NBA Players Union Makes Last Offer

The union for locked-out NBA players finally gave its new labor proposal to the commissioner Monday, just three days before the deadline for reaching a new agreement or canceling the season.

“They took it and reviewed it and said they would get back to us,” union director Billy Hunter said after the 45-minute meeting.

The NBA did not immediately comment.

The meeting, attended by commissioner David Stern, deputy commissioner Russ Granik, Hunter and union president Patrick Ewing, represented the first face-to-face talks between the sides since Dec. 27 when they met for five hours near Denver and the league made its “final” offer.

The union then readied a counterproposal but refused to give it to the owners until they agreed to a face-to-face meeting.

It finally came Monday afternoon at a hotel across the street from league headquarters.

“We’ve given them the proposal, they’ll have a conference call with their labor committee and we expect to speak to them later in the day,” Hunter said.

The union has told all 19 players on its negotiating committee to be in New York by Tuesday morning. The deadline is Thursday for reaching a new collective bargaining agreement to save the remainder of the season.

If no deal is reached, the league’s Board of Governors — with one ownership representative from each of the 29 teams — could vote that day to scrap the rest of the schedule.

Herb Williams of the Knicks, a member of the union’s executive committee, thinks the deadline might be extended.

“If a deal was done on the 9th or 10th, I’m sure David wouldn’t say that just because we didn’t do it on 7th the season is over. It’s a business, and sometimes you have to posture,” Williams said.

Some players have been asking for a vote on the owners’ final offer, but the union’s negotiating committee — the only body with the power to put a proposal to a vote — says it will not put forward any offer that it does not deem worthy.

The sides have moved toward each other on virtually all of the most hotly contested issues, and the union’s new offer included an absolute limit on the amount of salary any player can earn. If accepted, it would make the NBA the only professional sports league to limit the amount of money a top athlete can make.

Standing in the way of a settlement are items of contention worth tens of millions of dollars per year.

If no agreement is reached, the NBA will have gone from being the only major U.S. sport to never have lost a game to a work stoppage to being the first sport to lose an entire season to a labor dispute.

So far, the first two months of the season have been wiped out. It would take three to four weeks after a settlement to begin a 45- to 50-game season.

The key sticking point to a settlement could center on how much revenue will be paid to the players during the course of the six-year deal.

In its proposal, the union wants 55 percent of revenue devoted to salaries in the fourth year while owners have offered 53 percent. In the fifth year, players want 56 percent while owners are offering 53.5. And in the final year, players want 57 percent — the amount they received last season — while the league is offering 54 percent.

Michael Olowokandi, the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, signed Monday with Kinder Bologna of the Italian League for $3 million. The 7-foot-1 center can return to the NBA on Feb. 15 if the lockout is lifted and still would receive $1 million.

Also Monday, Steven Woods, the agent for Toronto’s Kevin Willis, refiled an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the union for allegedly breaching its duty of fair representation.

Associated Press