That glimmer of optimism we had a few weeks ago when we thought talks were heating up, quickly died. The news then was that while the players made concessions on the amount of basketball related income (BRI) they would be willing to take, the owners reportedly wouldn’t budge on their demand for a had cap. Translation: a stalemate. But it looks like that has changes as result of yesterday’s meeting.
NBA commissioner David Stern offered a new proposal to the players’ union in Tuesday’s labor talks that modestly budged from the owners’ long-held position on establishing a hard cap, according to league sources familiar with the negotiations.
Sources told ESPN The Magazine’s Ric Bucher that the owners did not offer players a finite annual team limit on salaries but as of Tuesday night were willing to relax the cap only if the following conditions are met:
• The “Larry Bird exception,” which allows teams to exceed the cap to retain their own free agents regardless of their other committed salaries, is limited to one player per team per season.
• The mid-level exception, which the league valued at $7.4 million last season and could be extended by as many as five years, is reduced in length and size.
• The current luxury tax, the $1-for-$1 penalty a team must pay to the league for the amount it exceeds the salary cap, is to be severely increased
Source: ESPN.com.
