invited you to his wedding and you weren't there. Then you got married and didn't invite any of us. And now you are in the middle of this problem, this sensitive situation, and now you want all of us to step up for you. We don't even know you."

lol @ Kobe stans denying shit in the GAF thread. Shaq obviously has reason to make shit up, but this sounds 100% like Kobe.

[benjipwns]

Fantastic news!

WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski
Veteran player who has long been on side of decertification just texted me: "Time to blow this (bleep) to the moon."

[Stoney Mason]

Stern: Deal on table until Wednesday

Associated Press
NEW YORK -- NBA commissioner David Stern says the league is prepared to offer a deal that could give players up to 51 percent of basketball revenue.

If the players don't take the deal by the close of business Wednesday, the league will drop the revenue split to 47 percent, plus add a flex cap -- a deal the players would certainly reject thereby risking the season.

"We hope that this juxtaposition will cause the union to assess its position and accept the deal," Stern said. "I think it's fair to say that speaking on behalf of the union, Mr. Kessler rejected the mediators' recommendations and our proposal. But hope springs eternal, and we would love to see the union accept the proposal that is now on the table."

Stern denied that the offer is an ultimatum.

"We want to allow enough time for the union to consider our most recent proposal, and we are hopeful that they accept it," he said.

NBA owners and players met for more than eight hours late into the night Saturday in hopes of ending the lockout before it could do further damage to an already-shortened schedule.

After "frank and open dialogue" at an owners meeting earlier Saturday, Stern said he believes owners would support this deal.

He would not speculate as to the odds on whether players will take the deal.

"I'm not going to make percentage guesses or anything like that. We want our players to play. We'd like to have a season," Stern said. "These are the terms upon which we're prepared to gear up and get in as many games as possible."

Federal mediator George Cohen faced a difficult task in trying to help the sides close the financial gap that derailed talks again last week.

Going into the meeting, owners were determined not to give players anything more than a 50-50 split of basketball-related income. Players, who were guaranteed 57 percent under the old collective bargaining agreement, had proposed a reduction to 52.5 percent, leaving the sides about $100 million apart annually based on last season's revenues.

If the players don't take the deal by the close of business Wednesday, the league will drop the revenue split to 47 percent, plus add a flex cap.

"We hope that this juxtaposition will cause the union to assess its position and accept the deal," Stern said. "I think it's fair to say that speaking on behalf of the union, Mr. Kessler rejected the mediators' recommendations and our proposal. But hope springs eternal, and we would love to see the union accept the proposal that is now on the table."

Stern denied that the offer is an ultimatum.

"We want to allow enough time for the union to consider our most recent proposal, and we are hopeful that they accept it," he said.

NBA owners and players met for more than eight hours late into the night Saturday in hopes of ending the lockout before it could do further damage to an already-shortened schedule.

After "frank and open dialogue" at an owners meeting earlier Saturday, Stern said he believes owners would support this deal.

He would not speculate as to the odds on whether players will take the deal.

"I'm not going to make percentage guesses or anything like that. We want our players to play. We'd like to have a season," Stern said. "These are the terms upon which we're prepared to gear up and get in as many games as possible."

Federal mediator George Cohen faced a difficult task in trying to help the sides close the financial gap that derailed talks again last week.

Going into the meeting, owners were determined not to give players anything more than a 50-50 split of basketball-related income. Players, who were guaranteed 57 percent under the old collective bargaining agreement, had proposed a reduction to 52.5 percent, leaving the sides about $100 million apart annually based on last season's revenues.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7195620/nba-owners-players-end-talks-deal-table-wednesday

[etiolate]

There is something sinister about Stern saying "hope springs eternal".

[benjipwns]

Kessler: "The players will not be intimidated. It's not happening on Derek Fisher's watch, not happening on Billy Hunter's watch."

On Saturday, as labor talks between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association were winding down, at least three NBA players took to Twitter to express their frustration with Jordan.

"I'm not wearing Jordans no more," Washington Wizards guard Nick Young said. "Can't believe what I just seen and heard from MJ. Elvis Done Left The Building."

"Damn MJ," Indiana Pacers guard Paul George wondered aloud. "That's how you feel?"

Later, Golden State Warriors rookie wing Klay Thompson replied to George: "You think the 1996 MJ would pull this? Straight hypocrite bro."

George agreed: "Man straight hypocrite bro.. He should've been the 1st one behind us smh."

I'm sure this means good things ahead.

To my tweet NBA wouldn't blow up season on Nov. 9, source briefed on owners' meeting Saturday texts: "The hardliners have control and will."

[pilonv1]

Season is fucked because Hunter/Fisher can't have it look like they're accepting a shittier deal than they had 2 months ago.

[benjipwns]

Good article on decertification: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/michael_mccann/11/03/nba.labor.decertify/

[Stoney Mason]

It's funny to see all these NBA kids feel as if Jordan is turning on them. He was always an asshole. The media didn't want to cover that then outside of things like The Jordan rules.

[benjipwns]

They're just ignorant of the real Jordan and believe all that media protected narrative they grew up with. They probably don't even know what Jordan was doing during the 1995 mini-lockout to make sure he could get paid $30+ million a year. It takes nothing away from him as a player nor someone like Magic, but they lived in a very different media environment. Hell, you look at something like the late 70s, early 80s and most of the journalists were as coked out of their minds as the players.

They don't even seem to realize he's a fucking owner, of course he's not going to be on your side. Do they not even pay attention to the news? Didn't it come out that Jordan and Allen were the ones wanting to take the players below 40%?

Speaking of juicy NBA gossip, the Shaq stuff has been "leaking" more, with some repeats:
http://www.hoopsworld.com/nba-am-shaq-dishes-on-kobe-lebron/

Our coach, Mike Brown, was a nice guy, but he had to live on edge because nobody was supposed to be confrontational with LeBron. Nobody wanted him to leave Cleveland, so he was allowed to do whatever he wanted to do.

I remember one day in a film session LeBron didn’t get back on defense after a missed shot. Mike Brown didn’t say anything about it. He went to the next clip and it was Mo Williams not getting back and Mike was saying, “Yo, Mo, we can’t have that. You’ve got to hustle a little more.” So Delonte West is sitting there and he’s seen enough and he stands up and says, “Hold up, now. You can’t be pussyfooting around like that. Everyone has to be accountable for what they do, not just some of us.” Mike Brown said, “I know, Delonte. I know.” Mike knew Delonte was right. …

http://www.csnne.com/blog/celtics-talk/post/Shaq-wanted-to-punch-Big-Baby-in-the-fac?blockID=587574

I wasn’t surprised at all when he got traded. Nate was always trying to get noticed by the public. He was always tweeting videos of himself punking his teammates ... Some people are a little too focused on Twitter and Nate was one of them. He was too worried about how many followers he had. He kept saying, “Shaq, I need more people. Help me out.”

[Cormacaroni]

I'm so buying the Shaq book.

[pilonv1]

I'm worried the best stuff has been leaked.

Also everyone knew Mike Brown was a figurehead coach and had no authority.

[Joe Molotov]

lol @ a couple of scrubs thinking that Jordan is their buddy. 1996 MJ would have pimp-slapped your ass and then laughed about it 15 years later during his HOF speech.

[benjipwns]

Interesting: sources from each side told me players&owners only spent "about 15 minutes" together during Saturday's 8 1/2 hour meeting

Federal Mediator George Cohen shuttled back & forth between the two rooms before bringing them together at the end for owners proposal