Twitter is alive with truth

Yeah, Arison does NOT want a hard cap and less exceptions. He stands to have to make the toughest decisions of any owner if it comes to that.

All, if you’re using Firefox, the display of storify might be a little buggy. And by a little buggy, I mean completely jacked up. I’m having trouble with the fix, so if you have any ideas…

Between now and then, I suggest Chrome or, gasp, IE.

I feel like the players are a little delirious, this stand they are making its going to end up costing them A LOT. They are playing with fire, and will get burn. I think they miscalculated the owners resolve, greed and deep pockets, they are going to screw the players for every dollar and eventually get their way, this is how they got their millions, by cold-hearted ruthless business deals.

Andrew & Timothy, et al-
Why no discussion of incentive based pay, bonuses, etc? With the players unwilling to meet owner BRI demands, seems like owners should push for this instead (which would be better for the game).

They say “players get paid during the regular season, owners in the playoffs”… It should be the other way around, merit-based if you will. After an athlete is relatively “set for life”, the huge money should go to the top performers. R Lewis, Arenas deals are bad for NBA, terrible for fans and franchises alike. Same for B Roy, etc.

C Butler, R Gay? With exceptions for rookie contracts, if a player misses more than 20 games he starts getting reduced pay up for games missed down to a minimum of, say, 60% of annual contract pay. Amnesty buyouts should be set at a penalty tax free 40% (perhaps, conceding an up-front lump-sum payment) of the contract deal. If Jay-Z can’t perform for his tour dates, he either doesn’t get paid, doesn’t get further bookings, or both. Owners should push this issue, and allow BRI booty to go to players, rookie or not, based on team leaders for usage rate, +/- (especially in final 2 minutes of close games), and wins, (and maybe ratings & attendance influence). Give those stars major, major dough. Owners are protected, real stars of the game get paid appropriately (and chasing money vs wins becomes moot- they become nearly synonymous). Last season Dirk should have made the most dough (with Joe Johnson not even in the same conversation). Free loaders are eliminated, role players are taken care of… And we have the ultimate reality competition (like Golf, only wildly entertaining).

Do the owners just assume that the players would never go for it? It sure isn’t stopping them from their 50% split commitment. Pushing for a merit-model would allow the owners to have the favor of the fans to leverage vs the players. Instead this BRI bs makes both sides look like greedy, lazy, be-ahtches who don’t care about the game and don’t deserve our money or the attention.

I agree with you about a merit model that rewards players that work harder. The difficulty of course is finding something that the player has control over and is non-biased. It’s pretty ridiculous of the players to say we want guaranteed contracts and offer no counter to the owner for under performers other than saying they shouldn’t have given the contracts. It’s not like the owners can look into the future. In fact that’s why I think shorter contracts are better.

Maybe the owners should take the fans and sportswriters opinions into consideration. Everybody was of the consensus that giving R. Lewis that deal was a bad move. But like I said some of them you can’t predict. You couldn’t tell giving G. Arenas would be a bad deal.

Bad idea!