Posts Tagged ‘NBA’

The NBA’s locked-out referees are on the verge of a return to work next week after an unexpected meeting on Tuesday in New York, headlined by commissioner David Stern and Lamell McMorris of the referees’ union, has led to a tentative labor agreement.

Sources close to the process said that the referees are scheduled to vote on the latest proposed agreement Friday after the sudden progress in negotiations, which comes weeks after both Stern and McMorris separately withdrew from the negotiations leading into the lockout.

Tuesday’s agreement in principal, sources said, has the support of the referee union’s executive board and is expected to be ratified with scant resistance after the NBA’s 57 tenured referees watched replacements from the D-League and WNBA work the entire exhibition season. Ratification in New Jersey would then be followed by a weekend training camp for the refs to get them ready for the start of the regular season.

“A lot is happening behind the scenes,” one source said.

“Things look promising,” said another source.

League officials declined comment Tuesday night and will not officially address how quickly veteran referees will be ready to call games until after Friday’s vote, but multiple sources close to the process said that the veterans will indeed be back at work in time for Tuesday’s opening night even though their regularly scheduled September training camp was one of the early casualties of the lockout.

When apprised that the refs’ union and league officials reached common ground on the differences that previously held up a deal, NBA Players Association chief Billy Hunter told the Associated Press: “I think it’s great. We’d welcome them back.”

LEHI, Utah — The owner of the Utah Jazz’s NBA Development League team wants to see Michael Jordan go 1-on-1 against Bryon Russell one more time.

Brandt Andersen is offering a $100,000 donation to the charity of the winner’s choice if he can get Jordan and Russell to play a game of 21.

Jordan’s jumper over Russell in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA finals gave the Chicago Bulls a 4-2 series win over Utah. Jazz fans still insist Jordan pushed off Russell.

During Jordan’s Hall of Fame speech, he said he was motivated by Russell’s trash talk toward him during his first retirement.

Andersen says he has spoken to Russell and left a message for Jordan through a mutual friend. Andersen’s suggestion: Jordan vs. Russell during halftime of the Utah Flash’s home opener.

Michael Beasley rejoined his Miami Heat teammates Monday following a monthlong stay in a rehabilitation facility to address substance abuse and other issues.

Beasley took part in a voluntary offseason workout and quickly drew rave reviews from coaches, many of whom were able to visit and work with him during the rehab stint. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra personally saw Beasley three times in the past month, and someone from the Heat staff was with the second-year forward daily.

“We want to bring him back to the family, bring him back in here,” Spoelstra said. “We’re 100 percent behind him. We’ve invested in him, not just financially but emotionally. We’ve spent a great deal of time with him this summer, trying to develop him on the court but also off the court. He’s ready. He was excited to be back here.”

Beasley, who starred at Kansas State for one season before jumping to the NBA, was not available for comment Monday. No specifics of his treatment have been offered, with both the Heat and people close to Beasley citing privacy concerns.

The No. 2 pick in the 2008 draft will be with the team when training camp opens officially on Sept. 29. Players kept in touch with Beasley through text messages and Twitter over the past month.

“I have no concern at all,” Heat forward and captain Udonis Haslem said last week when asked about Beasley. “He’s working out, he’s staying in shape, he’s keeping himself sharp. It’s not like he doesn’t know the plays and with Beas, if all else fails, he’ll shoot it. So he’ll be fine when he gets back.”

Beasley entered an in-patient Houston facility sometime around Aug. 20. A series of posts on his Twitter account around that time sparked concern for his well-being, including entries that said “Feelin like it’s not worth livin!!!!!!! I’m done” and “I feel like the whole world is against me I can’t win for losin.”

He also was fined $50,000 last year for being a hotel room where the scent of marijuana was detected during the league’s rookie symposium.

NBA referees expected a lockout to be “imminent” after negotiations Wednesday between their union and the league failed to produce a new collective agreement.

After rejecting the league’s latest offer by a vote of 57-0 at their meeting in Chicago on Wednesday night, the union and league exchanged further counterproposals Thursday, with the union claiming to have made $1 million in additional financial concessions.

But the talks ended at an impasse, and lead union negotiator Lamell McMorris said there remained a crucial unresolved dispute over the same retirement benefit issue, relating to severance pay, that caused commissioner David Stern to abruptly end a formal bargaining session nine days earlier.

