but what is the hard cap versus soft cap issue
well if it's a soft cap you're gonna have continuing increased salaries with mid level exceptions
and there's all kinds of ways
around the cap you got the bird exception which allows you to sign your players you have on your
roster
for a certain amount of time to whatever you want to keep them
uh... although that's been reduced also uh... the last time around
but i think the hard cap is basically what football has and what hockey has
and uh... i think that's really what the n_b_a_ probably would like to see i don't know if
that's realistic
but i think that's where they're trying to head
uh... i don't think the cap matters as much as the sharing of revenue
how much of the revenue are the players gonna get and how much are the teams going to get
and that's really what it all comes down to you can use caps and all these other things
but you know if at the end of the year you know you had a good year
if at the beginning of the year you had one dollar and at the end of the year you had ten you know you made ten grand
uh... and i think that's really the bottom line to all this
who's getting what share of the revenue
and i think that's what the battle's going to be about in my opinion but i don't even
know that for a fact I'm sorta just
talking like I do in any business
I've
I've heard this before not
these words but this
same concept
do you think that the issues will be able to be resolved so that everyone
uh... is relatively happy with the
the future of the n_b_a_ between the players and the owners
i certainly hope so the NBA is in the business to play basketball putting on basketball games
the players are in the business to play basketball
eventually they will
get it right but it may be you know it may be uh... painful
and may take some time
what you said will everybody be happy
i think the makeup of the different sides of this issue there are some people that are never
going to be happy no matter what the deal is sure
so i i think
everybody's not going to be happy the question is does it work for both sides
uh... frank mentioned uh...
larry fleisher
i think it might be
might be a good thing to go back a little bit in time sure and in nineteen eighty three
the uh...
n_b_a_ and the players association were at the end of a collective bargaining agreement they had actually
extended it a year but they were at a point where they had not made any progress
and larry fleischer uh...
gave the league notice if there had not been a uh... new agreement in place
by
march thirty first of that year so just about the end of the season
there would be a strike
of course it was uh... a brilliant the timing was brilliant on larry's part
because
uh... in normal course players contracts are paid over six months starting in october and they had
been completely paid all the players had been paid under their contracts
they hadn't yet played the playoffs and made the playoff monies which
depending on how far they go is generally a step down in terms of game
per game costs but the team makes a lot of money 0:03:06.719,0:03:10.099 but for that very reason
the teams make a fair amount of money
though up against that deadline
the players association and the n_b_a_ reached an agreement
two or three days before that deadline
and they instituted for the first time
what we now call a salary cap it's it was six or seven iterations
ago it's been uh... it's been
a modified and refined
but what happened was larry fleischer had been shown
as frank referred to
the books
and he was a very smart guy but he was also a courageous guy
he looked at them and he realized
that we had a very serious problem here for the league
for the continued success of the league there were five teams that might not open the next season
and what he recognized as
rational people would but not necessarily those in the midst of this kind of
uh...
uh... adversarial negotiation uh... he realized that if the league
fails
the players fail
they're too tied together they're you know if the league can't succeed
the players can't succeed even though they have contracts
that say they're worth they're getting a lot of money
nobody's there to pay them it doesn't do them any good
so he was
willing to take that step and it was a courageous step
there had been no salary cap in any sport up 'til then
and he was party to a very innovative approach
that's maybe the kind of situation we're in now we don't have a strike
uh... scenario we may have a lockout scenario and and hopefully people can
do the same things that larry did which is larry fleisher did which is to go and look at understand it
and take a bold step