NBA Lockout: 10 Reasons Why the Players, Owners Both Need the Lockout to End

As we all unfortunately know, the NBA is locked out.

Obviously all of the great fans of the NBA want the league to open back up, but the owners and players should actually want the league to open up again as well. Why is that? 

Some of the easy reasons are because they won't make money and because the fans want it, but there are truly many reasons why the NBA and players would both benefit from unlocking the league.

The top 10 reasons are listed ahead.

We're Coming off a Hugely Successful Season

There is an argument that this season was the best season ever, and it's an argument I would support. Ratings are up, profits are up and the league is at a point it hasn't been since the '90s with Michael Jordan leading the way. 

When you have a great product and you have a great stage, why would you mess that up?

In my opinion, the owners are better off making sure they can maintain what they have rather than pushing for more. When we start to miss games, it messes up the popularity of the whole NBA.

Why stop the momentum? 

It Limits the Flexibility of Teams

Unless you're Donald Sterling, you want to win basketball games. With the NBA now wide open, there's no better time to try and get better so you can win a title. 

July 1 is usually the day free agents can start negotiations with other teams, but that's cancelled because of the lockout. The cancellation of the Summer League also means that undrafted free agents and second-round picks like David Lighty, E'Twaun Moore and Ben Hansbrough are unable to prove themselves and sign with teams. 

Also, take a team like the Chicago Bulls. They are perhaps one piece away from being a title team, but they have no way to acquire that one piece at this time. The uncertainty for the team and for fans is what makes this a bad decision. 

A Player's Shelf Life Is Short

If the league locks out, we'll miss a lot. 

We'll miss a year, perhaps Kobe's last productive year.

We'll miss a year for LeBron to chase Jordan's rings.

We'll miss a year of Derrick Rose's development.

We'll miss a year for Amare and Melo to mesh.

We'll miss a year of the end of Dwyane Wade's prime. 

We'll miss a year of Kyrie Irving's entrance.

We'll miss a year of Kevin Durant highlights.

We'll miss a year of Steve Nash being a stud.

We'll miss a year Dirk being a wrecking ball.

We'll miss a year of Dwight Howard trade rumors.

We'll miss a year of questions about whether Russell Westbrook can be a true point guard.

We'll miss a year—a final year—of the Big Three in Boston.

No matter what your Dad says about the '86 Celtics being the best team he's ever seen, this is perhaps the most talented group of players we have ever seen in the NBA. Ever. Any year we miss is a year we'll never get back.

These players won't be great forever, and they need to fight to make sure they get to be productive when they can be productive.  

It's a Fight Between Millionaires and Billionaires

Doing things like this makes the league look horrible. The NBA has tried hard to make the league look like the good guy, through things like NBA Cares and Hoop Camps for kids. What makes the league look horrible is squabbling over money. 

The average American makes somewhere around $45,000 every year. The average basketball player makes something more like six million dollars every year. The average owner is a multibillionaire. 

We don't want to hear you whine about your money here. Many of us would kill to own an NBA team and never make any profit—just do it for the love of the game. We don't want to hear NBA owners complain about limited profits and players complain about their seven-figure salaries to play a game: It makes everyone look bad. 

Don't draw this out. It's not what you want to be remembered for. 

When the League Leaves, Fans Leave

If you're reading an NBA article by some nobody on Bleacher Report, I'm assuming you are a hoop-head just like me. Hoop-heads spend hours online finding anything they can about basketball. If there's a lockout, there's a shortage of news. Think of it this way: 

My favorite sport is basketball, but I'm also an NFL fan. Even if I was an avid NFL fan, do I really care that players are practicing? Why should I care? Yet this is reported on ESPN every day. At some point, I just say I couldn't care less and find something else to do like playing basketball or knitting or something to that effect.

It's not my thing, but some may turn to baseball. 

If you get used to living without basketball, then it only makes it that much harder to return to basketball once it comes back. If you're making things difficult for the fans, you deserve to lose millions every year because you have the worst business model ever.

Bring the people basketball and we'll give you our money. 

Income Stoppage

The players live off the money coming in from the NBA. While we may forget when we see Joe Johnson driving a Ford F-650 that looks like it could seat The Hulk comfortably, NBA players still need to pay the bills.

