Monday Bolts – 11.7.11

Ken Berger of CBSSports.com with a seriously brilliant column: “But what happened instead? The players and union officials took the bait that Stern had so cleverly planted on the end of a hook early Sunday. Instead, a defeated Fisher acknowledged the inevitable and Kessler, the union’s flame-throwing attorney, launched a roomful of red meat onto the table for the hard-line agents and star players who are fed up with this charade to devour on their path to the mutually assured destruction of union decertification. And if the season gets blown up in the aftermath of these ultimatums, threats and tantrums, it will be the players’ doing. This didn’t have to be. And it still doesn’t.”

Henry Abbott of TrueHoop: “Kessler explains the reasoning for the mechanism is because no union wants to let employers address workers directly. You don’t want your opponents to have direct access to your constituents. The fully informed committee has an obligation to keep bad deals from the rank and file, who have entrusted the process to them. This protects players from accepting an offer that might sound good to them, but would, in the judgment of those who have analyzed it most thoroughly, actually be bad news. So if the players are to accept the NBA’s offer, they will do so over the objection of their representatives.”

KD and Harden hanging at the PDX charity game.

Marc Stein of ESPN.com: “Sources close to the talks revealed later Sunday that the union is actually holding out hope that the league will call to re-open negotiations before Wednesday, with an eye toward tweaking some of the system issues to lead to a more palatable deal that the NBPA would be comfortable with putting to a vote. The union’s belief, sources say, is that a few changes — none of them monumental — could produce a deal now that the gap on the revenue was closed further in Saturday’s negotiations.”

Ben Golliver of Blazers Edge was at the Portland charity game last night: “I wouldn’t bet against the Thunder making the next Western Conference Finals whenever there is another Western Conference Finals. Some developed telepathy between Durant and Harden, who have both been charity game warriors during the lockout.”

The Basketball Jones is doing God’s work on their tour. Speaking of, you should go to their stop in Oklahoma City.