'Doomsday Provision': What's It Really Mean For NBA Players to Beware?

NBA Players Have Been Instructed to Beware of 'Doomsday Provision' - What Does This Mean?

DALLAS - "Doomsday.'' Forget sports; is there a more frightening word in the English language?

Notably, it's a phrase in Latin that takes us, and the NBA to that place, as the NBA Players Union on Friday issued a memo detailing a "doomsday provision" in the Collective Bargaining Agreement - all tied, of course, to the COVID-19 outbreak.

If you've ever signed an employment contract, you may know the phrase. A "Force Majeure'' event is, in a sense what some might call "an act of God'' - an unforeseeable circumstance that could prevent a party from fulfilling a contract with another party.

As ESPN has noted, the memo is meant to alert players that the clause could free owners from "paying players a percentage of their salaries," in the event of a catastrophic event - a natural disaster, a war, or yes ... a pandemic, as we are now experiencing with the coronavirus that has forced a stoppage of NBA play.

There are no indications that NBA owners are planning to freeze paychecks big or small; on the contrary, led by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, there is even a trend to guarantee the lost wages of arena workers.

"Sources say that there's been no discussion among the league and NBPA about triggering that provision," Wojnarowski wrote on Friday, taking quite a bit of scary sting out of the original notice.

The point here, really, is that the union is doing its job: Reminding the under-contract employees about the details of their contracts. Nothing more.

Who is using the "doomsday'' phrase? It's not clear whether that is union-driven or media-driven. But it's certainly an eye-catching way to remind NBA players that the 2019-20 season could not only be delayed but dumped, and that even millionaire athletes should take the same precautions against disaster as regular citizens.