Peace Is At Hand! NBA And Referees Reach Labor Agreement!
The “Associated Press” has reported that the NBA Regular Season Opener will have the regular Game Officials on the floor as the NBA and the NBA Referees Union reached an agreement Friday. The NBA preseason games have been officiated by replacement referees due to the fact that the regular officials are being locked out due to a contract dispute. The lockout was a result of the NBA wanting to trim $3.2 million from the referees budget. The Game Officials wanted to take a cut of only $2.5 million. Negotiations had stalled on both sides and it appeared that the lockout would continue through at least the start of the regular season.
“The Grand Poobah” NBA Commissioner David Stern released a statement announcing the deal. Stern wrote “We are pleased to reach this agreement. The negotiations extended further than either side had hoped, but when our regular season tips off on Tuesday we’ll have the best referees in the world officiating our games.”
The referees will hold an abridged version of training camp this weekend in New Jersey and will be given their assignments for the start of the season. No details of the agreement have been released; however New York Vinnie believes that most likely it would have the Union that blinked. The last thing in the world the regular referees wanted was for the NBA regular season to have started with the replacement Game Officials. Because the longer the replacements were on the floor the more dispensable the regular referees would have become.
NBA Game Officials are a necessary part of the game just like the Frickin hoop and the scoreboard are. The “Best NBA Referees” call no more attention to themselves than the hoop or the scoreboard do; unfortunately as we have seen over the years there are some referees who think they are Frickin stars like Joey Crawford. There is not one Frickin fan of the NBA that are going to rush down to their local NBA Areana because Ron Garretson, Derrick Stafford and Joey Crawford are officiating that night. Luckily for them they realized it before they found themselves out of jobs.
New York Vinnie will never start a fight, but he's not afraid to finish one.. Mess with New York Vinnie and he'll rip your nuts off and throw them down the sewer!
