The Executive Director of the NBA Players Union (Billy Hunter) said in an interview today that negotiations on the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) are at a standstill, and that he is “99% sure” there will be a lockout. ([URL=”http://www.sportingnews.com/nba/feed/2010-10/nba-labor/story/union-chief-99-percent-sure-nba-will-lock-out-players”]source[/URL]) What’s a lockout? Well, Hunter said that [URL=”http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=17986″]there will be no strike[/URL], which is what unions normally do when they don’t get what they want, so a lockout would be done by the team owners. That would be like if a car manufacturing plant and the auto-workers union couldn’t agree on a contract, so the car manufacturing plant locked the workers out. It would effectively be the same as a strike because there would be no basketball, but kind of backwards.
How would this affect recruiting at UK? If it were to actually happen (which I don’t see), a “worst-case” scenario would mean that nobody gets drafted next year, which means all of Kentucky’s players come back for another year. While that’s hardly a bad thing, many schools recruit based on the expectation that some players will be going into the draft, and if nobody is drafted then they are going to have too many players and not enough scholarships. Kentucky should still be fine, but the 2011 class would definitely be full. Cal has 10 scholarship players this year (not counting Polson, because he is supposed to be a walk-on) out of an allowable 13. Harrellson is a senior, so even if everybody else stays, UK will have 4 scholarships available for the 2011 class. Those are already taken by Gilchrist, Davis, Teague and Wiltjer. Maybe Cal isn’t holding off recruiting another player to see who’s available – maybe he’s holding off recruiting to see if he’s going to be keeping his entire team whether they’re ready to go pro or not. How awesome would that team be? Maybe we should encourage a lock-out.
