A perilous four-month standoff between N.B.A. players and owners has been reduced to a four-day window, with an ultimatum that might destroy the 2011-12 season.
Negotiations on a new labor deal failed again Saturday night, this time with specific consequences: The players have until Wednesday afternoon to accept the league’s final offer, or be dealt a significantly worse alternative.
They are almost certain to reject both proposals, throwing the league into turmoil.
“Right now, we’ve been given the ultimatum,” the president of the players union, Derek Fisher, said in a news conference early Sunday morning. “And our answer is: that’s not acceptable to us.”
The next move made by the players might be the one they have dutifully avoided since the lockout began — dissolving their union. A powerful group of agents and players are clamoring for such an action, which would shift the battle to the courts and perhaps buy them the leverage they need. But it could take months to execute, leaving little hope for salvaging the season.
The league’s fate should be clearer by the close of business Wednesday. That was the deadline given to the union by Commissioner David Stern to accept the owners’ offer: effectively, a 50-50 split of revenues and a package of harsh restrictions on team spending and free agency.
If the union balks, Stern said, the owners will withdraw it and instead offer the players a 47 percent share, combined with a so-called “flex-cap” system that, in practice, imposes a hard cap on payrolls.
“We hope that this juxtaposition will cause the union to assess its position and accept the deal,” Stern said.
Union leaders seem unlikely to reconsider. “But hope springs eternal,” Stern said, “and we would love to see the union accept the proposal that is now on the table.”
This latest negotiating session, the 21st of the lockout, lasted for eight and a half hours, ending around 1:30 a.m. Sunday. Under the guidance of George Cohen, a federal mediator, the parties actually narrowed the gap on some crucial items before the talks collapsed.
The players — who had vowed not to accept less than 52.5 percent of league revenues — proposed a 51 percent share, with 1 percent devoted to aid retired players. That moved them within 1 percent of the league’s longstanding proposal.
On Saturday, the owners proposed a “band” that would pay the players 49 to 51 percent, depending on revenue growth. But the union said it amounted to a 50 percent offer, because the threshold for growth was so high that the share would never get to 51. Jeff Kessler, the union’s outside counsel and chief negotiator, called the 49 to 51 band “a fraud.”
Yet it was ultimately the mechanics of a new system, not the revenue split, that killed the talks.
The league’s standing proposal would eliminate spending options for teams that pay the luxury tax, by banning them from sign-and-trade deals and the use of the midlevel exception. At Cohen’s suggestion, the league proposed a “mini-midlevel” that would start at $2.5 million — half the value of the full midlevel — and would be limited to two-year deals.
The N.B.A.’s proposal also called for an additional penalty — a so-called “repeater tax” — on teams that exceed the tax threshold three times in a five-year span. The union is open to the concept, but not at the steep rates proposed by the league.
The net effect of the N.B.A.’s proposal, the union said, would be to eliminate the highest-spending teams from acquiring top talent — thus devastating the free-agent market.
Union officials have been willing to compromise on the revenue split pending some degree of compromise from owners in other areas.
“The big story here is they want it all,” Kessler said, growing more agitated with every sentence.
He said the repeater-tax provision, as proposed, would amount to a hard salary cap, something the union has opposed for decades.
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