Union head Billy Hunter denies any rift with Derek Fisher

In case you weren’t reading PBT over the weekend — and if not, what is wrong with you? The outdoors are overrated — we told you about a report that union president Derek Fisher was good with a 50/50 split and that union director Billy Hunter confronted him about it.

Hunter denied that there is any rift between him and Fisher to the Sports Business Journal on Monday.

NBPA Exec Dir Billy Hunter disputed a report that indicated there was a rift between himself and union President Derek Fisher. Hunter, in a telephone interview with SportsBusiness Journal late Sunday evening, said he did not confront Fisher about him pushing for players to take a 50-50 split of basketball revenues on Friday morning, hours before talks to end the NBA lockout broke down.

As we said before, the first report clearly was leaked by one of the hardline players (or agents) that does not want the union to take less than 53 percent of the basketball related income. The union has gone to 52.5 percent officially, and that is as far as the hardliners want the union to go. Yet the leaks out of the most recent player/owner meetings suggested the union might go lower if the owners gave concessions on system issues such as the luxury tax and cap exceptions.

So someone put this out there, trying to put more pressure on Fisher and Hunter not to “cave.”

Again, as long as the hardliners are driving the bus on both sides we are not going to have basketball.