The five stages of coping with the NBA lockout
Welcome to Week 2 of the NBA Lockout. As a matter of principle, I figured we might as well start counting it in terms of weeks rather than days. My fellow NBA fans, we have a lot to cope with, so let’s take it easy on ourselves and avoid the more complex math.
Of all the things NBA players and executives could be doing this summer, the last thing they want to be doing is paperwork. As the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the NBA and the NBA Player’s Association (NBAPA) expired at midnight on June 30, predictable events became the sad reality. NBA owners have locked out their players due to the lack of a binding contract, making collective bargaining the necessary evil to ensure a 2011-12 NBA season. From steel workers to professional athletes, ask anyone familiar with the process of collective bargaining and they’ll let you know it is neither easy, nor timely.
Believe it or not, the CBA is a document you can actually read. That is, it’s written in English and displayable on paper or a screen, and some of the words in there are ones I recognize from the language I speak and write every day. Take a look at the document – available at NBAPA.org – and it may provide insight as to the necessary complexity of the negotiations. Even if the Player’s Association and NBA owners were following a similar train of thought, the scope of the project doesn’t at all seem like something executives, even executives and lawyers of the highest pay grade, can ‘hash out’ over the course of a weekend.
NBA commissioner David Stern admitted this himself in a press conference announcing the league-imposed lockout: “I’m resigned to the potential damage that it can cause to our league. [?] These things have the capacity to take on a life of their own and you can never predict was can happen.”
Stern later added, “We’re not closer [to a deal]. It worries me that we’re not closer. I know we spent all this time trying to get closer. We have a huge philosophical divide.”
[php snippet=1]
Stage One: DENIAL
They say there are five stages of coping with grief or loss. In the coming weeks or months, NBA fans alike are likely to cycle these emotional stages that the famed psychiatrist, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, developed in the 70s – now commonly called the Kubler-Ross model. Of all the insane things developed in the 70s, this seems to be one of the few that still has some legitimacy to it.
Personally, I’m at the point where I think many of us are: Stage One, Denial. Soon, Denial will lead to Anger, which burns itself hot and cools into Bargaining, sinking further into Depression, which cracks and builds up into a form of Acceptance.
In order to accept anything rationally we must understand it, and riding a rollercoaster of emotion, apparently, will bring us there. Think of this article as your first step in understanding, and ultimately in reaching Acceptance. It’s tough for all of us, let’s do it together.
Stage Two: ANGER
For us, the point where the wave of Denial crests into the bubbling rage of Anger is when we realize how long the two sides have been negotiating. Since the adoption of the last CBA before the 2005-06 season, the NBA community has known that displeasure towards that agreement on both sides would likely force a lockout. The shortened 50-game season in 1998-99 was undeniable, with obvious foreshadowing that a lockout was likely. Once again, this time around, we had players, coaches, agents and analysts all telling us that a lockout starting this summer was certain. Even though we all took a break to celebrate the Dallas Mavericks and their championship, it was a brief delay of the inevitable, both sides quickly took to the boardroom table.
Fan anger will constantly bubble throughout the summer, but it seems we are at the point where the anger of NBA execs and members of the NBAPA has subsided. Twitter rants have come and gone, scathing open letters have been published and indignant interviews have been shot and broadcast. Without a doubt, more angry bubbles and rifts will float to the surface, considering the process of grief is as linear as a Tarantino movie.
Surely, if games are missed this Anger will come back with more strength than before. Things are tame now, soon it will be ugly.
Stage Three: BARGAINING
Surprise, surprise, this is the stage the NBA and NBAPA are at now. The heart of the matter is that the economics of the NBA make it impossible for some 22 of 30 NBA teams to turn a profit, let alone be in a financially viable place to focus on putting together a competitive basketball team, according to numbers released by the NBA. While the NBAPA doesn’t agree with those figures, there is a concession that things are out of order, but it is in fleshing out these figures and deciding who gets what money where talks fall apart.
