Season takes another hit as owners, players refuse to close deal
AppId is over the quota
Adam Silver arrives for Friday's negotiations, which were expected to see significant progress. (Getty Images)
NEW YORK -- Here we are at the next foolish, scripted blowup of the NBA labor talks. See you in a few days, in the next hotel lobby taken over by grumpy, disaffected reporters and various other characters of questionable moral fiber.
Just when this was starting to get fun, just when it was starting to get done, we all got snookered.
That was the word Billy Hunter used Friday after negotiations to end the 120-day lockout went kablooey for the second time in a week and third time this month. That was what Hunter said David Stern did to him when the commissioner said Thursday night he was going into Friday's seemingly promising bargaining session "ready to negotiate everything."
Only he wasn't. Neither was Hunter. The two men who were supposed to be in position to finally close this deal did not have the authority to do so.
That's the only logical explanation when failing to get a deal this weekend results in approximately $800 million of economic carnage -- the total cost to both sides of a month of lost games -- when the distance between the two sides is $80 million.
"Absurdity," one person on the management side of the NBA business said Friday night.
Oh, no. It's worse than that. Altogether now: It's ass-hattery.
But you knew that already.
I'd brought two bananas to Friday's bargaining session -- mostly for sustenance during these mentally debilitating hours spent waiting for grown men to finish staring at each other, but also as props. You may recall the banana-in-the-tailpipe column in which I detailed the blowout victory the owners were seeking in these negotiations. On Friday, we all fell for the banana in the tailpipe again. And we didn't even have a late supper -- shrimp salad sandwiches, say -- to show for it.
On top of that, I left my grocery bag with the bananas in the lobby, and by the time the predictable, double-talk-laden news conferences were over, two perfectly good bananas were gone. The latest casualties of the dumbest lockout ever.
My prediction, if you still want to hear it, is that there will be conversations over the weekend and another meeting next week to take another stab at this. There's too much to lose; too much at stake. That's what happened the last time things blew up, sending federal mediator George Cohen running for cover. That's what will happen again. More than enough of the deal has been negotiated already so that the next meeting really only requires two people: Stern and Hunter.
But those two people must have the authority to close the deal. On Friday, neither had it.
That's the only way it could possibly make sense to squander a chance to recoup two weeks of canceled games (worth about $400 million to the owners and players) and lose two weeks more (for a total of $800 million) by refusing to even attempt to close a two-point gap in basketball-related income (BRI).
Think of it another way: If Hunter had been willing to move from 52.5 percent to 51 percent Friday, that would've been a $60 million concession in Year One of the deal to get back the lost games worth $400 million -- a net gain of $340 million. Instead, the players decided it was better to lose the games, and thus $400 million, which made it a $740 million decision to walk out of the room without a deal.
If Stern had been willing to move from 50 percent and meet Hunter at 51, it would've been a $40 million concession for the owners to get their approximately $400 million share of the lost November games -- a net gain of $360 million. But instead of offering to make the economic move Stern had said Thursday night he was prepared to make, he decided it was better to lose the $400 million -- a net swing of $760 million. So collectively, Hunter and Stern cost their business $1.5 billion by walking away without a deal Friday.
Swell!
There is no rational way to explain this behavior, so there has to be something wrong. And the only answer is that neither Stern nor Hunter had the authority to negotiate beyond his established position.
No wonder the NBA is in such sorry shape, losing $300 million a year and destroying the interest of people who might consider spending money on their product some day with every illogical decision they make.
It's easy to figure out who is giving Stern his marching orders; he works for the owners, many of whom are going for a bloodbath in this negotiation instead of a rational victory. Given the scope of the owners' initial demands, the players have won a couple of surprising "victories" by holding onto guaranteed contracts and a $5 million mid-level exception and beating back the owners' pursuit of a hard team salary cap. But every other aspect of the deal that's been negotiated to this point is in favor of the owners: minimally, a $1.3 billion reduction in salaries over six years, shorter contracts, smaller raises, a more punitive luxury tax, and on and on.
