The acrimony that was built over the summer and into the fall will soon dissipate and all will go back to normal, including heavy spending by the larger markets and more obscurity for the lesser ones.    

The total basketball revenue income (BRI) has increased for ownership and the over-the-cap luxury tax has reportedly increased three-fold — at least leveling the playing field somewhat — but it’s still a buyer’s market for the league’s big-wigs like the Lakers, Celtics, Heat, Mavs and Knicks.    

Under the last collective bargaining agreement, the luxury tax — a softer version of the NFL’s salary cap system — deemed that any NBA team that went over the allotted salary cap had to pay dollar-for-dollar in a tax. The newly proposed tax, however, would force teams to reportedly pay three times that amount. For example, if the Knicks went over the new salary cap by $10 million, they would owe $30 million in taxes. Such a burden would cripple most teams, but wouldn’t hinder the new-look Knicks from still purging lower-market teams of their stars.    

NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver tried to justify the new CBA by adding he’s confident the new luxury tax laws will slow down teams like the Heat and Knicks from stockpiling their rosters.       

“I think it will largely prevent the high-spending teams from competing in the free-agency market in the way they’ve been able to in the past,” Silver said. “The luxury tax is harsher than it was in the past deal and we hope it’s effective.”   

Silver did not specify the exact new workings of the luxury tax but added a team like the Lakers would be soundly penalized for going over the cap. Last season the Lakers had the league’s highest payroll, doling out $91 million in player salaries and another $21 million in luxury-tax penalties. This year’s penalties would be roughly $60 million.   

The Knicks would be in the same boat but that wouldn’t necessarily stop them pursuing the likes of Hornets point guard Chris Paul or Nets point guard Deron Williams. The Knicks have always been willing to pay top dollar – even for mediocre talent. The luxury tax shouldn’t deter them from getting a Paul or Williams and forming their own “Big Three” to complement Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire.    

“You know that the richer NBA teams, like the New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers will find ways around the salary cap, no matter how hard the owners say it is,” said one prominent NBA scout, adding the players will still see greener pastures. “That will also likely push the players’ salaries even higher than they are already projected to go.”     

So fear not, Knicks fans, you’ll surely get your own version of the “Big 3,” regardless of the new CBA.   

Knicks notes 

» The new CBA will allow for a 66-game schedule, which will force the free agency period and training camp to open on the same day, Dec. 9. The season will officially start with a Christmas Day slate that would include the Celtics at the Knicks. 

» Should the proposed schedule go as planned, the regular season will last 10 days longer than usual, making the last possible day of the NBA Finals be June 26 — two weeks later than the championship ended last season.   

» Teams would play 48 games within their conference and 18 non-conference games. That means Knicks fans would still get to see Kobe Bryant and the Lakers as per their annual visit to the Garden. No team would play on three straight nights more than three times. And like the lockout-shortened campaign in 1999, back-to-backs might also be played during the second round of the postseason.

» Although neither side was ultimately happy, the consensus is that the owners got most of the major concessions from the players in the new deal. The biggest concession the players agreed to was a 50-50 revenue split of the BRI. The old deal had the players receive 57 percent. In dollar terms, the players are essentially giving back to the owners $300 million per year under this deal. That is roughly the exact amount of money the owners claimed to be collectively losing per season. The players are also giving back minor concessions like shorter guaranteed contracts and a harder salary cap to prevent richer teams from overspending.   

» The new labor agreement will stretch 10 years, the longest labor agreement in NBA history. There won’t be another labor impasse for at least six years, when both sides will have the ability to opt-out.  

» It’s hard to call the players “losers” because the average player will still be a millionaire. The NBA players went into the lockout as the highest-paid athletes among the major sports in the United States, as the NBA players were paid $5.15 million per season on average. That is significantly more than MLB players ($3.31 million), NHL players ($2.4 million) and NFL players ($1.9 million). Even though the NBA players gave back some $300 million per year, they will still be the highest-paid athletes in the United States by a large margin.  

» The preseason schedule is still unclear, but one person involved with the process said there should be an “abbreviated version” where teams would only play two games, probably against a nearby rival. The source also said there’s a strong possibility that those games would have nothing but low-priced tickets, as a gesture of apologizing to fans for the delay.   
 
» As for the players who signed overseas, most will be able to come back without breaching their contracts. Nets guard Deron Williams said on Twitter early Saturday morning that he would soon be leaving his Turkish club, Besiktas, without any hitches. But for those free agents who signed deals with Chinese clubs, like former Knick Wilson Chandler, it may be harder to work out buyouts and outright releases.  

