thinkwild said:
Yes, Im sure I wont find any quotes here characterizing the rollback that way.
Although I wasnt posting here at the time, I will save you the trouble: The players Dec 09 proposal, which offered the 24% rollback and very little else was completely worthless. It was designed to split the owners along economic lines, but failed miserably as virtually every single owner recognized the need for a new economic system rather than "resetting the clock."
The rollback is significant only if real controls are put in place - a salary cap - that allow the system to remain functional. The union's rollback was geared towards the teams that were the most to blame for the economic wreck the league was: the richest teams. They were the ones that benefited most from the rollback. They were the ones that benefited most from a luxury tax (and a pathetically weak one at that), and they were the ones that were expected to take that 24% and immediately put it right back into the players pockets, driving salaries right back up.
The players first proposal was utterly worthless.
Such nonsense. Its perfectly legal for owners to drive salaries down. They were in the process of doing it when they locked the players out.
It is perfectly legal for the owners, or several of them, to decide not to pay player x what he wants?
Salaries went down in 2003-04 for one reason, and one reason only: several teams were trying to position themselves to be in good shape coming out of this lockout. They knew they were going to demand a cap, and they knew that ridiculous long term contracts were only going to hamper them. Absent of the pending expiration of the CBA, salaries would have continued on their merry way up, and any idiot should have been able to recognize that.