But Stern has done what I warned him not to do. A lawyer by trade, he failed to see the sure victory of a plea bargain in his midst and stubbornly -- presumably not of his own free will -- decided to take this one to the jury, where everybody loses.
The one thing Stern remains empowered to do is own the spin game, and he did that masterfully again Friday by pinning the blame on Hunter for walking out. And as with most spin, there was an element of truth to Stern's account. He and deputy commissioner Adam Silver conveniently omitted the part when there was an opportunity -- both when Hunter was still in the room and after he left -- for Stern to communicate a willingness to make the economic move he'd said he was prepared to make. He didn't do it, he blamed Hunter, and he won the P.R. battle while failing to realize he's losing the war.
Even after letting Hunter leave the room, there was still more time for Stern to rein these negotiations back in.
After word first circulated that the talks had imploded again shortly after 4 p.m. ET, the two sides sat separately for at least 45 minutes before Hunter and union president Derek Fisher finally came downstairs to speak with reporters. Where did league negotiators think Hunter, a 69-year-old man with a bad back, was going so fast that they didn't have time to invite him back in the room to continue the talks? Were they under the mistaken impression they were negotiating against Usain Bolt, would've been halfway up the FDR Drive by the time Stern got out of his chair?
I asked Stern this: If Hunter hadn't left, would Stern have made the economic move he'd stated he was prepared to make? In his answer, he tried to say the league had moved Friday to 50 percent from 47 percent -- which the whole world knows hasn't been the owners' bargaining position since Oct. 4, when the talks last blew up over the BRI split.
Later, I asked Silver why the two sides wouldn't keep trying to close such a small gap, considering the mammoth losses that will result.
"I don't know," Silver said. "You're asking me. Billy said he would not go below 52 when he left. He didn't say, 'Do you want to split the difference?' He said, 'I will not go below 52.' "
"Did you say that?" I asked Silver.
"The negotiation ended when he said that," Silver said.
As in, they ended when the union's 69-year-old negotiator, you know, got up and Usain Bolted.
That was enough for me. Having already heard Silver say with a straight face that the good thing about this deal for the players would be that they'd make more money as revenues increased -- even though a 50-50 split would cut player salaries by $1.8 billion over six years -- it was time to use my brain for other purposes.
Which brings us to this: If Stern is getting his marching orders from the hard-line owners, who is preventing Hunter from being able to negotiate and close this deal? Who's cut his legs out from under him?
And Hunter himself provided the answer -- part of it publicly with the media and part of it privately in the negotiating room.
In explaining how the two sides got back to the bargaining table in the first place this week, Hunter said that after a staff meeting on Monday that "didn't go well at all," he was contacted by "third-party intermediaries who suggested that we get together." It wasn't clear who Hunter was referring to until Silver mentioned something the union's executive director had said in the meeting.
"Billy said, 'My phone is ringing off the hook from agents and from players telling me I cannot go under 52 percent,' " Silver said. "And he said, 'Unless you're prepared to go there, we have nothing to talk about.' "
So even at this late date, when they were on the cusp of a deal, each one's bus has been hijacked -- the way union lawyer Jeffrey Kessler said the negotiations were hijacked a week ago. Stern is no longer driving for the league, and Hunter has been booted from the driver's seat by agents who -- justifiably or not -- believe the players already have given up too much in this negotiation and shouldn't give up another dime.
Yes, the two men who were supposedly empowered to make the deal everyone expected them to make Friday didn't have the juice to get it done. That's sad, silly, unfortunate, a disgrace -- and reality.
Until next time. Or until everybody goes bananas.
Tell Us What You'd Want if SEGA Made Another Console
AppId is over the quota
We're just one day away from unveiling the GameRevolution-built next-gen console of all our wildest, wettest dreams. There's just a few key ingredients missing. Ingredients which we must pluck from the hardcore SEGA fans out there.
SEGA Genesis was the first console to make Nintendo sweat through their power gloves. Without SEGA, the landscape of video games today would be very different. If making an ultimate console mash-up, we couldn't leave out SEGA.
If SEGA got back into the console business, what would you want to see in a new SEGA console?
