NBA hearing adjourned for 9 days
Decision on guaranteed contracts may not come until early October
Posted: Tuesday August 25, 1998 08:09 PM
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Stern (right) and the NBA owners may be liable to pay some $800 million worth of salaries due to 220 players with guaranteed contracts AP |
NEW YORK (AP) -- The NBA's guaranteed contracts arbitration hearing is
going to take a lot longer than expected.
A nine-day adjournment was announced Tuesday, meaning a verdict might not
come until October when training camps are due to open.
Tuesday was supposed to have been the final day of the two-day hearing.
Instead, three additional days have been added, September 3, 4 and 8.
Arbitrator John Feerick will have 30 days to render his decision, which
could eat up a huge chunk of the time the sides would have had to work out
a new collective bargaining agreement and possibly start the season on time
November 4.
Training camps are scheduled to open October 6.
The league said September 3 was the next mutually agreeable date for the
owners, players and arbitrator, although the union claimed commissioner
David Stern's vacation plans and the start of the semester at Fordham
University, where Feerick is a law school dean, necessitated the nine-day
adjournment.
The hearing lasted for another 6 1/2 hours Tuesday, for a total of 14
hours over two days. Union lawyer Ron Klempner was the only witness on Day
2, and lawyers for each side also spent time arguing the admissibility of
certain documents -- including a contract containing unique lockout
language signed by Sacramento Kings center
Olden
Polynice in 1994.
Having a longer-than-expected hearing before Feerick is nothing new for
Stern, deputy commissioner Russ Granik, union director Billy Hunter and
their lawyers. When Feerick held the Latrell
Sprewell hearing last February, it was supposed to last four days but
went nine.
"Our position hasn't changed. We want to litigate and resolve this issue
as soon as possible on behalf of our players. We're looking forward to
resuming the hearing," Hunter said.
This hearing concerns the union's claim that owners should be liable to
pay some $800 million worth of salaries due to 220 players who have
guaranteed contracts for the upcoming season.
Lawyers for the league contend employees never get paid during lockouts.
The union says NBA owners should have protected themselves, as baseball
owners do, with contract language making specific mention that players
would not be paid during a lockout.
"In baseball, that was a component of the owners' strategy. They began
inserting lockout language into guaranteed contracts in 1988 and 1989 in
anticipation of a work stoppage in 1990," said Eugene Orza, general counsel
for the Major League Baseball Players Association.
Major league owners eventually imposed a lockout in the spring of 1990,
but that dispute was settled and all 162 games were played, meaning no
player lost any salary.
In the only other baseball lockout, in 1976, there were no guaranteed
contracts to fight over, Orza said.
When hockey players were locked out in 1994, they did not seek to be
paid. Nor did NBA players who were locked out in the summer of 1995.
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