If you’re desperately looking for good news out of the NBA labor talks, after nearly eight hours of negotiations on Friday there is almost no news out of the room.
No news may be good news, or at least a sign that the two sides have gotten serious. There have always seemed to be leaks out of the negotiations before, that is not the case on Friday. That may be good news. Or not. Kind of a “glass half full” thing.
Representatives of the NBA owners and players started meeting earlier in the week and, after a break for the Thanksgiving holiday, were back at it Friday. The goal is to have a deal in place at the start of next week so there can be NBA games on Christmas to kick off a 66-game season. The calendar is the real pressure on the two sides now.
One thing we do know about this Friday meeting is who is in the room. For the owners there is commissioner David Stern, deputy commissioner Adam Silver, Peter Holt (the Spurs owner), and attorneys Rick Buchanan and Dan Rube. For the players it is NBPA director Billy Hunter, NBPA president Derek Fisher, Maurice Evans, attorney Ron Klempner and economist Kevin Murphy.
Those are basically all the same people that have been in the room since July 1. Big gun players’ attorneys David Boies and Jeffry Kessler are not participating on Friday.
So it’s the same people arguing the same issues, essentially. The difference is one of semantics — technically this is a lawsuit settlement conference, not a collective bargaining agreement negotiations. There is no more NBA union since the Nov. 14 “disclaimer of interest.” Of course, it’s the same people arguing over the same things, just with a different name. Meet the new talks, same as the old talks.
Just with fewer leaks.
