NEW YORK – As last summer's NBA lockout dragged on, the questions, puzzlement and second-guessing grew.

Why wasn't the National Basketball Player's Association decertifying? Why wasn't the union following the NFLPA lead of disbanding and filing an antitrust suit, a maneuver that put football owners back on their heels and saved the players as much as they could in final negotiations?

Why was the NBPA instead employing a legal strategy that consisted of an unfair labor complaint being filed with the National Labor Relations Board?

Some of the lawyers that worked the NFL lockout couldn't make sense of it. Agents for NBA players fumed and ranted and held conference calls, plotting for a way to change course.

This was never going to work, so many said. And, indeed, in the end, it didn't.

It wasn't until November when the players gave up on the unfair practices lawsuit and began moving toward disbandment and continued to consolidate an antitrust suit that a settlement with the NBA was reached.

[ Related: NBPA's Billy Hunter sought union investment for bank with ties to son ]

By then, however, the owners had whittled the revenue sharing percentage from 57-43 in favor of the players to 50-50. That represented a loss of $3 billion in future salaries.

Three billion.

This was an epic labor beat-down by the owners, a near complete annihilation.

Now comes word, courtesy of a Yahoo! Sports investigation, that the law firm that helped craft the union's labor strategy, Steptoe & Johnson, was paid more than $1 million by the NBPA since April 2011.

That was around the same time the firm hired a new special counsel – Alexis Hunter, daughter of NBPA executive director Billy Hunter.

Hunter's family has several connections to the union. Billy has a daughter and a daughter-in-law working directly for the NBPA. A son, two daughters and a daughter-in-law have worked for the NBPA or companies that did business with the NBPA. Hunter also sought a $7 million investment from the union into a failing New Jersey bank, which had ties to Billy's son, Todd. The investment never happened.

The NBPA says the hirings were vetted and explained to the membership. This should cause concern for the players, but, apparently, they aren't moved.

That's fine. It was the union's lockout strategy that should concern the players the most. If Billy Hunter is showing favoritism to his kids, well, that may not be an ideal practice, but I think LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and the rest of the players will survive.

Losing a collective $3 billion in future salaries is different.

[ Related: NBPA compensation by the numbers ]

Questioning why Hunter held onto the NLRB strategy for so long is fair. As is analyzing whether Steptoe & Johnson was the best choice for the NBPA – and how that decision was even made.

In the end, the plan cost the NBPA time and leverage and money. It almost cost them an entire season. There are too many broke former players for the current ones not to realize they deserve and should demand the best from their union leaders.

Perhaps there are appropriate answers to everything. Steptoe & Johnson cite their deep experience in these kinds of cases, and it stands to reason they didn't hope to lose. Maybe Hunter really believed in the course of action and it just didn't work.

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