The scheduled start of the NBA’s regular season is sitting in the crosshairs, and the lockout has started doing real damage to its calendar. The league announced Friday that all games from Oct. 9–15 are off and further decisions will be made as needed.
Camps were originally scheduled to open on Oct. 3. Cancellations include all three of the Blazers’ home games scheduled for the preseason against Utah, Golden State and Phoenix. The cancellations were inevitable after Thursday’s meeting between owners and players ended without a collective bargaining agreement. Both sides still hope the entire regular season, scheduled to begin Nov. 1, can be saved.
“We have regretfully reached the point on the calendar where we are not able to open training camps on time and need to cancel the first week of preseason games,” NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement to the media. “We will make further decisions as warranted.”
The announcement is a far cry from the optimism that Commissioner David Stern showed in the beginning of September, when players and owners met for the first time in a month.
“We agreed that we’re going to sit here for as many days as we can to see if we’re going to be able to make progress…and we told the players we wouldn’t say anything,” Stern said on Sept. 8.
Even players’ union President Billy Hunter believed that the season would be saved. “There is still time to save the start of the season…we have three weeks,” Hunter said on Sept. 8.
Contrary to the NFL’s lockout, nearly all of the issues of the NBA lockout are related to money distribution.
The NBA isn’t tangled in issues of player safety, rookie wage scales or training camp length like the NFL, but a major difference is that the NFL just came off a year where they brought in $9.3 billion and made a profit, while the NBA brought in $4.2 billion but declared a net loss of $300 million. Among the key issues between NBA owners and players is the split of basketball-related income. Last season, players earned 57 percent of all basketball-related income. Owners are demanding that number come down. In their desire to bring player salaries under control, owners have called for a cap on salaries. Initial negotiations in January of 2010 called for a cap at $45 million, $13 million less than last year’s $58 million. The proposal also suggested a “hard” cap, as opposed to the previous collective bargaining agreement wherein teams could exceed the cap by paying a luxury tax, as the Trailblazers did a year ago.
Layoffs have occurred throughout the league since July 1, including 115 in a two-day span during mid-July, and the Blazers were no exception. In July, the Blazers relieved Chief Information Officer Chris Dill and Executive Producer of Blazer Broadcasting Scott Zachry of their duties. Both had over 20 years of service with the organization. The Blazers insisted these layoffs were not lockout related.
Owners reportedly favor a system that would allow them to cut their losses on so-called “bad” contracts for under-performing athletes, which likely translates into shorter-term contracts and less guaranteed money for players. In regard to the Blazers, this would mean that with, say, Brandon Roy, a max-contract player whose career is up in the air after injuries, the team wouldn’t be burdened with owing unearned money to that player. Still, guaranteed contracts have been a staple in the NBA for years and the players’ union isn’t likely to give up such luxuries without a fight.
The next talks are not yet scheduled though both sides said Thursday they hope to meet again this week. Given the results of recent meetings, it’s likely to be pretty quiet this fall at the Rose Garden.