I hope you’re sitting down – I assume you’re on the toilet – but I have some very shocking news for you – NBA Commissioner David Stern has set another deadline. I know, right, super scary dude. Anywho, Stern’s latest threat comes a week after he canceled the first two weeks of the 2011-12 season, costing the owners and players approximately $250 million each, which is ironic because the current gap in the labor negotiations is reportedly around $250 million total.
So what’s so special about today, Mr. Stern?
George Cohen tried to resolve the NFL’s labor dispute. Now he’s overseeing basketball’s negotiations for the first time. Stern wants immediate results, saying during interviews last week that proposals could get worse and more games could be lost without a deal Tuesday.
“If there’s a breakthrough, it’s going to come on Tuesday,” he told NBA TV. “And if not, I think that the season is really going to potentially escape from us because we aren’t making any progress.”
(Via the Boston Globe)
And if nothing happens today, you can forget about the two-week blocks that Stern previously mentioned, as he’s ready to cancel everything up to and including the Christmas Day games. Clearly I’m not an employee for the NFL or NHL, but I have to think someone in their scheduling departments must be making a few calls.
As always, I will point out that the lockout began on July 1 when the last CBA expired and the owners and players had zero meetings in July and just one meeting in August, before someone finally said, “Hey, we should probably try to get something done.” All the while, Stern and the owners have been blatantly misreporting their so-called concessions (you can’t give up what you never had) in their negotiations with the players, while the players’ agents have been pitting them against the union and pushing for decertification to preserve their desire to receive 53% of the basketball related income. It’s all just a big hoot, you see?
Thankfully, someone has stepped forward to be the voice of reason and logic in this mess, and that someone is Stephen Colbert.
