The NBA and the NBPA have reached an agreement to extend the window during which the league can terminate the Collective Bargaining Agreement, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. The previous 60-day period, which began when the season was suspended on March 11, had been set to expire. The deadline will be pushed back to September, according to Wojnarowski.
It may sound ominous that the NBA will continue to have the ability to “terminate” the CBA, but it’s more of a necessary formality at this point. The “force majeure” provision gives the league that power, but the NBA has no interest in taking advantage of it for now, since both the league and the players’ union want to resume the 2019/20 season in the coming months.
In order for that to happen, the Collective Bargaining Agreement will need to be restructured, so delaying this deadline gives the two sides more time to gather information on the league’s projected financial losses and to work through issues like next season’s salary cap and luxury tax thresholds, as Woj explains. When the time comes, the NBA and the NBPA figure to work together to negotiate the necessary adjustments to the CBA.
“This CBA was not built for an extended pandemic,” Silver said on Friday’s conference call with players, per ESPN. “There’s not a mechanism in it that works to properly accept a cap when you’ve got so much uncertainty; when we’d be going in next season saying, “Well, our revenue could be $10 billion or it could be $6 billion. Or maybe it could be less.”
Besides figuring out salary cap details going forward, the league and the players’ union will have to negotiate a number of other issues, including how the players will be paid for whatever portion of the 2019/20 season can be played, how free agency will work, and what the NBA schedule will look like in 2020/21 and beyond.
Can somebody please explain why they want to terminate the CBA ?
Some players want to hit the slopes this December, but are not allowed to for health reasons in the present CBA.
;)