Politicians, Restaurant Owners Launch Protest Against NBA

New York State Senator Malcolm Smith and representatives of New York's restaurant and bar owners are launching their own occupy Madison Square Garden movement with a protest outside the arena today.

A press release from Smith's office has the details:

NEW YORK -- Senator Malcolm A. Smith will join Knicks and Nets fans and season ticketholders today,?Wednesday November 23, 2011 at 12 pm as they request a full refund for the whole season due to the NBA Walkout.? They will be also unveiling a 6 foot petition for over 1 million fans to sign in front of Madison Square Garden.? An upcoming National Basketball ??Solidarity Day will be announced that will take place in arenas and stadiums across the nation.

Officials from the United Restaurant and Tavern Owners Association along with other New York City merchants and vendors will join in tomorrow's news conference after losing over million dollars worth of revenue due to the cancellation of basketball games. The Association represents over 3,000 bars and restaurants in the tri-state area.

I applaud the sentiment behind this, as NBA fans have gotten fairly royally hosed by this labor mess. That said, I have a few suggestions to make.

First off... the Knicks and Nets - and every other NBA team - has a very clear policy for refunds in place and has since late July. When games are cancelled, ticket holders have the option of a full refund, or a credit - with 5 percent interest - towards next season's tickets. (Worth noting - 5 percent interest is a lot more than you'd get from a typical bank savings account these days.)

Second... what, exactly, is the "NBA Walkout?" That word choice seems to imply that the players are on strike, and that simply isn't the case. Whatever you think of the players' negotiating strategy to this point, or some of the decisions they made leading up to the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement, the league has been shut down by management. It's a lockout, not a strike.

Of course, Senator Smith won't be the first politician to grab for headlines despite a less-than-complete understanding of the underlying issues.

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Owners' Ultimatum Scuttles NBA Lockout Talks

With the help of a federal mediator, the NBA and NBPA seemed to be inching towards a settlement that would end the lockout that has paralyzed the league since June. The players were looking for a 53 percent share of basketball related income. The owners were offering something closer to 49 percent. That's not that big a gap, right?

Wrong.

Possibly emboldened by the fact that NBA commissioner David Stern was home with the flu, the owners collectively decided that they've already been too generous in their offers, and that a 50-50 split of league revenue was a "take it or leave it" offer. Ever conscious of appearances, the owner chosen to relay this message was Portland's Paul Allen - the Microsoft mogul with a personal net worth estimated at $13.2 billion.

Why the change of tune? Spurs owner Peter Holt reportedly told the players, "you haven't suffered enough."

Classy, that.

The union seems willing to discuss a 50-50 arrangement, but only if their other conditions - issues relating to the salary cap, player contract lengths and year-to-year increases and the like - are met. But the owners wouldn't even discuss those "system issues" without an agreement to split BRI evenly. And with that catch 22 firmly in place, talks fell apart.

I've been in the owners' corner for some time now. Or, perhaps more accurately, I don't see how the players can generate much leverage in this situation... and fighting for an extra percentage point of BRI doesn't make much sense when a couple weeks of cancelled games wipes out any financial gain. But I certainly wouldn't sign a deal under these circumstances.

(And to those pushing decertification of the union and a battle in the courts, understand that such a strategy would almost certainly wipe out this season, and wouldn't necessarily win the players a better deal.)

What happens next? It seems there are two possibilities. David Stern could re-emerge from his sick bed, get his owners in line, and pick the negotiations where the mediator left off. Or some of the more moderate owners - Jerry Buss, Mark Cuban, Mickey Arison and James Dolan have repeatedly been mentioned as wanting to make a deal - could step up and stop allowing their most hawkish brethren to drive the process.

Either way, it seems inevitable that more games will be cancelled.

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Splits Emerging Among NBA Owners?

It has been my opinion for some time now that the NBPA cannot win a battle with the NBA, so long as the owners stay together... that eventually, the players would have to accept what they most want to avoid: the dreaded hard cap.

But I also thought owner unity would last well into the new year. And recent leaks from the negotiating table seem to indicate that isn't the case. According to a story first reported by Dave McMenamin and Chris Broussard of ESPN, the sides seemed to be making significant progress in Tuesday's talks. But when the owners started discussing specific points among themselves, Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert and Robert Sarver of the Suns raised objections to many of the proposed deal points.

Lakers owner Jerry Buss and James Dolan of the Knicks were said to be "visibly annoyed" by Gilbert and Sarver's hard-line stance, and it's not hard to see why. Buss has reportedly accepted the idea that revenue sharing and other competitive balance measures - changes that will significantly impact, if not eliminate, many of the Lakers' biggest advantages - are inevitable.

Unsurprisingly, David Stern was quick to discount the very notion that his owners were losing solidarity.

What do we make of all this?