A source close to the talks said there were other unresolved issues, too, including the use of D-League and WNBA referees in regular-season NBA games, a separate pension issue concerning employer vs. employee contributions to referees’ retirement plans, and myriad other comparatively minor dollars-and-cents issues pertaining to salaries, per diems, and medical and dental benefits

“It looks like a lockout is both imminent and unavoidable,” McMorris said. “We have suspended dialogue again today. We’ve been in constant communication, but it’s not going to happen.”

“I am not optimistic,” lead NBA negotiator Rich Buchanan told ESPN.com. “Based on what happened today, I’m surprised and disappointed.”

Technically, the referees are not yet locked out.

But their training camp is scheduled to begin Sunday in New Jersey, and McMorris said the 57 current referees would not attend if they do not have an agreement in principle to replace the labor agreement that expired Sept. 1.

The first exhibition game is Oct. 1 in Utah, and the NBA faces the prospect of using replacement officials for the first time since 1995.

The lead negotiator and spokesman for NBA referees announced Thursday that the referees expect to be locked out when exhibition play starts Oct. 1 after contract negotiations with the league broke down this week.

Lamell McMorris, in a press release, also asserts that the NBA has begun to contact replacement referees to work in the preseason and perhaps the early part of the regular season.

NBA lead negotiator Rick Buchanan, in response, said Thursday that talks collapsed because the referees’ union changed its mind after agreeing to accept the league’s proposals on retirement benefits. Buchanan added that “all the union has offered to us is minimal concessions that are neither consistent with economic reality nor with the information it is currently distributing to the media.”

The statements were issued in the wake of an ESPN.com report Tuesday, when the latest negotiating session between the referees and league executives came to an abrupt end in New York, significantly increasing the possibility that replacement refs will be needed in the NBA for the first time since the 1995-96 season.

“We understand that everyone in the country is facing tough times, but the NBA is continuing to make money, sign large marketing and television contracts and expand their business internationally,” McMorris said. “We have attempted to negotiate in good faith and give substantial cuts to get the referees back to work.”

In Thursday’s editions of the New York Times, McMorris said he was “frustrated and disappointed at the unprofessional and disrespectful manner in which Mr. Stern ended what was a productive negotiating session” on Tuesday. McMorris also echoed the growing belief that Stern is taking a hard line with referees “to send a message to the players,” whose own labor contract with the NBA expires during the 2010-11 season.

In a separate interview with the Times, Stern told the newspaper that negotiations with the referees have “nothing to do with the player negotiations” and insisted that Tuesday’s talks, as Buchanan said, collapsed because McMorris’ union reneged on previously agreed-upon facets of a new contract.

Said Buchanan on Thursday: “Everyone at the NBA has a great deal of respect and admiration for our referees. With that said, the actions and statements of their union over the past 24 hours have been extremely disappointing. Personal attacks and inaccurate assertions in the media are hardly constructive methods of bridging differences or ultimately making a new agreement.

“It is and has always been our goal to reach a new collective bargaining agreement with the referees that is fair and appropriate, and we remain hopeful this can still be accomplished prior to the start of what promises to be another exciting NBA season.”

The NBA’s contract with its referees expired Sept. 1, but no further talks are scheduled between the sides with only 20 days before the league’s Oct. 1 exhibition opener (Denver at Utah).

Asked if the dispute can be resolved before the season starts, Stern told the Times: “Right now, I’m not optimistic.”

ESPN.com reported Aug. 25 that the league is seeking an across-the-board reduction of 10 percent to a referee budget that costs an estimated $32 million. In his statement Thursday, McMorris said that the referees have proposed a reduction to the budget of $2.5 million, which includes freezing salaries for the 2009-10 season in addition to reducing travel costs by 15 percent and per diem by 7 percent.

“In our proposal, we sought reductions in the NBA’s referee program expenses consistent with cuts we have made in other areas of our business — all in response to the current economic climate,” Buchanan said. “At the same time, we sought to soften the impact of these changes on the referees by preserving their existing levels of salary and playoff compensation and agreeing to a two-year term that would provide them with another opportunity to negotiate in the near future if the economy improves.”

One source with knowledge of the league’s thinking has openly questioned the referees’ leverage, telling ESPN.com last month and reiterating this week that he expects the refs — in this depressed economy — to ultimately accept the additional reduction from $2.5 million to $3.2 million when faced with the reality of not working.

The referees have scheduled a meeting in Chicago next week to discuss their next steps, with their annual training camp in New Jersey — scheduled to start Sept. 20 — on hold.