» The CBA isn’t officially ratified due to the loose strings that need to be tied. Such topics of interest include drug testing, the age limit and use of the Development League.

Follow Knicks beat writer Tony Williams on Twitter @TBone8 for any breaking news on the CBA and what the Knicks will be doing going forward.

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Financial details of the plan were not released but NBA Commissioner David Stern said the settlement called for training camps and the league’s free agency period to begin on Dec. 9.

“We’ve reached a tentative understanding that is subject to a variety of approvals and very complex machinations,” Stern told a news conference early on Saturday after a 15-hour negotiating session.

“But we’re optimistic that will all come to pass and that the NBA season will begin on Dec. 25, Christmas Day, with a triple-header.

“We’re very pleased that we’ve come this far. There’s still a lot of work to be done in a lot of places, with a lot of committees and player groups and the like.

“But we’re optimistic that it will hold and we’ll have ourselves an NBA season.”

Stern said the deal would be put before the owners’ labor relations committee during a teleconference later on Saturday, before being passed on to the overall Board of Governors.

Billy Hunter, the former executive director of the players’ now-disbanded union, said: “We’re going to turn it all over to the lawyers here and have them work out all the details.”

The players de-certified their union in an effort to file a variety of antitrust lawsuits against the league. It could take up to 10 days for the players to re-form their union and ratify a formal labor deal.

Compromise solution

Stern acknowledged the league had “literally thousands of people who are dependent upon the playing of our games at arenas, at parking lots, at restaurants around the stadium.”

“The reason for the settlement is [that] we’ve got fans, we’ve got players who would like to play, we’ve got others who are dependent on us,” he said.

“And it’s always been our goal to reach a deal that was fair to both sides and would get us playing as soon as possible. But, that took a little time.”

Players have been locked out of NBA facilities for 149 days and, should the plan proceed as scheduled, teams would play 16 games less than a normal season.

The league has said it lost $300 million last season and were demanding a reduction in the players’ share of income, which was 57 percent under the prior deal.

NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said the tentative deal called for a more balanced league,

“It will largely prevent the high spending teams from competing in the free agency market in a way that they have been able to in the past,” he said.

“It is a compromise and it is not the system we sought out to get in terms of a harder (salary) cap but the luxury tax is harsher than it was in the past deal and we hope it’s effective.

“We feel ultimately it will give fans in every community hope that their team can compete for championships and that their basis for believing in their team will be a function of management of that team rather than how deep the owners pockets are or how large the market is.”

Stern said he was optimistic both sides would approve the deal.

“We want to play basketball,” he said.

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It is a story about a rich kid. A rich kid with an even richer Dad. Let’s call the son Billy and the Dad Jim. Jim gives his son an allowance of $5,000 per week. Sounds pretty darn good. Billy has all kinds of fun spending all this money. Dad, well he doesn’t really care. He’s paying attention to what other parents are giving their kids in allowance, and as long as those kids get $5,000 per week, Billy will be getting the same.

Then the economy tanks.

Ooops. Jim’s company isn’t doing so well anymore. Neither are his neighbor’s businesses.

And each of them keeps giving their sons $5,000 per week in allowance. Gotta keep up with the Joneses, right? This whole bad economy thing will figure itself out; no big deal.

It doesn’t.

Well, Dad can charge the neighbors to borrow his lawn mower. That’ll make some money. Maybe hold a bake sale. Everyone likes a $10 brownie, right?

Turns out people don’t like $10 brownies. Who would’ve guessed? They don’t show up to your bake sale. And you keep losing money.

“Hey Billy, could you come in here for a moment, Dad wants to talk to you?”
“Sure, Dad, what’s up?”
“Ya know how I was really stupid and gave you a $5,000 allowance? And then was even stupider when the economy tanked and I kept giving you a $5,000 allowance? See, I’m having second thoughts about that. And so are all the parents in the neighborhood. We’re gonna need to do something about this.”
“What!? No way, Dad! I’ve been making that money. I’ve been helping around the house, cooking dinner, that was the deal. I want that money.”
“Um … go to your room Billy!”

Welcome to the 2011-12 NBA season ladies and gentlemen.

I don’t think I have to break down the story for you. If you read through it, you understand – Billy is obviously the players and Jim is the owners.

So where does that leave you, the reader? Well if you barely managed to get through that convoluted story it’s probably because you didn’t really care about the participants. Sure, something intriguing was going on, but you weren’t exactly sure you cared. You’re a good NBA fan.

And if you gave up (which would mean you aren’t reading this), then you’re the vast majority of casual NBA viewers.

There’s your analogy, Commissioner Stern. Tread lightly.

