Originally Posted by
Rennadrel
Think about it this way. This is a negotiation, the owners have been on the defensive since the beginning because they know Fehr is by far and away one of the most hard line negotiators to ever represent a union in any business. He doesn't back down and won't advise players of accepting a deal that isn't fair to them, and that has been what has held a new CBA back for so long, fairness. The owners are literally taking everything from the players thinking eventually they will cave and boot Fehr out of his job as their representative. The man isn't stupid and won't accept anything less then fairness and he has every right to continue to hold the players back from accepting a deal because so far no offer has been a fair deal for both sides of this process.
So the owners can sit there and stew and complain about losing money, if they aren't going to even attempt to make some concessions, and they haven't made any concrete concessions as every single one has been withdrawn, this lockout will continue. The players aren't stupid and they aren't going to get themselves locked into a CBA that doesn't allow for them to have any financial growth as athletes, nor are they going to sit back and accept restrictive free agency policies as well, I certainly wouldn't.
There are a lot of people to blame for how long this process has taken, especially the union initially, but every time the union makes concessions and moves towards what the league wants, the owners change their mind because they didn't accept the deal. Right now the cards are on the owners table, they could have moved to take the offer proposed by the union the other day and ran with it after some slight modifications, but it seems like every offer the players make that is more in the favor of the owners, the more they turn around and give the players a big old "fuck you".
Also, the owners walked away from the players after the players requested that Fehr rejoin the process, which screams to me that the owners, and it has been Bettman's intention all along, were intending to undermining Fehr's position in order to get a deal done.