Check this out:

LINK

The first post in the comments pretty much summarizes why you should not place any blame on the players for getting or not getting "what they want".

Basically, the players want to keep the status quo while continuing to work out a deal. CERTAIN OWNERS don't want to do that, and they are driven by GREED. Period.

Here's the text of what I am referencing:

quote:
The player's offer was for a flat fixed rate of 50%. The owners just want to increase that offset. Why? This is what doesn't make sense. When it was learned that TV money represented $4B, coupled with the league's design to add two games, seemed fairly clear that $500m was the target, and they were just starting out at $1B. No way do they ask the players to play 2 more games and give back money on top of that. But I don't get why the owners keep pushing that damn offset increase rather than co-opting that fixed rate proposal by the players.

When the old CBA was ratified total revenue was ~$6B. Minus the $1B offset, multiplied by the player's rate of 59.5%, the players were getting 49.6% of total revenues. If the cap had continued, with projections of $9B in total revenue, under the same terms the players would be getting 52.9% of TR.

If the owners bottom dollar deal is an additional $500M in offset, then with all CBA things remaining the same, the player's cut of TR would be.......... 49.6%. Exactly the same as the last CBA they grew to hate and opt out of. Hit the reset button. So if the owners get what they want, what happens a few years from now when revenues crest $13B? They're right back to the same spot they are today, crying about their chintzy offset, duking out another CBA showdown.

Why are the owner's so committed to pressing for an increased fixed offset that won't grow porportionally to increased revenues? And just puts them right back in the same untenable spot a few years from now?

If the issue for the owners is not so much the present, but the future, as you suggest, then I don't understand their obsession with a regressive offset. And I don't get why they don't just jump on the player's offer of a flat 50%.