NBA Lockout: How Damaging Would an Entire Lost Season Be?

The two sides to the negotiations still seem to have a way to go to close the gap. The first two weeks of the regular season have been cancelled. But what about the worst case scenario: no National Basketball Association games at all this season?

As recently as early August, Billy Hunter of the NBA Players Association was predicting that the entire season would be cancelled.

When there is 9 percent unemployment in our country, it is hard to listen to arguments between millionaires about dividing up revenue streams. So I won't bother to go into the details of the negotiations.

Instead let's just look at the impact of an entire lost season on three sets of stakeholders: the players, the fans, and other sports or leagues.

The Players

The last time an entire major professional sports season was cancelled was the 2004-2005 National Hockey League season. During that time, many of the NHL players found employment in European leagues.

Something similar would happen with many NBA players.

Four players from the Denver Nuggets have already signed up to play in the Chinese Basketball Association, despite an apparent law that would prohibit them from leaving the league mid-season to rejoin a delayed start of the NBA season. Maybe these guys know something the rest of us don't. With many low and moderate wage jobs being outsourced to China, it was only a matter of time until these higher priced jobs were outsourced, too.

Kobe Bryant is apparently going to play one game or more in Italy. So the established players will find employment and maintain their skills.

Others will just do their best to stay in shape and wait for next year's season. If we have another bad winter, maybe an NBA player will plow out your driveway for a fee.

The players that would seem to lose the most here are the late round draft picks or undrafted players who wouldn't get training camp and pre-season games to demonstrate their skills. The general economic woes of the country have kept a lot of recent college graduates from pursing their intended careers. The same might happen with a few basketball players.

For a player like Chauncey Billups, with a $14.2 million paycheck waiting for the last year of his contract, that is the amount of money at risk.

The 2004-2005 hockey season cost the players $1 billion in salaries, but some of that was replaced with employment in Europe. The total NBA payroll for 2011 would be over twice that amount, and some of it would be replaced by alternate employment as well.

The Fans

Some, and I believe many, NBA fans really don't start to follow the league closely until late December while they are on holiday break and loading up on sports on TV. So if the season was cut in half, this might not be a big deal to the NBA's fan base.

But what if the entire season was cancelled. Would fans feel neglected and not return the next year?

An academic paper in the Journal of Sports Economics found that during the 2004-2005 NHL strike, hockey fans just transferred their interest in watching hockey games to minor and junior league teams where they were available. So maybe this would mean that basketball fans would similarly attend minor league basketball games where they are available and return to the NBA games when they became available.

On the other hand, after the partial loss of the NBA season in 1998, attendance at games and TV ratings dropped sharply.

Finally, the 1994 baseball strike resulted in no World Series that year. Some have argued the strike cost the sport its elevated status as the national past time, which it has never regained.

Other Sports

In sports, as in life, there are always winners and losers.

If the entire NBA season is lost, the two clear winners would be the National Hockey League and NCAA basketball.

Maybe we would be able to see NHL games three or four days a week on a major channel, rather than on a channel not generally available even if you did want to pay for it. In my case, I would consider this to be a major upgrade. I'll take an NHL game, live or on TV, over an NBA game anytime.

The second clear winner would be NCAA basketball. Maybe we would see some of these bracket-buster and Cinderella teams play during the regular season, not just during March Madness.

Maybe fans would spend their discretionary dollars on other types of entertainment (movies or theatre), participatory winter sports (cross-country skiing or snow shoeing) or family indoor-activity centers (iPlay, for example).

You know, the more I think about this, let the NBA cancel the entire season. I think we all could use the break for a year.