NBA Lockout: Kobe Bryant Talking Turkey, but David Stern and Billy Hunter Won't

Kobe Bryant again stated his willingness to go play with Deron Williams in Turkey, or heck, anywhere. "I grew up overseas," he said.

No offense, Kobe, but I really don't care. I don't want to see you play in Turkey, I want to see you play in the NBA in the year 2012. I want to see you play at the start of the season. 

David Stern, Billy Hunter and the two sides are meeting today for the first time since the lockout started. That's only a month ago. 

In case you missed that, it's the first time. So precisely why is it that it's the first time?

It seems like the two sides are in a rush to not make money so that they can argue about who gets what cut of what they aren't making. 

I get it; you're trying to play silly games with one another. The players need to show they can survive. The owners need to starve them out. Whatever. Get over the silly jockeying for position, sit down at the table like adults, and get this thing resolved. 

The NFL could do it. The NBA can do it. 

Of course, the NBA has more to work out. The NFL was wondering how to split all that money. With the NBA, it's about whether some teams are making money and whether or not it's the players salaries that are the reason that some teams aren't making money. 

I get that it's more complicated. 

So shouldn't that mean that they should actually be doing more talking?

It's not bothersome to me that they haven't resolved the lockout yet. It doesn't even bother me that they haven't made progress on resolving it yet. What bothers me is that they haven't even tried to make progress on it yet. 

So today, David Stern and Billy Hunter and the two sides are getting together. Yippee! We're finally going to make progress, right?

Wrong. 

The two sides aren't going to talk about the issues that are essential to the lockout, things like the hard cap, what share of the revenues the players get and the other things that are actually reasons for the lockout.

So what's the point of getting together? How is the lockout going to be resolved by not negotiating?

I don't want to hear about Kobe Bryant talking Turkey, I want to hear about Billy Hunter and David Stern talking turkey. 

This isn't about the millionaires versus the billionaires. It's about the idiots versus the dolts. It's the donkeys versus the mules. It's the rocks against the stones. 

David. Billy. Please! For the love of all things NBA, stop posturing and start talking!