There’s going to be a massive battle between ownership and players at the new collective bargaining agreement. Adam Silver has blatantly said that “player trade demands are a bad thing” in an interview with ESPN, ensuring there will be a fight over player empowerment at the 2024 NBA collective bargaining agreement negotiation.
There was always going to be a boiling point for the NBA owners over player autonomy, and it seems like the players have pushed their luck too far.
In what was rather an innocuous, run-of-the-mill Sportscenter style interview, Adam Silver took the first shot of the 2024 collective bargaining battle as he voiced the frustrations of all the owners and himself when he said that player trades “are a bad thing” and that “we’ve got to focus on that and getting everyone is honoring their agreements”.
Of course, he was saying this in his capacity as the NBA’s commissioner and he didn’t claim that was the view of all the owners (or any, for that matter), but the very nature of his job implies that is the case. I mean, he does work for the owners at the end of the day and is required to ensure the league operates in the best interest of the owner’s teams (and them by extension).
Therefore, it’s pretty much inevitable a lockout will happen as both sides (owners and players) seem set in their ways over player empowerment and autonomy. And we all have the Brooklyn Nets to thank for this.
The forming of the now-defunct Brooklyn “Big 3” of James Harden, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Durant is essentially the cataclysmic event that has spurned the owners into banning together and taking on the players union as these three individuals publicly, blatantly, and wrongfully destroyed the immediate futures of two NBA franchises over trade demands.
Harden is the worst offender of the three as he demanded trades from both the Rockets and the Nets in back-to-back stints, despite the fact that he was under contract for 2+ years with both teams prior to his demands.
Moreover, Harden disrespectfully showed up to the Rockets 2021 offseason workouts (the year he was traded) fat and out-of-shape (by the NBA’s lofty standards), practically sat out the Rockets season before the trade (he only played 8 games with Houston that year) and was awful (by his MVP standards) in the few games he did play with the Rockets.
He averaged just 24.8 PPG in the 8 games he played in Houston in 2020, even though he averaged north of 30.0 PPG and won the 2018 NBA MVP in the three years (2017, 2018, 2019) prior to the trade. Oh, and his departure left a team that was on the precipice of an NBA Finals debut in despair and ruin as the Rockets have missed the playoffs the last three seasons (including this year as they are currently bottom of the entire league).
Then, when he was with the Nets, he only played in 74 total NBA games in two seasons with the team before demanding a trade out of Brooklyn, which was granted in the now infamous Ben Simmons-James Harden deal. Plus, seeing how the Nets now are dropping out of the Top-4 in the East quicker than Harden leaving a franchise, it seems like he’ll be responsible for two ruined organizations.
As for Kyrie Irving, he forced his way out of Brooklyn just a few weeks ago with his bizarre, irate, and ridiculous off-court actions that saw him banned from Barclays Center (the Nets home court) at times because he wasn’t vaccinated, taking games off for silly reasons such as his sister’s birthday party, refused to play in the COVID bubble playoffs, and was suspended by the Nets for 8-games after some controversial remarks and posts this past fall before getting shipped off to the Dallas Mavericks.
And, we all know about Kevin Durant’s trade demand this summer and then his blockbuster move to the Phoenix Suns on trade deadline day, even though he resigned a 4-year contract with the Nets in 2019. Though, I will say that he was the most professional to the NBA, the Brooklyn Nets, and the Brooklyn Nets fans out of the three superstars throughout the whole ordeal.
Nevertheless, the way all of these players were able to evade the responsibilities and duties they agreed to in their extremely lucrative contracts obviously has not settled well with the owners and will probably result in a games-played stipulation for players to get max contracts in the future if Adam Silver is being serious with his statements.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see when the collective bargaining agreement runs out after the end of next season.
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