Michael Jordan "is the owner most determined to bury the basketball players union financially" [View All]

[Better Believe It]

MJ sells out players with hard-line stance
By Jason Whitlock
November 5, 2011

Now that NBA superstars have decided to fully engage in the lockout negotiations and threaten union decertification, David Stern and ownership have decided to unleash their token minority owner from the house to play hardball. According to The New York Times, Michael Jeffrey Jordan, the greatest player of all time, is the owner most determined to bury the union financially. Jordan allegedly wants current players to take a 10- to 20-point basketball-related-income pay cut.

This is the ultimate betrayal. A league filled mostly with African-American young men who grew up wanting to be like Mike is finally getting to see just who Michael Jordan is. He’s a cheap, stingy, mean-spirited, cut-throat, greedy, uncaring, disloyal slave to his own bottom line.

And now Jordan, as the owner of the Charlotte Bobcats, wants to be the face of ownership greed and vindictiveness.

Why would basketball players and black people continue to shower adoration on a man who has never once stood up for anything that doesn’t positively impact his financial bottom line, particularly when it’s a man who has made billions off the love of inner-city kids?

Read the full article at:

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/Michael-Jordan-siding-with-David-Stern-in-NBA-lockout-a-selfish-betrayal-110411


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Report: Jordan emerging as hard-liner
FOX Sports
November 5, 2011

Michael Jordan, once the NBA's greatest player but now just another money-losing owner of a small-market team, is adamant about not giving any more concessions to players in their ongoing labor dispute, according to The New York Times.

Jordan, the Charlotte Bobcats owner, has emerged as a leader of a faction of 10 to 14 hard-line owners who are determined to cap the players' share of basketball-related income at 50 percent, the Times reported Friday.

About 10 to 14 owners, led by Jordan, are expected to reiterate their stance to NBA commissioner David Stern, which might make it more difficult to negotiate an end to the lockout.

The players received 57 percent in the last labor deal and have so far offered to reduce that share to 52.5. However, the hard-line owners wanted the players’ share capped at 47 percent and are upset with the 50-50 proposal, according to the Times.

Read the full article at:

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/Michael-Jordan-NBA-lockout-hard-stance-Charlotte-Bobcats-owner-110411/


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Michael Jordan leads NBA owners: 50/50 too much
by Ben Golliver
November 4, 2011

Just when you thought that the possible decertificiation of the National Basketball Players Association was the biggest threat to the 2011-2012 NBA season, the Greatest Basketball Player Of All Time is reportedly stepping into the forefront, reminding everyone that the world of hoops still revolves around him.

NBA legend Michael Jordan, the majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats, is reportedly leading a band of owners who believe that a 50/50 split of Basketball-Related Income is too much for the owners to give up.

Assuming the report's accurary, it's a fairly stunning about-face for Jordan. In 1998, just 13 years ago, Jordan famously told Abe Pollin, then owner of the Washington Wizards, that he should sell his team if he can't make a profit, rather than take a "hard stand" against the players. Fourteen years later, with the situation reversed, Jordan now so embodies hard-line ownership that he has become the group's public face.

This is the ownership's response to the idea that the threat of decertification might serve as leverage to improve the owners' offer to players during Saturday's negotiating session. It produces a clear choice for the players: Take a 50/50 split, which you say that you don't want, because it will be the best offer made, period. And, please, consider the fact that there is a large, vocal minority pushing the offer back the other direction if you decide not to accept it. In other words, this information attempts to incentivize the players to cave now rather than to cave later. It appeals to any insecurity they might have about the direction of the negotiations, presents 50/50 as a reasonable alternative to the season-spiking chaos that goes along with decertification, and attempts to extinguish any hope that 52.5 percent, or even 51 percent, is a future possibility.



Michael Jordan

http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/22748484/33105950