The Missing Link Adds a Another Boss Fight to Deus Ex: Human Revolution
AppId is over the quota
It was almost too clear that the painfully disruptive boss fights in Deus Ex: Human Revolution weren't developed by Eidos Montreal. With studio Grip Entertainment at the helm of those awkward moments where players and Adam Jensen were forced to face-off with enemies requiring brute force (read: rocket launchers), things sort of fell apart.
In The Missing Link, Eidos Montreal hopes to prove to players that it can develop boss fights deserving of the Deus Ex name. Asked how they'd accomplish this, Production Coordinator Marc-Andre Dufort said:
Those options sound more like what you'd expect from Deus Ex. Dufort continued:We have a boss battle at the end [of The Missing Link], but it's different from the main game boss battles. You can actually not kill the boss. You can do a non-lethal takedown on him. And you can kill him from afar. You can even kill him without him seeing you. It's more of a bigger challenge than a standard boss fight like we have in many games.
The Missing Link DLC will add five hours to the game next month. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is available now for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.Everything was done in Montreal at Eidos. It's a lot less frustrating. But it depends on the way you play. If you played more combat in the main game, you probably didn't have any trouble dealing with the boss fights. So we allow the adaptation of the way you play for that particular boss fight. I was playing more of mixed stealth and combat style, so I had some good weapons in my inventory. I didn't have a lot of trouble dealing with them. No, I didn't get any big frustrations dealing with them. But I can understand people playing more stealth style having some frustration dealing with those boss.
From what I've seen, the game will load you up with power weapons right before you encounter a boss, so even if you do play stealth, it doesn't seem like that big a deal. Of course, purists are purists. What are your thoughts on the bosses in Deus Ex: Human Revolution?
Mediator is planning another NFL session for July 19
MINNEAPOLIS--the federal magistrate judge, arranging the work dispute between NFL owners and players has scheduled another session for July 19 in Minneapolis.
Judge Arthur j. Boylan put the meeting on Saturday, just before the start of his stay. But he made clear that both sides further should their own meetings in the meantime, as they work towards a new collective agreement.
Judge Arthur j. Boylan, who shall submit the date the start of his vacation, suggests that the pages continue to speak in his absence. (AP) The principals in the dispute to as until more than $9 billion were sales all week in New York, but still a new deal as the lock have not reached parts of itself has taken on more than four months.
The urgency, it seems to warm up starts. Several teams have already cancelled their traditional projects in parts of the training camp and the Hall of Fame game between Chicago and St. Louis is way less than a month.
Boylan ordered both sides continue to mediation without him "in an effort to define and the differences between their respective settlement positions narrow." He also ordered that lawyers from both sides meeting with him in the evening of July of 18 "for a personal agenda-setting session" that probably be prepared, the stage for meaningful and fruitful talks would set the following day.
After it in two days in New York this week, known NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and NFL Players Association Chief DeMaurice Smith, that they move out of the weekend were. You plan to back negotiations on Monday in what will be the first mediation sessions with owners and players that contains no Boylan.
If no agreement by the time they have achieved meetings with Boylan in Minneapolis are planned of the League and players, there could be bad news for training camp and maybe even low season are games. The Giants, jets and Ravens have already announced that, no matter, if an agreement is reached, they make all their preseason work to perform their primary facilities for various College campus, a time-honored tradition that embrace coach, as a team building exercise and small towns across the country for tourism depend on revenue.
The Vikings have already said that if an agreement is not reached on 18 July, they have to the training camp in Mankato, Minnesota State University, cancel, where they held two days every summer since 1966.
And the Rams and bears are planned, kick-off the previous season with a game in Canton, Ohio on 7 August, only two and a half weeks after Boylan of the scheduled meeting on May 19.
I need an another RPG NDS pliss
All final fantasy, all Dragon Quest, the two Kingdom Hearts, Chrono Trigger, Mario and Luigi Bowser of each Pokemon Solatorobo, Disgaea Mesias ends of the world with you and I think that I myself did not leave.
Also I have played (in English), nostalgia, Digimon World and Phantasy Star 0, impressive Juegazos.
Thanks in advance)
Best wishes.