Follow New York sports editor Mark Osborne on Twitter @MetroNYSports.

The post Dear NBA, no one will miss you appeared first on Metro.us.

They are — despite many potential holes due to free agency — a leading contender for the Super Bowl. For two straight years they’ve fallen a game short of a chance at the Lombardi Trophy, but there is a sense from the Jets that this is the year they get over the hump.

“Well, we have been there twice and they say third time is a charm so hopefully.  We feel very strongly that we can do that and we feel the same way,” tight end Dustin Keller said. “As Rex said, we are going to win the Super Bowl and we have all the ability in the world to do it.  It’s just a matter of getting over that hump, winning that game and hopefully winning a Super Bowl for the second time, but we definitely have the ability to do that.”

The offseason proved to be a stumbling block towards building that Super Bowl-caliber team. Due to the lockout and the restrictions on using team facilities, there were no offseason workouts, organized team activities or a mini-camp. This meant that the Jets were in the same position as every other team in that they needed to police themselves and form their own offseason plans independent of the team.

Mark Sanchez held a “Jets West” camp in California during the spring, bringing together the offensive skill position players for three days of workouts and bonding. Nose tackle Sione Pouha organized some workouts in western New Jersey for the defensive line, including rookies Mohammad Wilkerson and Kenrick Ellis. And about a dozen players worked out together for several weeks at TEST Sports Clubs in Martinsville, N.J. in an effort to be physically ready for the season — whenever that was.

While they couldn’t put on pads, the Jets are confident that physically they’re entering camp some of the best shape of their lives.

“I think guys will be in, probably in some the best shapes of their lives. Will they be in football shape? No, because even in past seasons when we had offseason workouts, as soon as you go to football camp and put the pads on, it’s totally different,” guard Brandon Moore said. “Football shape’s a little different. There’s so many facilities and performance centers, and all of these different coaches out then there was in the past. So, guys are going to come in, probably in better shape than they were.”

Despite big pieces potentially leaving the team via free agency — names like Antonio Cromartie, Braylon Edwards and Santonio Holmes — there is a sense that this is the same Jets team coming back as years past. Most of the marquee pieces remain in place, and with head coach Rex Ryan returning for his third year with the team, the Jets have less rebuilding to do than most teams. That could be a potential advantage in this condensed offseason.

“I think that given that we haven’t had a full offseason, it is pretty important,” cornerback Dwight Lowery said. “Whatever situation we have had we always adjusted well so I think who we put out on the field will be ready and be able to play football and everything will take care of itself.”

Follow Kristian Dyer on Twitter @KristianRDyer and for all your New York sports news follow @MetroNYSports.

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The Jets cut salaries of all their employees by 25 percent when the lockout officially began — including general manager Mike Tannenbaum and head coach Rex Ryan.

Johnson said at the time he would pay back the money if the regular season began on time.
“At the beginning, we realized that asking people to take 25 percent pay cuts at this time would be a tremendous hardship. It was a shared sacrifice in a period where we had unknown financial conditions,” Johnson said. “I don’t think anybody was happy about it.”

The Miami Dolphins have announced they will do the same. 

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That’s what the next few days should feel like, now that the NFL has ended its five-month labor dispute. The timeline is fast and furious as teams try to cram days into hours and weeks into days.

“This is a long time coming, and football’s back,” commissioner Roger Goodell said yesterday.
As you read this, trades are being pursued, free agents are being wooed and draft picks are getting playbooks. The schedule for acquiring new players has been shrunk from a month to just 10 days.
Hopefully teams haven’t been sitting back enjoying “Entourage” reruns over the past few months.

Coaches will have less than three weeks to make key personnel and strategic decisions. Who goes? Who stays? What kind of defensive scheme? The NFL is officially in a speed rush.

And training camp … well, that starts tomorrow for some teams. Of course, that will also have a different look. Under the new CBA, traditional two-a-days are banned, meaning teams can no longer pound each other to a pulp. If they choose to practice twice a day, the second one will be without pads — no exceptions. It’s part of the league’s new player safety guidelines.

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Now that NBA owners have joined its football brethren with a lockout of its own, the main sticking point from the owners – particularly the small-market ones – is that the rich are getting richer, not only monetarily but with stacking their rosters.    

Thanks to the alleged behind-the-scenes complicity of James and his superfriends — Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — joining forces in Miami, the league was basically sent over the edge of no return. When James decided to jettison small-town Cleveland for the glitz and glamour of South Beach, it was the straw that broke the Collective Bargaining Agreement’s back because it once again showed that the small market clubs couldn’t compete.  

