‘Pointing’ to a showdown

MELBOURNE (Paulo Kennedy’s View from Downunder) - The events of recent weeks suggest Basketball Australia (BA) and the National Basketball League Players Association (NBLPA) are on a collision course when their collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of this season.

Some public comments from prominent NBL players followed by a strange and ill-informed blog column quoting Boomer David Barlow - which clearly appeared to be written at the behest of the players - signalled the start of their campaign against BA, who run the NBL.

What’s the issue? The Player Points Cap (PPC) that all NBL teams must abide by. Before I go any further, here is some background for the uninitiated.

The NBL has had the PPC in place since 2003. Based on their statistical output from the previous season (or two in some instances), players are assigned a rating from 1-10 and clubs cannot exceed 70 points.

Before the 2009/10 season, the NBL tinkered with the system to remove the numerous exceptions that had crept in over the years, so that all teams faced the same restrictions when putting a roster together.

Those changes aimed to increase parity across the league and make it harder for teams to cheat the $1 million salary cap, with the PPC stopping teams from accumulating a disproportionate number of topline players in comparison with the rest of the league.

The system has been given partial credit for creating one of the world’s most even leagues. Almost every game is in genuine doubt before the first whistle is blown, and last season the bottom two teams pinched series wins off top two teams.

So what is the issue? I gave NBLPA President Jacob Holmes a call to find out.

“All our members have agreed that the main goal is to remove the points system,” he said.

“It’s come to the point after discussions with the Australian Athletes’ Alliance, where we’ve discussed the legalities of it (the PPC) with them and they support our view that it is unfairly restrictive on the players.”

Restraint of trade is the NBLPA’s claim, that by making NBL clubs juggle points ratings as well as salaries when compiling their rosters makes it more difficult for players to land at the club of their choice and limits the options of some players with unfavourable ratings.

Holmes believes clubs should take responsibility for managing their finances astutely and not ignoring the salary cap in their quest for a title.

“We’re definitely looking to ensure clubs are financially stable and the league is as even as possible, but at the same time we don’t think the points system is a necessary measure for those two things,” he said.

“The points cap was put in place by the league and clubs to try and find a way to help themselves not spend over the cap. We think the only people who are affected by it are the players who weren’t the ones spending over the salary cap in the first place.”

A salary cap has long been in effect in the NBL, but due to a lack of resources it was poorly policed.

The NBLPA wants a strictly enforced salary cap to achieve the objectives of the PPC. To achieve this where it wasn’t possible previously, its members are prepared to face far greater scrutiny.

“We understand that you can’t have a system like this if you have players who are secretly making deals on the side or aren’t willing to open up what their financial status is,” Holmes said.

He said the NBLPA’s members have committed to making personal finances available to an auditor so the NBL can accurately gauge player payments.

“It would have to be within a system that also maintained their privacy as well. We don’t want these figures thrown around the halls of the NBL. It would have to be through a specific service that could arbitrate independently,” Holmes pointed out.

“(But) I think it is all part of the transparency the NBLPA members are more than willing to provide.”

This storm is still brewing and will until the end of the season, but next week I will put both the PPC and the NBLPA’s claims under the spotlight to see what holds water and what doesn’t.

More importantly, I’ll see if there is some sort of compromise that could break what is shaping as a deadlock between players, the league and its clubs, something the slowly re-emerging sport of basketball can ill-afford Downunder.

Paulo Kennedy

FIBA

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