So What’s a Few Million Dollars Between Friends?

Fehr and loathing descended upon Caesars Palace last week as six-, seven- and eight-figure NBA workers staged a solidarity pageant to make up for the 15% of their salaries they’ll have lost when the league cancels the rest of November, which is money a lot of them need.

Attending, besides the game’s sun god, Michael Jordan, were sports-labor titans with experiences as disparate as Don Fehr and Gene Upshaw, directors of the baseball and football unions, respectively.

Of course, by consensus the NBA is better run than major league baseball, which is so dominated by its unions, its commissioner can’t tell the umpires what the strike zone is, and the NFL, where owners are so, uh, mobile, three of the nation’s largest markets don’t have teams.

Because NBA players are also the world’s highest paid athletes and have enjoyed a partnership with management that baseball and football can only dream of, one wonders why the hoopers should have been listening to Fehr and Upshaw, rather than the other way around.

In fact, Fehr and Upshaw proceeded to contradict each other.

Upshaw told NBA players to “decertify and soon,” presumably soft-pedaling the fact that after winning an antitrust suit, he made a new deal with the NFL, giving it the hardest salary cap in sports.

Fehr, meanwhile, advised not decertifying and sticking together to the end, as baseball players did in (shudder) 1994.

Afterward, National Basketball Players Assn. director Billy Hunter was asked what his members were supposed to make of that. Hunter launched into a standard reply--a chance to consider all options, etc.--but behind him, Washington’s Juwan Howard, one of about 20 stars flanking the podium, rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“That’s a good question,” Howard said later, noting he’d been wondering the same thing.

This union stuff is new to most of them. A few are conscientious, a lot are recent converts, but for some, the collective bargaining agreement is still fine print and why they hire agents. Take Penny Hardaway, who recently admitted he didn’t know exactly what the Larry Bird exception was.

(Hint: It’s the rule your agent has been counting on to enable Orlando to pay you whatever you want next summer, even if it’s over the cap.)

We’re still a long way from real life here. As with the owners, who’ll reap $5 million from TV while taking November off, the players’ “suffering” is only relative to their privileged lives. Locked-out steelworkers don’t get $25,000 checks on Nov. 15 for their share of the licensing fee for NBA merchandise, as most players will.

Nevertheless, the NBA has lost its precious partnership and it remains to be seen if it can get it back. The two sides are now so polarized, one little development has gone all but unnoticed:

With four negotiating sessions all summer, they are already agreed in principle on all major issues.

* The league wants to lengthen the rookie scale from three years to five. That’s OK with the union.

* The union wants minimum salaries boosted, especially for journeymen. That’s OK with the league.

* Even on the precarious issue of “cost certainty” (NBA term) or “hard cap” (union term), they’re tacitly agreed on a scheme, separated only by numbers.

The union, reluctantly, proposed a luxury tax, although (for negotiating purposes, of course) it set the figure at which it would start absurdly high, at $18 million.

The NBA, reluctantly, came back with a luxury tax, although (for negotiating purposes, of course) it set the figure absurdly low, at $2.6 million.

Both sides then ridiculed the other’s proposal and holed up to nurse their grievances. In NBA offices, there was word super-agent David Falk was going to Las Vegas to push for decertification. Falk, instead, came out against, along with the other great hawk of 1995, Arn Tellem.

For their part, agents stormed that if Commissioner David Stern insisted on a hard cap--a position he moved off two weeks ago when he made a luxury tax counterproposal--he didn’t have to wait until Dec. 15, he could cancel the season now.

Let’s just say it’s a good thing neither side had an army, navy or air force at its disposal.

Battle of Vegas: Billy’s Test

Hunter came to Las Vegas, still relatively unknown to his union, with the general notion that the agents still called the shots. Two days later, it looked like there was a new sheriff in town.

Hunter was hired after the union’s 1995 debacle. NBA people even claim he was required to swear he wouldn’t back down from Stern. Unknown at the time, the union got a bonus, someone who wouldn’t kowtow to the agents, either.

