In our October 2011 issue of the Master Negotiator, we talked about the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) lockout and the inability of the Commissioner of the NBA, the team owners and the players to pull together a win-win outcome after months of on-going negotiation.
The three areas where both sides could not find agreement were: the division of revenues between the owners and the players, the structure of the salary cap system and the length of the players’ contracts.
A harsh reality the owners brought to light and remained steadfast was in the fact that 22 of the 30 NBA franchises were losing money each year and ultimately, the owners needed a Collective Bargaining Agreement that would help them run their teams like a business that consistently makes a profit.
In October’s newsletter, we made a few predictions. First, we said that the players would never gain back the money they were losing during the lockout by not coming to agreement. Second, that it would also be hard for the owners to quickly come to agreement because the league is composed of “haves,” the teams from big profitable markets, and the “have nots,” the less profitable teams from smaller markets. And third, we predicted that the lockout would be resolved in late December or early January.
