NBA Lockout: Commissioner David Stern Should Cancel Rest of Season Now

As expected, no deal was reached Monday to end the NBA lockout and commissioner David Stern was forced to cancel games. Even though the two sides have negotiated for countless hours over the past few months, a deal seems like a long shot. Stern should just cancel the remainder of the season now instead of making fans follow labor discussions for several more weeks or months.

Associated Press writer Brian Mahoney passed along some grim comments from Stern.

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Clashing more over the salary cap system than economics—but still far apart on both—Stern said the sides are “very far apart on virtually all issues … We just have a gulf that separates us.

With every day that goes by, I think we need to look at further reductions in what’s left of the season.

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It's the first labor dispute costing the league games since 1998-'99. That season teams eventually played a shortened schedule (50 games). However, both sides have drawn a line in the sand and don't appear ready to budge anytime soon.

At least during the recent NFL negotiations there was a sense of progress each time the two sides would address the media. That doesn't exist with the NBA and the season was expected to start in less than three weeks.

With such large differences between NBA owners and the players union, the sides are basically holding fans hostage by chopping weeks off the season at a time. It doesn't help either side's negotiating power—both are losing large sums of money—so it's only a ploy to keep fans interested.

Another bad sign from yesterday was the massive amount of tweets sent out by NBA players. Many used the hashtag “#StandUnited,” while All-Star point guard Steve Nash had a more simple message.

Nash, whose Twitter account has more than 650,000 followers, went on to talk about how a new deal “just lines the owners' pockets.” That's not the type of rhetoric you would expect to hear if an agreement was on the horizon.

If there was any good news to report other than continued meetings, it would be easy to support taking a week-by-week approach to the season. That's not the case, though. Owners and players seem further apart than Democrats and Republicans right now and that's saying something.

Stern should stop leading the sport's diehard fans down a dead-end street. Wipe out the remaining 1,130 games today and let fans move on, they deserve that much respect.