James’s defection nearly crippled the Cavaliers while strengthening yet another major market. Sure, The King wasn’t alone – Carlos Boozer dissing Utah for Chicago and Carmelo Anthony forcing Denver’s hand in a trade to New York are other examples – but it was mostly James’s and the Heat’s arrogance that stockpiling a roster and fleeing to bigger markets was the only way to build instant winners.

This type of never-to-be-proven collusion basically forced the league to reexamine how teams are doing business. Commissioner David Stern stated that thanks to the mismanagement of several teams and the fact that star players seem to be calling the shots, it’s ruined the balance of the league and caused a great divide between the haves and have-nots. In fact, according to Stern, 22 of the 30 franchises were losing money and with no end in sight, the lockout was deemed “inevitable.”  

Billy Hunter, Executive Director of the NBA Players’ Association, basically agreed with Stern – about the only time that sentence will be read for the foreseeable future.   

“We’ve been anticipating this for two-three years,” Hunter said, once the lockout became official. “[Now that the lockout has been enforced] maybe now we can really begin to negotiate.”  

Unlike NFL owners, who are trying to split $9 billion in revenue with the players, the NBA owners are crying poverty. Their biggest gripes are how to share $4 billion in revenue, trying not to have teams relocate [Sacramento Kings] or contract [league-owned New Orleans Hornets], and trying to wrest back control from the players, who are now seemingly dictating how teams are being built in this new era of stockpiling.  

Free agency changes the face of NFL teams on an annual basis but the league doesn’t have the same problems as the NBA. Relocation may eventually come up once Los Angeles builds a new football stadium but there isn’t a call for contraction because teams aren’t able to hoard talent anymore due to the hard salary cap. The NBA Players Association’s unwillingness to accept a hard cap – the old CBA called for teams to be given a dollar-for-dollar “luxury tax” penalty if they went over the soft cap – is what turned out to be the downfall of most mismanaged teams. While NBA franchises were handing out tens of millions of dollars to mediocre players [Eddy Curry, stand up], NFL teams like the Giants mostly rounded out their roster with good, cheap, base-salary players like Ahmad Bradshaw, who earned only $550,000 while giving the squad a great return on their investment [1,235 yards rushing and eight touchdowns].   

Plus, once an NFL team is done with a player they can simply release him with no more financial ties to him, save for his signing bonus. Meanwhile, NBA teams can waive a player but still be on the hook for the remainder of his salary. Guaranteed contracts have turned out to be a godsend for NBA players but hellacious for NBA owners.   

Naturally, NBA owners want to replicate what the NFL has — including a “franchise tag” — while NBA players have no such desire to go that route.    

“They’re asking for a deal that is worse than hockey, which is considered to the be the worst CBA deal in sports history,” snarled San Antonio Spurs forward Matt Bonner, who is also a Union Executive Committee Member.   

NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver disagreed with Bonner’s assertion that the owners are trying to cripple the union and basically said the league office is trying to save the owners from themselves.   

“The expired CBA created a broken system that produced huge financial losses for our teams,” Silver said. “We need a sustainable business model that allows all 30 teams to be able to compete for a championship, fairly compensates our players, and provides teams – if well managed – with an opportunity to be profitable.”     

The NFL’s hard-line date to settle their conflict is July 15 because anything after that means training camps get pushed back and pre-season games start getting missed, which most importantly means real money starts getting lost. The first such exhibition is the Hall of Fame Game, August 7, which means to avoid a public relations nightmare – and most importantly to the players and owners — lost revenue, they’ll certainly figure out how to divvy up the pie.  

The NBA, however, may be a different story. Many pundits believe this is a battle that may not end until early 2012 – or maybe miss the entire 2011-12 season altogether. Stern has precedence in this matter before and has stated he’s unafraid of losing actual games or alienating the fans, so the hard line has already been drawn in the sand.    

“I’m not scared. I’m resigned to the potential damage it can cause to our league,” said Stern, who added that teams will be fined $1 million if they have contact with players. “These things have a capacity to take a life of their own and you can’t predict what will happen or where this will lead.”   

The NBA now faces its first work interruption since the 1999 season when the league and player’s union didn’t come to an agreement until the 11th hour, in mid-January. The league was forced to have a shortened season – from 82 games to 50 – resulting in a mad dash to the playoffs, culminating in what Phil Jackson once snidely dubbed as the “asterisk championship season” for the Spurs.    

Things look far bleaker for the NBA than the NFL, but if you’re an eternal optimist it should be noted the last time the NBA had a lockout, New York made the Finals. Perhaps there is a silver lining for Knicks fans afterall.   

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