NBA commissioner Adam Silver and the team owners who comprise the league’s labor relations committee have been regularly meeting with NBPA head Michele Roberts and her staff in recent months to work on a new collective bargaining agreement, Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com reports. According to the scribe’s sources, those talks have been productive and there is optimism that the two sides may be able to work out a new deal by December. With either side having the ability to opt out of the current CBA after this season, progress on a new arrangement is good news for all parties involved. With the league’s new television deal reaping benefits for both the players and team owners, it is in the best interests of all to avoid a lockout and any potential of missing games while squabbling over a new agreement.
Here’s more from around the league:
- While the talks between the NBA and the player’s union continue, not everyone is convinced a lockout will be avoided. SB Nation’s Tom Ziller opines that unprecedented increase in the salary cap this offseason, and the resulting windfalls a number of players have received as a result, will embolden the owners to try and impose a number of stricter salary cap rules in an effort to increase their profits and team values.
- In a soon to be published study, Masaru Teramoto, an assistant professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine (h/t Tom Haberstroh of ESPN.com), found that back-to-back games that are played on the road are significantly more likely to result in an in-game injury, generating 3.5 times the injury rate as those played at home. “As much as possible, we would recommend that the NBA consider avoiding the back-to-back games on the road,” Teramoto said. “If there’s not much they can do with an 82-game schedule, it might be time to consider drastically changing the structure of the schedule and cut, say, five games from the season.” While the league has cut down on the amount of back-to-back games, two out of every three back-to-back games still occur on the road, Haberstroh notes.
- With the NBA set to open global basketball academies in Africa, China, India and Australia, Jonathan Givony of The Vertical examined how this will impact the league.