Wednesday, November 16th, 2011 at 9:00 am  |  104 responses

Players Filed Separate Anti-Trust Lawsuits Against the NBA


by Marcel Mutoni / @marcel_mutoni

For the foreseeable future, the only court that matters for NBA basketball players, owners, fans, partners, and all other interested parties, is the courtroom.

As expected, players filed anti-trust lawsuits against the League’s team owners, looking to get favorable results by filing separately in Minnesota and California.

CBS Sports breaks it down:

NBA players sued the league alleging antitrust violations Tuesday, in part using commissioner David Stern’s own words against him in making their case that the lockout is illegal. With two antitrust actions — one in California naming superstars Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant among five plaintiffs, and another in Minnesota naming four plaintiffs — the players are seeking summary judgment and treble damages totaling three times the players’ lost wages due to what lead attorney David Boies referred to as an illegal group boycott.

The California case, filed Tuesday night in the Northern District, named plaintiffs who represent a wide array of players: Anthony, Durant and Chauncey Billups (high-paid stars); Leon Powe (a mid-level veteran); and Kawhi Leonard (a rookie). The plaintiffs in a similar case filed in Minnesota are Caron Butler, Ben Gordon, Anthony Tolliver and Derrick Williams. Boies said there could be other lawsuits, and at some point, they could be combined. It is possible, Boies said, that the players could get a summary judgment before the NBA cancels the entire season — essentially a two-month timeframe. By that point, with the clock starting on potential damages Tuesday — which was supposed to have been the first pay day of the season for the majority of players — treble damages could amount to $2.4 billion.

“We would hope that it’s not necessary to go to trial and get huge damages to bring them to a point where they are prepared to abide by the law,” Boies said.

Despite David Stern’s angry and dismissive remarks about the players’ shocking maneuver last week, the NBA and its lawyers will have no choice but to enter this legal battle, something they had hoped would never happen.

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  • CubicleWorker

    Basically they could do analytical procedures to estimate whether that $300M loss is plausible or not. Although the purpose of the independent audit is to provide assurance that the financial statements are free from material misstatements. Basically, the financials of the league shouldn’t (and in fact no longer are) be in question of the NBPA.

  • http://Slamonline.com nbk

    I understand that the players are no longer hung up on the financial situation, their current offer guarantees a profit for any decently run organization (is what they said), it’s about the owners trying to make it so a player’s rights to pursue market value are totally restricted to be followed with the aformentioned % drop in income. It doesn’t make any sense to support the owners taking total advantage of their power. They are restricting all of the players rights in pursuit of a system similar to the NHL. A league with nowhere near the revenue stream of the NBA. I support the stated goals of the owners, profit + competitive balance. But I don’t support how the owners are going about trying to achieve those goals. (for the record, I don’t really “support” the players either, their decision making and courage -up until now, which seems more like blind courage- have had about as positive of an impact on this situation as Donald Sterling has had for the Clippers.)

  • theakinet

    1. Profit/loss is irrelevant to anti-trust law.
    2. “Good-faith” negotiations are irrelevant to anti-trust/labor law.
    3. There is no such thing as a “sham” disclaimer/decertification…However, if Hunter/Fisher/Exec Comm. continued to negotiate *directly* with NBA owners then courts would delay anti-trust case until they stopped negotiating.

    BTW the NBA players are 3-0 in anti-trust cases. Oscar Robertson 1971-1976, Oct 1987 decertification, 1995 *threat* of decertification.

  • http://jackiemoon.com Jackie Moon

    Haha looks like Jackie Moon did get a deal in place!

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