Tuesday Bolts – 11.15.11

An agent to Ken Berger of CBSSports.com: “This is honestly the last thing I would’ve done,” one moderate agent said of the union’s disclaimer. “I can’t imagine these [players] truly know what they’ve gotten themselves into. … I don’t know an agent, including the decert agents, who are happy with this move.”

Ian Thompson of SI.com: “But 20 years from now, when the emotions have boiled away and they can see this breakdown for what it is, the owners and players will also blame themselves. The wise people on each side of this argument will think about what they might have done differently, and they will realize the needless harm that was done. There was no natural disaster at play here. Nothing beyond the control of the owners and players forced them to push this season to the edge of cancellation. They did this together.”

The union didn’t ask all players what to do yesterday: “Rockets guard Kevin Martin, by text on Monday morning, said he didn’t care to be represented that way: “I think it’s fair for every player to have a vote, because we’re all grown men and its time for the players to control their career decisions, and not one player per team. If it comes down to a final decision, you got to be fair.”

KD says he’s going back to school.

The NBA’s new legal counsel David Boies: “I’m just saying, we’re going to go back, we’re going to assess this. Jeffrey probably has got decades more experience in this than I have. And we’re going to go back and we’re going to talk about what the right approach is. Maybe it’s filing a lawsuit. Maybe it’s not filing a lawsuit. We’ve got to figure out what the lawsuit would say if there is going to be a lawsuit. There’s a lot that has to be worked out. ”

Billy Hunter sent a letter to the players explaining the disclaimer of interest.

Matt Moore of CBSSports.com: “There was no vote yesterday, no consideration of the deal which a lot of rank-and-file players would have accepted. Those 30 reps didn’t speak with with all the players they were meant to. And something happened to scare the living bejeezus out of them into voting “unanimously” to disclaim interest. Maybe it was Jeffrey Kessler, who seems to be getting an awful lot of publicity out of this whole ordeal he wouldn’t have gotten if there was a deal. Maybe it was Billy Hunter, trying to steer the conversation away from this abject failure in leadership during these negotiations in order to reaffirm his position and save his salary once this ends. Maybe it was the agents, though that’s unlikely given their reaction to yesterday’s debacle.”