NBA Players Reject Latest Owners' Latest Offer

Today in sports: The last best chance of saving the NBA season has come and gone, the UFC brings in big numbers for Fox, and a fair price for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Today in sports: The last best chance of saving the NBA season has come and gone, the UFC brings in big numbers for Fox, and a fair price for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

• The National Basketball Players Association has rejected the latest labor deal offered by owners and announced plans to disband as a union. That will allow players to file a class-action lawsuit against owners in federal court, and puts this year's NBA season on life support. Under the terms of the rejected offer, players and owners would have evenly split all "basketball-related income" and an abbreviated 72-game regular season would have started on December 15. Players want something closer to the 57-43 revenue split they had under the last collective bargaining agreement. [AP]
• Fox's telecast of Saturday's Ultimate Fighting Championship bout between Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez attracted 5.7 million viewers, which is a nice way to kick off a seven-year broadcasting deal. The last televised fight to draw a number that big was the Lennox Lewis-Vitali Klitschko heavyweight championship fight in 2003, which 7 million people watched on HBO. [The New York Times]
• It's a busy Monday for the NFL league office, which is reviewing the circumstances surrounding a brawl in the fourth quarter of yesterday's Chicago Bears-Detroit Lions game and footage of New York Jets coach Rex Ryan swearing at an unseen New England Patriots fan following as he walked off the field last night in New Jersey. [NFL.com]

• Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos isn't going to let a little thing like being kidnapped on his front doorstep by four armed gunmen deter him from playing winter league ball in his native Venezuela. Washington Times Nationals beat writer Amanda Comak tweets that Ramos will be in the lineup when the Tigres de Aragua on Wednesday and that he doesn't have any plans to leave the country, though he has hired a security detail. Based on his description of being rescued by Venezuelan commandos late-Friday night, we can't understand why. [Amanda Comak via Big League Stew]

• University of Michigan sports management professor Mark Rosentraub says it's "realistic" to expect the Los Angeles Dodgers to sell for $1 billion. Smith College economics professor also is predicting the club and land around Dodgers Stadium will sell for a figure "in the neighborhood" of $1 billion. That figure would be a record, but it's less than the $1.2 billion soon-to-be-former owner Frank McCourt was offered for the club and land back in September. [ESPN Los Angeles]