By Sports Direct

The head of the NBA players' union has said the latest proposal by NBA owners would "change the culture of the league."  Union chief Billy Hunter wrote a memo to the players on April 26 in which he detailed that the NBA is seeking a hard salary cap of $45 million per team.  Hunter said the owners want a lower cap number to avoid some teams having to pay a luxury tax.  The memo also outlined other concessions being sought from the players in the form of non-guaranteed contracts.

Under the proposal, the league would guarantee no more than 50 percent of a player's first $8 million in salary. For contracts higher than $8 million, the guaranteed salary would drop to 25 percent.  "A system-wide change in the nature of guaranteed contracts ... not only would harm players' economic interests individually, but it would also significantly change the culture of the league collectively," Hunter wrote in the memo.

Also outlined in the memo were measures to designate players as minimum-salary, rookies, maximum-salary and "others." The latter category would be for players who would have to agree to reduced contracts to fit under the salary cap.  The current collective bargaining agreement is scheduled to expire on June 30.  The NBA has not had a work stoppage since 1998, when a lockout reduced the 1998-99 season to 50 games and hurt the league's popularity among fans.

NBA commissioner David Stern has said the league will lose $300 million this season. The union has said much of that is due to creative accounting that factors in depreciation and loans, costs for which it believes the players are not responsible.