On a conference call after last week’s arbitration decision, three agents--Mark Fleischer, Mark Bartelstein, Don Fagan--argued passionately for decertification. As fear coursed through NBA headquarters about what the big guys might be up to, Hunter convened an agents’ meeting and advised sticking with the bargaining process. When it ended, Falk and Tellem were behind Hunter, docile as tabby cats and pleased as punch.

“I think this was very much a test for Billy,” said Steve Kauffman, a Malibu-based agent and one of six insurgents, along with Falk and Tellem, sued by the league in 1995.

“And I thought, frankly, that all hell could break out at this kind of a meeting because there’s a lot of agents with different kinds of players and he had to unify everyone. He had to rally everyone and he was able to do so in a very short amount of time. He was tested by a few agents and he handled himself very well.”

With Falk so happy, people began wondering if Hunter hadn’t been David’s man all along, but sources say the two have actually been fencing behind the scenes, as if to determine the new pecking order.

“Billy goes to great lengths to keep the agents away,” a union official said. “At the same time, he’s enough of a politician to solicit their views and listen to them.”

Hunter has been impressive, jaunty, unafraid, personable, comfortable in his role. That’s what the agents wanted all along, someone with the weight to confront Stern.

League officials, still wary of Falk mischief, remain skeptical. Said one, of the theory that Hunter consolidated his power in Las Vegas: “Do you really believe that?”

Yes.

The union, which had been hoping to get 100 players to attend, got more than half its 430 members, and almost all the marquee names. Of course, a union united behind a feisty director could mean a long, knock-down, drag-out fight.

Or as Steve Kerr, who is 33 and unsigned, put it, rejoicing in the new solidarity and wincing at the future at the same time:

“Part of me is very discouraged right now because I realize, this is gonna last a while.”

Battle of New York: Easy Dave’s Test

Or not.

We’ll soon find out if the men who run pro basketball can stop vilifying each other long enough to realize how close they are to a deal.

This isn’t the NFL in the ‘80s. When Upshaw decertified his union, players had token free agency, low pay and a divided union.

This isn’t baseball, where owners declared war so often, they turned the players no one thought could be unionized into a garrison state that would never realize when it had won.

The NBA has had a salary cap for years. Labor and management long ago agreed to a defined division of revenues and prospered together.

In truth, Stern loves a good fight on his own terms. His idea of negotiating goes 1) I lock you out, 2) Come, let us reason together.

Nevertheless, after months of stalling, league sources say Stern intended to start bargaining in earnest around Sept. 15, when both sides would be ready for give and take.

Instead, the union surprised him with its arbitration case. Then John Feerick surprised them all, taking a month to make his decision, paralyzing the process.

Ahead of Ferrick’s decision, Stern sent Hunter an olive branch in the form of a letter, asking to resume negotiations. Another surprise: The owners won--but nervy Billy replied coolly he’d get back to them.

Hunter wants to resume negotiations with as many of his players as want to attend, and all of Stern’s owners there. Hunter might believe Stern will remain implacable, but this is actually the commissioner’s chance to show the players he isn’t the union-busting ogre they have made him out to be.

Of course, the way to do that is to offer something tangible, like:

* Increased minimums for veteran journeymen, $700,000 after six years and $100,000 a year for every season after that.

* Bumping that $1-million exception teams get every two years to $2.5 million.

* A new luxury tax proposal, starting at, say, $4 million.

The $2.5 million and increased minimums are chump change to the owners but the issue for 40% of the union. Hunter won’t like the luxury tax number, but the package will make it plain Stern wants to deal.

Polarization comes with the turf, but you finally have to get down to business, particularly if commissioner, executive director, owners, agents and/or players aren’t too spoiled to realize how good they’ve got it. If they’re in conceptual agreement on the peace and still can’t make a deal, they’ll deserve every penny they lose and all the scorn they win.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

LOCKOUT: DAY 118

Exhibitions cancelled: 114

Games cancelled: 99

Laker and Clipper games cancelled: 7 each

*

IF ALL NOVEMBER GAMES ARE CANCELLED:

Total games lost: 194

Laker and Clipper games lost: 13 each