NBA: “We are so far apart,” season’s first two weeks canceled
NBA Commission David Stern has canceled the first two weeks of basketball’s season when yesterday’s negotiations ended without any resolutions and no further progress on a new labor deal. Opening night was scheduled for Nov. 1, so this cancelation affects all the games between Nov. 1-14 - 100 games total.
”The gap is so significant that we just can’t bridge it at this time,” Stern said. ”We certainly hoped it would never come to this.”
Union president Derek Fisher agreed, ”This is not where we choose to be. We’re not at a place where a fair deal can be reached with the NBA.”
The reprecussions of this move have a large ripple effect. The game venues lose massive revenue and now have to scramble to book events for these open nights on the schedule. Ushers, security personal, concession workers, restaurant employees, merchandise vendors and parking lot attendants will have their hours cut or worse, join the ranks of the unemployed. NBA teams themselves have also laid off staff, with more cutbacks still looming.
The canceled 100 games equate to nearly $83 million in lost ticket sales, $350 million estimated loss to the players for each month they are locked out, and hundreds of millions of dollars lost to the league itself. And the fans are losing faith that the season will happen at all.
”I think it would be foolish for them to kill the season, and we’re coming off the best season in the history of the NBA and I’m not so sure in this kind of economy that if there is a protracted lockout whether the league will recover,” said Billy Hunter, union executive director. ”It took us a while to recover from the ‘98 lockout, and I think it will take us even longer to recover this time around.”
The contentious issues on the table include the salary cap system, division of revenue split, non-guaranteed contracts and the strengthening of the luxury tax on players. At this time, the two sides have no additional formal talks scheduled, but they expect to remain in contact.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 11:26 am by michelle
Tags: David Stern, National Basketball Association, NBA lockout, NBA news
