"After 17 years of representing NBA players during CBA negotiations and defending their rights in other proceedings, not once was there an occasion where one side was denied an opportunity to be heard, " Hunter said.
The NBA lockout came just as CBA teams were boosting their spending on foreign talent.
Barring a miracle save, the NBA stands to lose a lot in its CBA dispute.
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When the new CBA went down I wrote how NBA commissioner David Stern had slam-dunked Hunter because of the favorable terms Stern had gotten for the owners.
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The new CBA will also make it much easier for the NBA to sell the financial struggling New Orleans Hornets, which the league bought last season.
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"With no NBA games on TV, there is a level attention on CBA games and the lives of CBA players that has never been seen before, " said Matt Beyer, a Beijing-based sports management consultant.
In a strange twist, the only CBA star who is currently making plans to return to the NBA this season is Chinese citizen Yi Jianlian, who isn't subject to the same restrictive provisions in his contract.
"The NBA lockout now comes to an end, so does A Lian's performance in the CBA, " said a statement posted on the team's official Twitter-like microblog.
And if NFL players win on both or either of these accounts, it will only serve to buttress the confidence of NBA players that they could pursue a similar decertification strategy in the hopes of achieving similarly courtroom success and CBA leverage.
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