Wednesday Bolts – Doomsday Edition
Via the Washington Post: “To present that in the context of ‘take it or leave it,’ in our view, that is not good faith,” Kessler, who also represented the NFL players in their labor dispute with the NFL, said in a telephone interview Monday night. “Instead of treating the players like partners, they’re treating them like plantation workers.” In a phone call Tuesday, Stern blamed Kessler for the stalled talks and said he deserved to be “called to task” for the remark. “Kessler’s agenda is always to inflame and not to make a deal,” Stern said, “even if it means injecting race and thereby insulting his own clients. . . . He has been the single most divisive force in our negotiations and it doesn’t surprise me he would rant and not talk about specifics. Kessler’s conduct is routinely despicable.”
Ken Berger of CBSSports.com: “Who in Portland is going to ask Paul Allen — one of the richest men in the world and a silent assassin in the labor talks — whether he personally is going to replace the event revenues that are supposed to fund the bond debt that partially funded the Rose Garden? And while Spurs owner Peter Holt wasn’t mentioned on my sources’ list of hard-liners, as the chairman of the owners’ labor relation committee his fingerprints will be all over this death-knell proposal if it gets delivered to the players Wednesday night. Will anyone in the state of Texas, which has three NBA teams that would be idled by a season-long lockout, ask Holt to explain why the 84-percent taxpayer funded AT&T Center will be without its signature tenant and primary source of revenue?”
Howard Beck of the New York Times: “Derek Fisher, the union president, made that overture at a news conference, with 43 players standing behind him. In return, the union wants the league to relax its proposed restrictions on free agency. By offering to take the league’s offer, the union effectively shifted the onus back to Commissioner David Stern and the owners.”
KD played in Rudy Gay’s charity game last night and scored 29.
Zach Lowe of SI.com: “The two sides are still apart on the small but important issue of broadening the salary-matching requirement for trades. Under the old rules, a team over the cap could take back only 125 percent (plus $100,000) of the salary it sent out in a trade, so that the salaries would nearly have to match. The union has proposed bumping that gap all the way to 200 percent for teams below the luxury tax line, while the league has offered to go to 150 percent — with a bright line rule that the total salary difference in any trade cannot exceed $5 million, per a source close to the talks.”
Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports: “There can be a few things tweaked along the edges, the periphery and this can be agreed upon,” one ownership source told Yahoo! Sports. “I’m confident that would not be an issue if [Stern] did that. It will be a very slight budge,” one high-ranking management source said.”
