With the 2017 CBA negotiations looming large over the coming NBA season, there’s been a lot of debate about whether the league, the owners, and the players’ association will be able to effectively avoid another work stoppage like the one in 2011 that whittled the season to 66 games.
NBPA director Michele Roberts has said publicly that she’s optimistic the two sides can prevent a repeat of that scenario. Now, it appears commissioner Adam Silver agrees with that assessment. Via Ira Boudway of Bloomberg Business Week:
While we and the union have agreed that we’re not going to talk publicly about the substance of our discussions, neither side has made it a secret that we’re talking and that the goal is, of course, to avoid any type of work stoppage whatsoever. I feel fairly confident that, based on the tone of these discussions thus far, based on the sense of trust and the amount of respect among the parties, that we should be able to avoid any kind of public labor issue and that the things we need to get done will get done behind closed doors.
Silver and Roberts have a much more amicable working relationship than former commissioner David Stern and previous NBPA director Billy Hunter did during the last round of negotiations. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be significant disagreements about several topics that will inevitably come to the forefront, such as the age limit, certain rule changes, and how to keep divvying up the massive influx of revenue from the cable deals the league signed last year. Nonetheless, Silver and Roberts have remained steadfast in their quest to hammer it all out before next summer rolls around.
