NEW YORK -- NBA players rejected the league's latest offer Monday and began disbanding the union, likely jeopardizing the season.
"We're prepared to file this antitrust action against the NBA," union executive director Billy Hunter said. "That's the best situation where players can get their due process."
And that's a tragedy as far as NBA Commissioner David Stern is concerned.
"It looks like the 2011-12 season is really in jeopardy," Stern said in an interview aired on ESPN. "It's just a big charade. To do it now, the union is ratcheting up I guess to see if they can scare the NBA owners or something. That's not happening."
Hunter said players were not prepared to accept Stern's ultimatum to accept the current proposal or face a worse one, saying they thought it was "extremely unfair."
Stern had urged players to take the deal on the table, saying it's the best the NBA could offer and warned that decertification is not a winning strategy.
Instead, players went a different route, believing that filing the disclaimer is much quicker that the decertification process and gives them a chance to win several billion dollars in triple damages.
"This is the best decision for the players," union president Derek Fisher said. "I want to reiterate that point, that a lot of individual players have a lot of things personally at stake in terms of their careers and where they stand. And right now they feel it's important -- we all feel it's important to all our players, not just the ones in this room, but our entire group -- that we not only try to get a deal done for today but for the body of NBA players that will come into this league over the next decade and beyond."
Fisher, flanked at a press conference by dozens of players including Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony, said the decision was unanimous.
Hunter said the NBPA was in the process of converting to a trade association and that all players will be represented in a class-action suit against the NBA by attorneys Jeffrey Kessler and David Boies -- who were on opposite sides of the NFL labor dispute, Kessler working for the players, Boise for the league.
"The fact that the two biggest legal adversaries in the NFL players dispute over the NFL lockout both agree that the NBA lockout is now illegal and subject to triple damages speaks for itself," Kessler said in an email to The Associated Press. "I am delighted to work together with David Boies on behalf of the NBA players."
Stern was not impressed with his legal adversaries.
"Mr. Kessler got his way, and we're about to go into the nuclear winter of the NBA," he told ESPN. "If I were a player ... I would be wondering what it is that Billy Hunter just did."
Hunter said the NBPA's "notice of disclaimer" was filed with Stern's office about an hour before the news conference announcing the move.
Hunter said the bargaining process had "completely broken down." Players and owners have been talking for some two years but couldn't reach a deal, with players feeling the league's desires to improve competitive balance would hurt their free agency options.
And beyond that, the owners' desire for a 50-50 split of basketball-related income, after players were guaranteed 57 percent under the old deal, meant players were shifting at least $280 million per year to the owners.
"This deal could have been done. It should have been done," Hunter said. "We've given and given and given, and they got to the place where they just reached for too much and the players decided to push back."
Over the weekend, Stern said he would not cancel the season this week.
Regardless, damage has already been done, in many ways.
Financially, both sides have lost hundreds of millions because of the games missed and the countless more that will be wiped out before play resumes. Team employees are losing money, and in some cases, jobs. And both the NBA and NBPA eventually must regain the loyalty of an angered fan base that wonders how the league reached this low point after such a strong 2010-11 season.
The proposal rejected by the players called for a 72-game season beginning Dec. 15.
On Sunday, the league made a very public push on the positives of the deal -- hosting a 90-minute twitter chat to answer questions from players and fans, posting a YouTube video to explain the key points and sending a memo from Stern to players urging them to "study our proposal carefully, and to accept it as a fair compromise of the issues between us."
In the memo, posted on the league's website, Stern highlighted points of the deal and asked players to focus on the compromises the league made during negotiations, such as dropping its demands for a hard salary cap, non-guaranteed contracts and salary rollbacks.
Union officials repeatedly have said the system issues are perhaps more important to them than the split of basketball-related income, but owners say they need fundamental changes in both to allow for a chance to profit and to ensure more competitive balance throughout the league.
The previous CBA expired at the end of the day June 30. Despite a series of meetings in June, there was never much hope of a deal before that deadline, with owners wanting significant changes after saying they lost $300 million last season and hundreds of millions more in each year of the old agreement, which was ratified in 2005.
Owners wanted to keep more of the league's nearly $4 billion in basketball revenues. And they sought a system where even the smallest-market clubs could compete, believing the current system would always favor the teams who could spend the most.
The NBA's last work stoppage reduced the 1998-99 season to 50 games. Monday marked the 137th day of the lockout; the NFL lockout lasted 136 days.
By BRIAN MAHONEY
Associated Press