Oftentimes players forget their money is a finite resource. Take the case of Antoine Walker. Walker was a star player who made more than $100 million in his career. With that money, he supported dozens of his family members. 

Less than two years out of the league and his money was gone. Now Walker is forced to play for the Idaho Stampede of the D-League to pay the bills. I would probably bet Walker couldn't point out Idaho on a map during his NBA career. 

While most star players don't burn their money so quickly, fringe NBA players do. While $473,000 may sound like a lot of money to a fan, this is the money they will live on for the rest of their life. When the paychecks start coming, the players lose money that may have not even been enough to support them in the first place. 

When the fringe players leave, rosters become pressured because the next group of players just isn't in the same class as other NBA players. It just keeps spiraling. 

Name Recognition

Right now, the NBA is a star-driven league. Since it's a star-driven league, it needs its stars to be the face of the league.

It may seem far-fetched that players could lose their name recognition, but is it? Here are some names: Kevin Johnson, Mitch Richmond, Glen Rice, Tom Chambers, Ralph Sampson, Nate Archibald, Alex English. How many of these names do you recognize? 

For some of you older fans, these names might bring you back to the '80s and '90s. Some of you younger fans may have no idea who these guys are.

These guys were all All-Stars (many of them several times) but may not have been remembered as easily in the history books because their names weren't repeated over and over again. This is because the '80s and '90s are remembered by many as the time of Magic, Bird and Jordan, and not much else.

This phenomenon may happen because of today's lockout. We'll probably always remember LeBron and Kobe because they are the faces of the league, but what about Kevin Love? Deron Williams? Joe Johnson? These guys are stars, but they play in smaller markets and are not talked about as much by the hype machine at ESPN.

If the stars on marginal teams lose their name recognition, what's the motivation to go to a Timberwolves game? A Nets game? A Hawks game? Small-market owners may think things are bad now, but waiting for their stars to become relatively useless to them will only make things worse.  

The Chances Presented by the NFL Lockout

Football is generally considered the most popular sport in America, with basketball coming in a close second. If the NFL locks out for a big portion of time, the NBA should use that as an opportunity to cash in. 

While the NFL has more brand recognition and more fan following than the NBA, it is not insurmountable. The NBA has steadily risen in popularity ever since LeBron James entered the league, and the NFL locking out could be that final piece that puts the NBA over the top. 

However, if the NBA actually locks out for more time than the NFL, all the casual basketball fans will leave for good just like they did after the 1998 lockout. It would be so much more effective if they tried to overcome the NFL by ending the lockout. 

1998 Lockout

Who remembers the 1998 lockout? 

After the lockout, the league was just different. The stars of the '90s were all but gone. The new stars had arrived...but they just weren't as good.

The popularity of the league suffered greatly in that year and the years following. Soon we saw that instead of Hakeem Olajuwon being picked first, Kwame Brown was. Instead of Michael Jordan winning MVPs, Allen Iverson did. Instead of parity, the Spurs and Lakers ran the league: only one big market. For Chicago fans, this was the beginning of a terrible half a decade until Jerry Krause was fired, a stark difference to winning six titles in six years.  

After the lockout, basketball all but died for a while, and the league still hasn't fully recovered. Only with the introduction of players like LeBron and the renewed competitiveness of the big markets like Chicago and New York has the league developed. 

If there's another lockout, the league will only take another step back. 

ME!

This is me. 

I'm a featured columnist for a major sports Internet site. I live and breath basketball. I could name every starting lineup in the league, every coach in the league, probably at least something about the first five guys off every bench. 

What if I get a social life? I have nothing better to do now, what if I find something?

I myself, along with fans like you, are the life blood of the NBA. NFL fans are largely fair weather and not very committed to the league. The majority of NBA fans are CRAZY about the league. If you're an NBA fan, everyone knows it.

What if you lose me? Or you? Once hardcore fans leave, it's HARD to get us back.

Just make it easy on yourself, NBA. Give us our game back and we'll give you our money. Take away our game and we'll take away our money. Then it won't matter how you split it because you won't have anything to split.

Seems pretty simple to me.