Ex-Piston: NBA labor will be long fight

At the core of the NBA labor debates are the issues of free agency and contracts.

"They are basically trying to change our whole structure that we have been using," Ratliff, vice president of the NBA Players Association, told his hometown Demopolis (Ala.) Times recently. "They want us on a hard cap totally."

The NBA has long operated under what is considered a soft salary cap for teams. There are a number of cap allowances, plus teams can exceed their allotted salary cap in an effort to re-sign their own players.

According to Ratliff, owners also are seeking to rid the league of guaranteed contracts, opting for a system more like that of the NFL in which teams have the option of cutting a player without paying him the entire amount of his deal.

That hits close to home for Ratliff, who battled a series of injuries during the prime years of his career. The L.A. Lakers center and former NBA All-Star has had a long-term contract that was traded and always satisfied thanks to the language of the league's CBA.

"It would have changed a lot because you would have had an opportunity for a team to just cut you," said Ratliff, who played for the Pistons in 1995-97 and 2008.

As the summer approaches, the threat of a work stoppage looms greater by the day. But, in Ratliff's estimation, proceeding forward with a well-functioning league might not necessarily mean avoiding a stoppage.

"As a player, you can't give that up," Ratliff said of guaranteed contracts and soft cap allowances. "If you give it up, you are never going to get it back again. It's going to be a long, hard fight."