Michelle Roberts was recently elected as the executive director of the NBPA, which is the NBA’s players union. Roberts & Commissionar Adam Silver will be in heavy discussion in a couple of years about their new terms to the new collective bargaining agreement. They have a lot of things they need to discuss, like the heavy salary increase that’s about to happen, the TV deal, and a lot of other money concerned issues.
Now, Silver has another problem to deal with. According to Kevin Draper of DeadSpin, Roberts said:
“For many years, the CBA has also included a provision that allows the union to engage its own independent firm to audit five teams of its choosing. This audit process can be initiated following the audit of the League and every franchise conducted at the end of every season by PwC. A similar protocol is followed in both hockey and football. To date, this option was used sparingly by the NBPA. Starting this year, the union will exercise this option and conduct the five-team audit annually.”
“When asked which teams the union plans to audit, the union says, “We will not choose the five teams until after the BRI audit is completed.”
Even with the union demurring, you can bet that the Knicks will be one of the five, and that more generally the union will target teams that earn the most revenue and have a host of complicated related party issues. An informed guess would be that the Knicks, Nets, Mavericks, Nuggets, and Lakers will be audited, with the Rockets, Bulls, and Warriors candidates as well.”
So if it’s the money makers of the NBA, the Lakers, Bulls, Rockets, Knicks are definite candidates for audits. Essentially, the NBPA is making sure that the players get the money they are entitled to, and that it isn’t being pushed into any type of fraudulent crime by the Owners. If they do find anything, you can be sure we will be seeing a lockout soon.
