Dallas » NBA commissioner David Stern addressed reporters Saturday for the first time since a Friday negotiating session following which Players Association executive director Billy Hunter said the owners had torn up their collective bargaining agreement proposal.
Stern said the NBA had documented losses to the union projected to be $400 million this season and $200 million in each of the previous seasons covered by the current CBA.
"Our response is you can denounce it, you can tear it up, you can burn it, you can jump up and down on it," Stern said of the league's proposal, "as long as you understand it reflects the financial realities of where we are."
Hunter said the union would return with a proposal of its own, although he offered no timetable for doing so. The current CBA will expire after the 2010-11 season amid widespread fears of a future lockout.
"If you would like to have your proposal, as long as it comes back and deals with our financial realities, that's OK with us," Stern said. "That's fine with us. In fact, that's what we'd like to do."
Stern said he was happy to see the group of 11 All-Star players who attended Friday's session and expressed his displeasure with league executives who have been quoted anonymously in recent weeks disparaging players in connection with CBA talks.
One such executive told CBSSports.com that if LeBron James and Dwyane Wade objected to the new reductions to max contracts, James could play football and Wade could be a fashion model.
"They won't make squat and no one will remember who they are in a few years," the executive was quoted as saying. Those comments were e-mailed to players around the league by Hunter. Stern called such comments "cowardly."
Stern declined to address specifics in the league's proposal, which called from everything from shortened contracts to the effective creation of a hard salary cap. Hunter said owners were seeking to implement the new CBA in time for the 2010 free-agent summer.
"I always thought that given the potential changes that needed to be made," Stern said, "having an extra season to do it would make things a little easier for us, but the proposal that we gave was for the end of next season.
"But we also said we could make certain adjustments if we did it sooner, but that's up to the players."
Skilled labor
Deron Williams was unable to win the skills contest for the second time in three years, losing to Steve Nash in the finals as part of All-Star Saturday night. Williams had a clean run before getting tripped up trying to complete an outlet pass.
He needed five tries to hit it, with Nash then playfully attempting to block Williams' layup bid after it became impossible to match Nash's winning time of 29.9 seconds. "I thought I had it, man. If I would have made that pass, I was there, I was gone," Williams said.
Williams' record winning time of 25.5 seconds from 2008 still stands. Oklahoma City's Russell Westbrook and Milwaukee's Brandon Jennings didn't survive the first round Saturday. Nash went from lighting the Olympic torch to a skills contest victory in 24 hours.
Nash left Vancouver, British Columbia, and arrived in Dallas around 7 a.m. in time for All-Star practice and said he was operating on little to no sleep. "But it makes it OK when you win a résumé-builder like this," Nash joked.
Briefly
Williams made an appearance Saturday on behalf of Nike and had a meet-and-greet with a Chinese businessman after the skills contest. He said he hadn't gotten a good night's sleep since Monday night before the Jazz played the Clippers. ... Former Jazz guard Morris Almond went 1-for-8 with two points and three turnovers in the D-League All-Star Game.