Without questioning the talents or journalistic integrity of McMenamin, Broussard or Kevin Ding, who wrote the Jerry Buss piece for the Orange County Register... I can't get past the fact that both stories do such a good job of reinforcing the points made by the NBPA and league. Union president Derek Fisher suggests the owners are split on key points... and then, suddenly, an unnamed source gives ESPN a story illustrating that, and giving fans a couple of "bad guys" in the process. And the "Lakers are willing to accept a hard cap" story can just as easily be read as a warning shot across the union's bow.

Point is, both sides in this dispute are well-versed in the media game.

Meanwhile, it seems fair to suggest that Derek Fisher is the last person who should be questioning anyone's solidarity - not after just 35 players showed up for the NBPA meeting in Las Vegas yesterday. There are over 400 union members currently... and about 60 in Las Vegas alone, participating in the Impact league.

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How Unified are the NBA's Owners?

The NBA lockout has taken on a "war of attrition" cast of late, with both sides apparently digging in for a long, protracted standoff. But there may be cracks in the owners' united front.

John Canzano of the Oregonian is reporting that there's a group of owners that are determined to extend the lockout into early 2012 and beyond as a means of breaking the union and making major changes to the league's economic structure. No surprise there. But he also said there's a second group that seems eager to settle.

That second part is a bit of a revelation. But perhaps it shouldn't be.

Contenders vs. Non-Contenders

I've long suspected that there are owners who would rather not lose the 2011-12 season to a labor dispute. The Lakers' Jerry Buss, for example; his team is making a healthy profit, and he's got a limited window of opportunity to win titles with the Kobe Bryant/Pau Gasol core. Or the Knicks' James Dolan, who has a team worthy of appearing on the back pages of New York's tabloids for the first time in a decade - and a massive renovation of Madison Square Garden to pay for. Or Mark Cuban, who would love to cash in on the NBA championship his Mavs won in June. Or Mickey Arison, whose team needs to get back on the floor to erase everyone's memories of the Finals.

Established Owners vs. the New Guys

An extended lockout may not be a big priority for some of the league's longer-tenured owners, either. Buss, for example, bought the Lakers (along with their home arena, the NHL's Los Angeles Kings, and a large piece of property) for $67.5 million in 1979. Last season, Forbes estimated the team's value at $643 million. Even the small-market Milwaukee Bucks - ranked 30th in terms of franchise value at $258 million - have been a nice investment for owner Herb Kohl, who purchased the team in 1985 for $19 million.

NHL Owners vs. Everyone Else

So who are the hard-liners? Some suggest that the league's newest owners, after paying record sums for their teams, are most eager for an extreme makeover of the league's economic system. That might include the Warriors' new ownership group, which paid $450 million for the team in 2010, and Cleveland's Dan Gilbert, whose team lost an estimated 26 percent of its value when LeBron took his talents to South Beach.

There has also been conjecture that the owners with investments in both NBA and NHL teams represent an important voting bloc, and one that believes, based on their experience with the NHL's season-killing 1995 lockout, that cancelling an entire season can be worth the sacrifice. But it's hard to imagine that group wielding that much influence because it seems to be getting smaller by the day.

Earlier this year, there were six NBA owners with "sister franchises" in the NHL: Ted Leonsis (Wizards, Capitals), Dolan (Knicks, Rangers), Stan and Josh Kroenke (Nuggets, Avalanche), Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (Raptors, Maple Leafs), Ed Snider (Sixers, Flyers) and Atlanta Spirit LLC (Hawks, Thrashers). But the Sixers, Hawks and Thrashers have all been sold, and the Raptors are reportedly on the market as well. It's not hard to imagine Leonsis - who has been stuck for the last half-decade with the god-awful contracts of Gilbert Arenas and, now, Rashard Lewis - wanting to crush the union, but I'm not convinced that the others have a ton of influence over the proceedings.

And as I've suggested before, any owner that tries to sell his colleagues on the idea that cancelling the NHL season was a net positive has his work cut out for him. My response would simply be, "where can I find the Versus network on basic cable, exactly?"

Big Markets vs. Small

Another potential split: the "haves" and the "have nots." The numbers vary depending on who is doing the talking, but the general consensus seems to be that between 10-12 teams made a profit of approximately $150 million last season, while the rest collectively lost as much as $450 million. Not hard to imagine the lower-revenue clubs having a healthy amount of resentment towards the Knicks/Bulls/Lakers/Celtics/Heat. And that's before you consider the fact that most of the major player moves last summer were from small markets (Cleveland, Toronto, Phoenix, Utah) to big (Miami, New York, Chicago).

I don't think the owners will allow revenue sharing to become part of the labor negotiations, simply because I don't think they'll be willing to have what could be a long and ugly fight in public. Which is a shame, because I'd love to see what Buss and Dolan have to say to the idea that their television money should be used to prop up the Maloof brothers.

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