Stern Projects NBA To Lose $400 Million In 2010

First off, let's revisit NBA union VP Adonal Foyle's response to last week's CBA offer made by league owners:

It's ludicrous. This [new proposal] has gone too far. It wants a hard cap, it basically will create no middle class and which, in effect, means none of the Bird rules would apply.

ESPN.com had more details on the proposal:

A person who had seen it told The Associated Press on Thursday that it called for first-round picks to have their salaries cut by about one-third, would reduce the minimum salary by as much as 20 percent, and would guarantee contracts for only half their value.

Also, the total value of a maximum salary would drop sharply, as would the total years players could sign for, and the players would see a reduction in their share of the basketball-related income, of which they currently receive 57 percent.

In simplest terms, players would be making far less money. Perhaps Foyle's support of the current agreement prompted his harsh response, as it is his belief that not much needs to be changed.

I think when you look at the current CBA as it stands, it benefits both the players and owners. This is an agreement where we can [quibble] with different things within it, but it's an agreement that gives some things to both parties involved.

Quibble with different things? While that may be an ideal course of action for the players, the owners, as well as commissioner David Stern, have a different agenda in mind. Preferably, they'd like to avoid continuously losing hundreds of millions of dollars every season. Yes, hundreds of millions.

Stern said that the NBA projects losses of about $400 million this year, and while he said that he expected the players' union to disagree with the owner's original proposal, he stated that it was merely meant to serve as a wake-up call of sorts:

The right adjectives were thrown around, and our proposal appropriately denounced. Our response is, 'You can denounce it, tear it up, you can burn it, you can jump up and down on it, as long as you understand that it reflects the financial realities of where we are. And if you would like to have your own proposal, as long as it comes back and deals with our financial realities, that's OK with us. That's fine with us. In fact, that's what we would like to do.

Now we all know where the owners were coming from. As always, the primary conflict here lies in the willingness of the players' to buy into the financial success of the league as a whole, as opposed to the wealth of their individual contracts. Given the initial response of the players' union, this is going to be a long, difficult process.