Key points from NBA’s labor fallout

In a letter to all players on Wednesday, NBPA president Derek Fisher said the league's informal 50/50 offer was too low for the union to consider. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

• The most plugged-in reporters on the scene Tuesday in Manhattan all came away with the same general narrative: The two sides are very, very close, at least when you consider the dueling offers they made informally during sidebar conversations. NBA commissioner David Stern and deputy commissioner Adam Silver made their informal offer public, telling reporters they pitched an even 50/50 split of basketball-related income. That would still be a huge drop-off from the 57 percent the players received under the old deal — about $280 million per year, and rising — but it also represents a major step up from where the owners started last year and from the 47 percent slice they offered players in the league’s last formal proposal on Tuesday.

Characterizing the league’s informal offer as a 50/50 split is reportedly a bit simplistic, since it apparently consists of a floor at 49 percent (for the players) with the possibility that total player salaries could jump to 51 percent.

The players reportedly came back at the owners with their own informal proposal: A floor at 51 percent, with the possibility of a jump to 53 percent, depending on owner spending habits and other variables. Take those two informal proposals together, and as Ken Berger of CBS Sports and others note, the players and owners are only two percentage points apart — about $80 million in the first year of the deal. That’s not chump change; that $80 million would rise as league revenues rise, and would amount to nearly $500 million over a six-year agreement. That’s a lot.

But it’s a far cry from the many billions that separated the two sides initially, and it’s a gap so small that it would seem ludicrous for the sides to ditch a full season — or any of the season, really — over it.

But here’s the thing: The players are not even acknowledging that they made an informal offer of any kind. They didn’t acknowledge it during their press session Tuesday, and they didn’t mention the reported informal offer in a letter union president Derek Fisher and executive director Billy Hunter wrote to players this morning. That letter says players offered to reduce their share of basketball-related income from 57 percent to 53 percent per year, on average, over the course of a new CBA. The letter then goes on to mention the league’s informal 50/50 offer, which Fisher and Hunter deem unacceptable.

So why are the players proceeding as if their informal offer, reported all over the place, does not exist? More to the point: In a negotiation in which they are going to lose ground, at least if you consider the old CBA as a starting point, why is the union not ready to jump at a 50/50 split, provided the league sticks by its commitment to a soft-ish salary cap?

There are loads of possible reasons: The union senses a chance now, as we approach Monday’s deadline to cancel the first set of regular-season games, to wring an extra percentage point or two from a group of owners who might worry the union is actually ready to miss significant time. The union could be working to hold off hard-line agents who are pushing for a line in the sand at 52 percent (or higher) or for the decertification of the union if Hunter can’t bring in a number at that level.

Regardless, the union is implicitly questioning the public perception that the two sides are as close as they might have been Tuesday night.

• A key line from the NBPA’s letter to players on Wednesday says the union’s formal offer — the one that would give players 53 percent of basketball-related income — would also “maintain the current salary cap and luxury-tax levels.” If Fisher and Hunter mean “current” as in the cap and tax structure of the old CBA, that is troublesome, since owners have floated a bunch of proposed changes, including a harsher luxury-tax system, a reduced mid-level exception and other tweaks that would make it more difficult for teams to exceed the cap. If “current” means the owners’ most recent proposals, we’re in better shape.

It’s important to remember that those system issues remain a moving target. It is not as if the players and owners have agreed 100 percent on how the cap and tax will look in the next CBA and have only the revenue split left to settle. The two issues move together. The union has made it clear that it’s happy with some of the concessions the league has made on the system, but it remains worried those concessions are conditioned on a revenue split the players cannot accept. In other words: Does the league’s proposed cap system work the same way with a 50/50 split as it would with the 47/53 split that still represents the league’s formal proposal? That’s an important question, and if the answer is bad, it could prolong the negotiations.

• As Henry Abbott of TrueHoop wrote Tuesday night, the longer it takes the two sides to agree, the more likely it is that a judge or National Labor Relations Board official tosses a monkey wrench into the process. The NBA sued the union in federal court in August, and the first major oral arguments in that case have been scheduled for Nov. 2. That suit seeks a bunch of things, including a declaration that the lockout is legal, and that any antitrust suit the players bring (after decertifying the union) would be groundless. The union has moved to dismiss the suit, though the judge hearing the case has so far not made that motion public. The NBA’s suit names both the union and several players as defendants, including members of the union’s executive committee (Chris Paul, Maurice Evans, Derek Fisher, etc.) and 2011 draft picks Jimmer Fredette and Charles Jenkins. A source close to the case says the union is fighting to get the players’ names removed from the suit, since they do not support the decertification of the union and thus would not file the kind of antitrust suit the league is trying to block.

There’s also the matter of the union’s NLRB case, in which they have accused the league of failing to bargain in good faith. After some delays, a source tells SI.com the NLRB’s New York office, which has first crack at deciding whether the Board should pursue the union’s case, issued its confidential recommendation and forwarded the file on Monday to the Board’s national offices in Washington. If the Board decides to take on the union’s case, it can file a federal suit against the league and ask a judge to issue an immediate injunction that would end (at least temporarily) the lockout. There is no set timetable for when the NLRB might move on the matter.