NBA Players to Vote on Union Proposal : Pro basketball: They’ll approve collective bargaining agreement or decertify players’ association.

The NBA arrives at a crossroads today. Players will vote either to accept the collective bargaining agreement its union leaders reached with an owners’ negotiating committee or to decertify the same National Basketball Players Assn., as a group of unhappy players, inspired by their agents, is urging.

Decertification would undoubtedly result in lawsuits and at best delay the start of the season. It could even result in a long work stoppage that league officials warn could jeopardize the season.

About 420 players are eligible to vote--there is no exact number available, but it does not go beyond 425--at 44 regional offices of the National Labor Relations Board.

Players are eligible to vote if they were on a roster for more than one 10-day contract last season, but have not announced their retirement. Rookies are ineligible because they have not signed contracts and therefore are not officially considered part of the union.

Players can cast ballots today or Sept. 7, and the votes will be counted and the results announced on Sept. 12. All votes will be tallied that day, so there won’t be any “score” after today’s first session.

A simple majority will be enough for either side.

Not surprisingly, both sides are predicting victory.

Commissioner David Stern, suddenly on the same side as union leadership in an attempt to get the deal passed, said unofficial straw polls conducted by each team are “very, very, very encouraging.”

“The big issue, like with most elections, is getting out the vote,” Stern said. “We’re confident the vote will be yes, but we’re not going to make the boastful comments that the agents’ group seem to need.”

The insurgents have a different slant.

Marc Fleisher, representing the unhappy players, said 30 to 35 agents polled their own players, combined the results and found that decertification was leading by 18-19 percentage points.

Agent Jerome Stanley put his internal tracking at 160-60 to dissolve the union and said the balloting is “going to be a bigger wipeout than the 49ers and the Chargers.”

Feel free to distrust any straw poll. Even team personnel concede that some players, wanting to maintain positive relationships with their employers and their agents, may be saying one thing to them and another to the representative. The agent and the club president of one widely known Eastern Conference starting guard say they have both been told by the player that they have his vote.

The one thing most can agree on is that a big turnout is critical for passage of the collective bargaining agreement. The feeling is that the insurgents will vote because they want something changed, so league officials countered with their own encouragement: free transportation for every player to the nearest polling place, even if that means round-trip air fare from Europe for a vote that should take only seconds.

“That says to me they’re desperate,” said Fleisher, who predicts that only 50% of the players will vote despite the importance of the decision.

Alonzo Mourning, who along with Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing are the most prominent dissident players, was the first to accept the offer of free transportation, an obvious zing at Stern and union leadership. He will probably let the NBA foot the bill for a limousine ride to an NLRB office. At least one player in Los Angeles is expected to do the same thing.

Kurt Rambis, an active Laker for part of last season, will interrupt a vacation in Big Bear and take an hours-long round-trip limo ride to the Los Angeles NLRB office. And because Minnesota’s Brad Lohaus will be voting in Des Moines, Iowa, a representative for each side will travel there to monitor the moment.