noveldrama
Chapter 866 866 536 Chairman Yu Decides to Ruin His
Chapter 866 866 536 Chairman Yu Decides to Ruin His
?Chapter 866: Chapter 536: Chairman Yu Decides to Ruin His Reputation_4 Chapter 866: Chapter 536: Chairman Yu Decides to Ruin His Reputation_4 So, a few days later, the negotiations broke down again.
NBA Commissioner David Stern announced the cancellation of the regular games for November.
An entire month of games being canceled meant that every person in the league, whether owner or player, had lost 1/8 of their income.
“We all share this hope, but in light of the breakdown of negotiations, we won’t have a complete NBA season,” Stern said.
He also reiterated his warning that the longer the lockout dragged on, the more severe the proposals could become, as the league needed to compensate for the loss of hundreds of millions of US dollars.
“We are going to have to recalculate just how severe the losses are,” Stern said. “The next proposal will reflect the huge losses that are stacking up right now.”
For Yu Fei, what had happened and what was about to happen felt like a surreal dream.
He indeed had brought the NBA back to its pinnacle last season.
But rather than the NBA’s pinnacle, it would be more accurate to say it was the pinnacle for big-market teams like Seattle and Los Angeles.
They earned everything, while the small-market teams gained nothing; they chose to tear up the CBA agreement on the eve of a new television broadcasting deal. Was this a madness from which there was no return, or was it an explosion of the contradictions between the growth of big and small markets?
With the regular games for November already canceled, it was almost impossible for the lockout to end in December.
And once the lockout extended into 2011, the complete cancellation of the entire season became a possibility.
This was no longer about whether the players were willing to make concessions; the problem was that the imbalance in income distribution among the owners could not be adjusted through self-regulation and hence, they turned their knives on the players.
Derrick Fisher faced a historic decision.
Would he accept a 47% income distribution?
If he accepted, there was no doubt that he would go down in history as the most incompetent players’ union president.
If he didn’t accept, then the players under his leadership would need to risk not playing for a year for the sake of fair income distribution.
Yu Fei obviously no longer wished to be involved in this matter. After a brief comeback, he announced his support for all decisions made by the players’ union. He would always stand with the players’ camp, and now he was off to his special training and to prepare for his movie that he had planned long ago.
Kobe gossip about possibly joining the CBA surfaced.
The media revealed that the Shanxi Team had offered Kobe a sky-high contract.
Kobe’s team confirmed that there indeed was such a matter, but it wasn’t a sure thing; Kobe was considering all options.
The lower-tier players started to pressure the union to end the lockout ASAP.
The mid-level players had enough savings to last through this period, and therefore, they were the more steadfast opposition.
It was the top-tier players who, after Yu Fei stepped aside, began to schedule their personal activities.
Only stars like Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade, who aspired to be part of the players’ union leadership, continued to participate in the negotiations.
November 14
The players’ union announced that it would disband to form a trade association, a step in preparation for filing an antitrust lawsuit against the NBA.
Subsequently, Stern announced the cancellation of all games before December 15, and he threatened Fisher that if a new agreement could not be reached before the New Year, then the entire 2010-11 season would be canceled.
The new agreement meant that the players would have to make concessions on every single option.
Revenue sharing would drop from 57% to 47%, the maximum contract lengths from 5 years to 4 years, and there would be further additions to the luxury tax, mainly to curb the monopoly of the big markets.
Fisher, coming from the lower rungs, decided to bear the humiliation for the lower-tier players, but the backlash that his decision provoked was far from what he desired.
At that time, Yu Fei was in New York.
In addition to preparing for his movie, he also had to carve out four hours a day for training.
Agent Arne Trem called Yu Fei.
“Derrick Fisher is going to kneel before the capitalists!” Trem said with absolute certainty. “He’s been bought off!”
Yu Fei did not believe that Fisher had been bought off by the League, but he agreed that dropping revenue sharing from 57% to 47% was enough to nail Fisher to the pillar of shame.
Yes, this move would get the lower-tier players back to work, but mid-level and top-tier players who suffered income losses would not let him off the hook.
“So what?” Yu Fei asked casually. “Is the lockout over?”
Who knew, Trem replied in a chilling tone on the other end of the line, “Quite the opposite.”
“The lockout is just beginning.”
Hearing this after 162 days of the NBA lockout was truly exhilarating.