NBA labor talks resume Friday with Fisher, escrow talk

Friday talks will resume as the NBA owners and players try to reach a labor deal in time to save games on Christmas and have a 66-game season.

After talks have seemed close to a deal so many times only to blow up it’s hard to get too optimistic, but there seems to be a real urgency to get things done tis time according to sources PBT has spoken with. Both sides realize the damage to the league and the lost money — paychecks for players, revenue for owners — as this drags on. Both sides want games on Christmas Day, but that means making a deal by Monday.

Here are a few things we know about the talks Friday.

First, Derek Fisher may be back in the room. Fisher is president of the National Basketball Players Association, the organization that used to be the players union and is currently a trade association (after a disclaimer of interest that essentially decertified the union). Fisher was integral to the talks for the past couple years. Without a union, Fisher has no real seat at the table but he will be there Wednesday, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo.

There’s a push within the league office and from Players Association executive director Billy Hunter to have Fisher in the room, league sources said. Nevertheless, Fisher hasn’t committed to attending the meeting, perhaps because of legal concerns about how a judge in the federal suit could view his participation. There’s still a sense the owners could be setting up a trap for the Players Association, perhaps leading them on in talks now only to pull the plug and make a case to the judge that Hunter’s and Fisher’s involvement in the meetings shows they’re still acting as a union – and that the disclaimer of interest and subsequent lawsuits were nothing more than negotiating tactics.”

It should be noted that while Fisher may be in Jeffrey Kessler, the union’s lead outside counsel through much of the lockout, seems to be playing a smaller role. Kessler is strong willed and clashed heavily with David Stern, not having him in the room may improve the dynamic. David Boise and Jim Quinn seem to have taken the lead.

David Stern is reportedly polling his owners to see if he can give luxury-tax paying teams more exceptions. That was something the players wanted in exchange for a 50/50 split of revenues, to allow bigger spending teams paths to spend (small market owners wanted to tie their hands).

What’s the biggest hangup in talks? Well, as always it’s money, but now we are talking directly the money in players’ paychecks. There will be an escrow system set up as their had been in the last labor deal — in that one eight percent of all player checks were withheld and went into an escrow fund. At the end of the season, the calculations were made on “basketball related income” and the players got the portion of that money back to bring total player salaries to 57 percent of BRI.

Chris Sheridan of Sheridan Hoops explains the new hang up.

A source tells SheridanHoops.com that the most significant impediment to a deal remains the owners’ insistence on an escrow withholding system that would ensure that the revenue split for each season ends up being 50-50. Players have offered to have 10 percent of salaries withheld, but a problem has continually arisen when the sides have discussed what mechanism would make up for the shortfall if the 10 percent withholding did not get the players’ share down to 50 percent.

Lest you think that is a minor thing, that impacts take home pay for players. It’s money in their pocket. People fight over that.

It isn’t something that should stand in the way of a deal, but would it shock you if it did? Exactly. That’s why for all the motivation to do a deal, keep your optimism in check.