It appears more likely that the league will be setting up a training camp for replacement referees for the first time since the 1995-96 season, when refs were locked out for more than two months before reaching an agreement to return to work in December 1995.

Two current vets refs, Bill Kennedy and former NBA player Leon Wood, are notable examples of 1995 replacement referees who wound up working in the league full time.

The referees have argued against the severity of a 10-percent budget cut by insisting that the late hours they work and difficult travel conditions they endure — in addition to the injury risks and daily scrutiny they’re subjected to — make them unlike any other group of NBA employees. The refs’ union has also protested the reductions by questioning the raises it says have been awarded to three senior league officials in New York — Ron Johnson, Bernie Fryer and Joe Borgia — who oversee the referee program.

McMorris also represents Major League Baseball umpires, whose labor contract expires Dec. 31. But the baseball negotiations, in the words of president of the umpires’ union Joe West, are on track “to get a deal done well in advance of that date.”

SOURCE: espn

There should be no doubt that Spain’s Ricky Rubio has an incredible change of direction and is not afraid of backing the ball out when he’s calling a play.

Future NBA point guard Rubio developed cold feet for Minnesota and the 18-year-old said he’ll wait another two years before entering the NBA.

This after it appeared that the Timberwolves, who drafted Rubio No. 5 overall, had worked out a deal to get him out of his contract in Europe.

“I don’t think the disappointment should overshadow the big picture,” said David Kahn, VP of basketball operations. “Ricky is the youngest player in the draft. He’ll be 20 in two years. I can think of a lot worse things that can happen to us as a franchise. We tried and came very close.”

Jim Souhan of the Minneapolis Star Tribune says Rubio saga illustrates the long road for the Timberwolves.

Bethlehem Shoals of The Baseline looks at players Minnesota could have taken at No. 5.

But are Rubio and Kahn selling us wolf tickets in place of Wolves tickets?

Is Kahn putting on the best face possible and is Rubio trying to maneuver himself to a different NBA team?

New York fans are hoping LeBron will be playing for the Knicks instead of against them in 2010-11

For the greatest free-agent class in NBA history, the magic number is 10, because according to our forecast, at least 10 teams will have significant cap space in the summer of 2010.

And it appears there will be at least 10 big names on the open market as unrestricted free agents: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudemire, Shaquille O’Neal, Carlos Boozer, Paul Pierce, Manu Ginobili, Dirk Nowitzki and Joe Johnson, along with aging but still potent names like Ray Allen, Marcus Camby, Derek Fisher, Jermaine O’Neal and Tracy McGrady. And that’s not to mention Yao Ming, Tyson Chandler, Richard Jefferson and Michael Redd, each of whom has the option of joining the 2010 class, as do potential restricted free agents Rajon Rondo, Rudy Gay and LaMarcus Aldridge. And last but not least, Kobe Bryant still could choose to hit free agency in 2010.

So is it merely a coincidence that so many teams have hoarded cap space, and that other teams are trying to create space to join the party? You do the math.

Of course, the giant game of musical chairs that appears to be looming has already created quite a frenzy, as fans, journalists and the teams themselves try to imagine all the ways it could play out.

To read the full summer forecast, click HERE

Allen Iverson twittered again Wednesday, saying the Grizzlies have made him an offer — and Memphis says it’s true.

Grizzlies general manager Chris Wallace told ESPN.com Wednesday night that negotiations between the sides have heated up to the point where the Grizzlies have made their first formal offer.

“We’re heading into the home stretch before the season, and we have had interest in Allen all summer,” Wallace said. “We’ve been in touch on a fairly consistent basis and had dialogue with his agent, Leon Rose, since the beginning of free agency.”

Iverson is one of the most high profile, unrestricted free agents remaining on the market, and there were reports in recent days that he was leaning hardest toward reuniting with his old coach, Larry Brown, with the Charlotte Bobcats.

But the Bobcats are for sale and are under severe financial constraints, and Iverson’s other strongest suitor — the Miami Heat — is already more than $3 million into luxury tax territory and has not been willing thus far to make Iverson a substantial financial offer.

Memphis is approximately $3.5 million under the salary cap for the 2009-10 season and thus could easily outbid Charlotte and Miami for the services of the 10-time All-Star, whom Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley sees as a strong gate attraction.

Wallace would not disclose the size of the offer or what kind of a time table he is on.

“We’ll probably add another guard at some point, but we don’t need to rush to do it,” Wallace said.

Iverson played in only 57 games between Denver and Detroit last season due to injury and averaged a career-low 17.5 points per game.