What is a lockout in basketball?

Answer 1

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman stood in New York on Sept. 15, apologizing to millions of fans while informing them the league has no choice but to lock out more than 600 of its players.

The entire NHL board of governors backed a lockout plan after hearing recommendations from Bettman and executive vice-president and chief legal officer Bill Daly during a meeting earlier in the day.

The league's current collective bargaining agreement with the Players' Association, which was extended twice in 1997 and '98, expired Sept. 15 at midnight ET.

"It is my somber duty to report that NHL teams will not play at the expiration of the CBA until we have a new system which fixes the economic problems facing our game," Bettman said during an afternoon news conference.

What does this mean? Read more...

What exactly is the collective bargaining agreement?

The collective bargaining agreement - which expired on Sept. 15, 2004 - is an arrangement negotiated between the NHL Players' Association and the owners that sets forth the rights and obligations of the players, the teams and the NHL.

So what does that mean for the upcoming NHL season?

It means there will be no hockey until the union and the league negoiate a new collective bargaining agreement.

No hockey? What does that mean?

Unlike in 1992, the players are not on strike. Instead, the owners have locked out the players like they did a decade ago. In 1994, the owners locked the players out for 103 days before a new labor contract was agreed upon. The 1994-95 NHL season didn't start until mid-January.

Who is negotiating this new contract?

While each side will have a team of representatives, the primary voices at the negotiating table will belong to Bob Goodenow, the NHLPA's executive director, and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. Goodenow and Bettman also brokered the NHL's last collective bargaining agreement.

Those talks between Goodenow and Bettman were difficult and mostly acrimonious. Some observers have suggested the personal relationship between the two men is still contentious, and are concerned that the bad blood could affect the current round of negotiations.>

What is at the root of this burgeoning crisis?

Like most labor negotiations, this is about money. Bettman argues that NHL revenues aren't keeping up with increasing player salaries and that has to change if the league is to survive.

According to Bettman, players' salaries have increased 240 percent since 1995, while revenues have increased only 160 percent. The average NHL salary in 1994-95 was $733,000 US. Coming into the 2002-03 season, it's just shy of $2 million per season.

Owners say that, mainly due to the rapid increase in player salaries, many of the NHL's teams are in financial trouble. A recent report in the Wall Street Journal claimed that more than two-thirds of the NHL's 30 franchises suffered losses last season.

The league says total losses amounted to nearly $300 million US last season. Those numbers were seemingly confirmed by Arthur Levitt, a former chairman of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, who issued a report on the NHL's finances in early February.

Levitt's study, commissioned by the NHL, found league's teams combined to lose $273 million US last season. The NHLPA characterized the report as "simply another league public relations initiative." They also questioned the legitimacy of the report because Levitt was paid by the NHL.

In the past, the NHL's players union has been skeptical of Bettman's claims, saying that teams have under-reported the money they bring in by tens of millions of dollars.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Ted Saskin, the union's director of business affairs, said the financial numbers being put out by the League are "garbage in and out."

All 30 NHL teams are required to provide a detailed list of hockey-related income and expenses. Saskin claims some of those reports weren't comprehensive.

"There are a number of significant categories missing," he told the paper. He also added that "a number of teams understated cable revenues and didn't report concessions."

Levitt said he believed that NHL teams were accurately reporting revenues.

Why have salaries increased so much?

Bettman believes owners are so competitive that they will do whatever it takes to win, including paying players big salaries.

Goodenow, on the other hand, says the market dictates salaries and that it isn't the players' responsibility to protect the owners from themselves.

"The players are paid what the owners believe they are worth," Goodenow said, "and every time an owner signs a contract with a player, it's like a vote on what that player's value is. From our perspective, it's pretty straight forward. There's no mystery at all."

Why didn't the owners tackle the issue of rising player salaries during negotiations for the last CBA?

They thought they did.

Signed after a four-month lockout, the current CBA, with its rookie salary cap, restrictions on free agency, and new arbitration rules was hailed as a victory for the owners.

Owners believed that limiting how much a player could earn in his first few years and preventing him from becoming an unrestricted free agent until after he was 31 years old would provide a sufficient drag on escalating salaries.

Hindsight shows the owners were wrong.

Creative contracts featuring signing and performance bonuses have largely neutered the effects of the free-agency and rookie restrictions.

So what do the owners want this time around?

Bettman says instead of going after free agency, NHL owners want to establish an economic framework for the game that gives them "cost certainty."

"If you look at the leagues that seem to be performing well, franchise by franchise from an economic certainty, they all have some measure of cost certainty," he said.

Exactly what Bettman means by "cost certainty" is unclear, but most assume it refers to a salary cap or some other method of tying player salaries to team revenues. The NHL is the only one of the four major sports that does not have any mandated form of salary control.

The league's numbers indicate that 76 percent of total revenues last season went to player costs. After coaches' salaries, travel expenses, and building costs are paid, that doesn't leave much in the way of profits.

By comparison, the National Football League spent 64 percent of its total revenues on player costs, Major League Baseball 63 percent. About 58 percent of the National Basketball Association's revenues went to play players.

The NHL wants a system that will guarantee no more than 60 percent of its revenues are spent on player costs.

"Everyone knows the game needs a new economic system," Bettman said. "I promise a new system can and will be attained."

While owners say "cost certainty" is a must, the players insist a hard cap will never be accepted.

"We won't be agreeing to a salary cap," said Goodenow. "We made adjustments to the system the last time -- to the entry-level system and the salary arbitration rates and everything else.

"The players believe very strongly that some type of marketplace needs to be established that we feel is fair and equitable for everybody."

In part, the players refuse to accept the principle of "cost certainty" because they are suspicious of the NHL's accounting. They believe the owners are under-reporting revenues and over-reporting losses. The NHLPA is reluctant to accept a system that fixes players' salaries to a percentage of revenue when they aren't sure whether NHL's numbers are accurate.

What do the players want?

The NHLPA favors a revenue-sharing system.

The union proposed a four-point plan featuring a luxury tax, player salary rollback, changes to the entry-level player system and a revenue-sharing plan

The union proposed an immediate five percent wage rollback on all existing contracts, a move that it claims would generate over $100 million in savings for the owners.

The players also advanced changes to the entry level system that it believes would add an estimated $2 million in savings per team for an annual total of $60 million.

The players also proposed a luxury tax on team payrolls exceeding a negotiated level that would restrain club spending on player payrolls and raise an estimated $30-$35 million annually for redistribution to teams that need money.

Finally, the players advised the owners that they are prepared to modify their prior revenue-sharing proposal to distribute revenues from high-revenue clubs to lower revenue clubs in the smaller amounts previously suggested by the league.

What are some other issues?

While the salary cap will be the most contentious issue on the table, it won't be the only one.

Another big issue is revenue sharing. Both sides agree that something must be done to shore up the small-market and Canadian teams, but have different views on how this can be achieved.

Owners also want to tighten restrictions on how much rookies can make. Performance bonuses have made the existing rookie cap, a major part of the 1995 agreement, almost irrelevant.

Some of the other issues up for discussion include: arbitration, lowering the age for unrestricted free agency and the NHL's participation at the Winter Olympics in 2006.

Answer 2

Usually a disagreement between players and owners about contracts and a salary cap. The owners lock the players out of the stadium. The owners usually work together.

Answer 3

It's an act when the league is shut down because of lack of money or other reasons. This year, the NBA is going under a lock down. How sad... ):