By Mike Kahn
CBS SportsLine Executive Editor
Oct. 26, 1998

The 400-player stroll is coming to New York, and NBA owners are blinking.

They

Players union president Patrick Ewing and executive director Billy Hunter appear to be representing a group that is as unified as ever. (AP)

should be.

Threats and promises have been blossoming as the NBA lockout of its players amid acrimonious collective bargaining approaches its fifth month. We already know the first two weeks of the regular season have been canceled, and the league is expected to announce this week that the loss of games will stretch through all of November.

The players met en masse Thursday in Las Vegas with a unified front, appearing stronger than ever behind executive director Billy Hunter. The prevailing perspective is the next step is to come to New York and confront the owners and the NBA front office.

And all of that comes after Monday's ... double top-secret, Sergeant Schultz knows nothing, Darryl Dawkins is still dunking, Dennis Rodman got two more tattoos . . . meeting between the two sides. Word is thirtysomething people were there, and progress was made.

Maybe.

This could be fun.

THIS IS WAR OVER THE OWNERS' DESIRE to have a hard cap that will limit the amount of salaries doled out every year rather than retaining the soft cap and the Larry Bird exception, which allows for teams to pay as much money as they can for their own free agents.

Owners don't want to be paying out more than 57 percent of the basketball related income as they did this season. They had expected it to be closer to 52 percent, a discrepancy that allowed them to terminate this agreement with two years left.

"If the NBA insists upon a hard cap, there very well may not be a season," Hunter said. "We're prepared to deal and be reasonable."

You probably already knew that, however vague it may be. It has been written and discussed enough. There is this matter of a luxury tax, which the players seem to think is a means of negotiation, if only because it is their answer to the owners. If there is a luxury tax payback to the league and other teams when a salary exceeds a certain level, then it will coerce owners to keep pay down.

Yeah, right. And we've seen what it has done to baseball. The rich teams get richer and the rest of the teams keep hoping exceptional managers can get young players to play over their heads. Of course, the spectacular season of seasons masked all those problems. Nevertheless, there remains a huge disparity between big- and small-market teams in baseball -- and the NBA already is struggling with that.

The luxury tax would only serve to create a greater disproportion between the haves and have-nots. And the original proposal from the players put only two players -- Michael Jordan ($33 million) and Patrick Ewing ($20.5 million) -- in the category of a luxury tax. The NBA countered with anyone who made at least $2.6 million.

And yet that appears to be the area in which the owners are bending.

SO WITH THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS IN New York to meet Tuesday and Wednesday -- beginning with the rendezvous of the owners' labor committee from nine teams on Tuesday -- the players claimed up to 400 would show up Wednesday for a grand meeting of the minds.

Does it really matter that Jordan is unifying with the rest of the players? Now that Karl Malone and David Robinson have elected to join the rank-and-file after entire careers of ignoring all of this, does that further galvanize these players?

The leadership is touching. That they are speaking on behalf of younger players is good. But they can afford to. Those guys are millionaires. They don't have to work ever again if they don't want to. The implication in recent comments of this being comparable to slave labor is beyond belief. Remember, the average salary last year was $2.6 million. Granted the median was far below that. Still, you get the point.

As the minimum salaries soar beyond $300,000 a year, we're not callous enough to discount the limited number of years of income most players have. We're also not denying the owners tend to be greedy, hogs seeking only to feather their already opulent nests. Then again, they are the owners!

Which brings us to the grandest point of all. Do owners of professional sports teams have a different responsibility than those of other businesses? Most accept that as a fact. Others just lie to the fans and the media, just as they do to make their other ventures successful.

WE ARE WATCHING CAPITALISM IN ITS purest form. That's what the luxury tax will perpetuate, and the players don't care. If you have a salable product -- even if it is your own body -- then it is your inalienable right to get as much money to perform as possible.

The scariest term that had been sidestepped for the most part until last week is decertification of the union. It's something the agents and union attorneys began promoting in 1995 when both sides settled for the agreement they just dumped. Now the move to decert is coming back loud and clear. It would eliminate the collective bargaining laws because the union would be gone. Lawsuits from players then would begin to come out of the woodwork.

It would get very ugly. There would be no 1998-99 NBA season. Make no mistake, it is the worst thing that could happen to the NBA at this moment. Perhaps it is that detestable d-word that is compelling the owners to get off their high horse.

They are on the brink of disaster. NBA commissioner David Stern has all but said if the season doesn't begin by mid-January, it will be canceled. The NBA All-Star Game, scheduled for Feb. 14 in Philadelphia, is obviously in serious peril, too.

Who would be the All-Stars if they've only played a dozen regular season games -- out of shape and in disarray from last-minute free-agents signings? Calling it an All-Star Game would be a misnomer.

This is a mess, and it needs to be settled this week. Let's see ... if there are 400 players vs. 29 owners and some groupies on both sides for good measure, it's tough not to go with the players when Wednesday's game unfolds.

We'll take the players and give you, uh, 12 points.