NBA owners back off slightly on hard salary cap, but players are unimpressed

With the clock ticking toward the expiration of the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement June 30, Commissioner David Stern on Tuesday announced owners have backed off slightly from their prior demand for a fixed salary cap.

The significance of that move didn’t impress Lakers guard Derek Fisher, president of the National Basketball Players Assn., who said after meetings in New York that “we’re still just really far apart on the largest issue of [a] hard salary cap.”

Stern clarified his definition of a “flex cap” that would allow teams, through exceptions, to spend more than $62 million a year in players’ compensation up to a certain, unspecified figure that amounts to a hard cap. Teams such as the Lakers have previously been allowed to exceed a soft cap number, although they were also on the hook to pay luxury-tax penalties.

Stern maintained the NBA owners’ “desire to go as far as we can to avoid a lockout,” adding Tuesday’s offer might not be the league’s last before July 1 but that the “cupboard is getting barer and barer,” and that it is “virtually the best shot we think we have” to stop sports fans from enduring simultaneous labor stoppages in the NBA and NFL.

Although the NBA players agreed to endure the reduction of millions of dollars in a five-year proposal Tuesday, owners are seeking a 50-50 split of basketball revenue, according to Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver.

Stern said the owners’ proposal would lock players into a 10-year contract in which total player compensation would not fall below $2 billion a year, less than what was paid this season, when players received 57% of $4.2 billion in revenue in the expiring deal.

“The owners, to a person, feel that this is what we have to give,” Stern said.

The request for such a steep giveback so close to June 30 leaves many observers convinced a work stoppage is inevitable, although the sides agreed to meet again Friday in New York.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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