How do the owners think they can achieve this financial and competitive parity? The owners want to guarantee a league-wide player salary of $2 billion for a 10-year period, down somewhat from $2.17 billion. With that, a “flex cap” proposal of $62 million (from the previous of $58 million) would be in place, similar to the salary cap system of now except for a firmer upper limit of salary and elimination of the luxury tax.
Under these financial limits and restrictions, the NBA would place other non-monetary restrictions on contracts: a reduced contract length (three-year max for new signings, down from five; a four-year max for players remaining with their current teams, down from six). So-called “sign and trades” would also be eliminated, giving teams more power to keep desirable free agents from jumping ship while taking their favorable contacts with them and unfairly burdening smaller market teams (Cleveland, Toronto, Denver, etc.). A hard cap eliminates the ability of large market teams to exceed the salary cap when taking on contracts negotiated with other teams via trade or signing. The NBA is also looking to reduce the cost of huge contracts for unquantifiable rookies.
While the issue of rookie salaries probably should be an easy one to hammer out, what the NBAPA wants spells out some difficult negotiations. Players favor the “soft cap” system and instead have offered to reduce salaries by $100 million a year for five years (half the length of the NBA’s 10-year agreement). Also well aware of competitive advantages for larger market teams, players are pushing for revenue sharing between teams rather than enforcing these measures to increase the competitive nature between NBA teams through restrictions on contract length and value (as is the NBA’s current offer). In fact, the players want to increase “sign and trade” capabilities, allowing teams more room under the cap when absorbing slightly larger contracts through a trade.
As well, players look to extend the time of Restricted Free Agency to alleviate the “frenzied” week-long negotiations that benefit owners rather than players. Also, players want the age limit lowered to pre-2005 levels (18 years as opposed to 19 now) as well the appointment of a neutral arbitrator regarding all on-court disciplinary matters.
While Stern and NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver have both said that talks remain civil, it is unclear as to where and how much each side is willing to concede. Time will tell.
If collective bargaining is unsuccessful and talks ends without resolution, the NBAPA would decertify; a legal maneuver that be the first step towards anti-trust litigation. In the end, both sides are weary of bringing the courts in to settle the matter as this almost guarantees missed games if not an entire regular season due to the typically lengthy judicial process. The goal here is to – somehow – settle their disagreements between the two sides and forego missing regular season games before the courts make everything move at an even more glacial pace.
So, when is their next scheduled bargaining session? According to NBA.com it remains “to be determined.”
Stage Four: DEPRESSION
Without major compromise from both sides there will be no season – seems like as good place as any to begin getting depressed. Looking into the murky future, little is immediately clear, but without major compromises that both sides are legitimately committed to upholding for a matter of years, this could just the beginning of another decade of collective bargaining.
They’ve ripped off the band-aid and are prepping the patient for surgery that should go well, but it may not. Hey, now it seems like an even better time to get depressed.
Stage Five: ACCEPTANCE
Now we’re getting ahead of ourselves – I still haven’t progressed from Stage Four. I’m not willing to accept anything because, let’s face it, nothing has happened yet. No games have been missed and it’s hard to feel sympathy for pro athletes having to cover their own health benefits for a few months while their labor lucrative negotiations are ironed out. Yes, very real middle-class employees of the NBA’s 30 teams will be hurt more so than their forlorn fans, and so will the countless other industries that feed off that billion-dollar NBA profit apparatus.
Acceptance might land with a heavy thud come September when the weather drives us back inside without basketball (or football) to watch, and more importantly, pink slips begin to land on the desks of hardworking trainers, equipment managers, marketing managers and janitorial staff. David Stern’s job is to run the world’s greatest professional basketball league and NBAPA President Billy Hunter is acting with the implicit desire to get 360 basketball players once again earning millions of dollars each – this only happens if there is an actual season, and that happens with major compromise.
A lot has to happen between now and then and a lot will happen, it’s just a matter of what happens and who is the least unhappy by the time we eventually see tip-off… which might be some time in 2013.
[php snippet=1]
