NBA Lockout: A 72-Game Season and Its Impact on the League

As of right now, with the players and owners in the depths of a now four month long lockout, the owners have the ball in their hands as they are putting all the pressure on the players.

The owners have revised their proposal and given it to the players union to mull over which, if they were to accept, would mean the NBA season would start on Dec.15 and would consist of a 72-game schedule.

I'm not going to get to excited about this yet, because if we've learned anything over the past few months, it's that no matter how much optimism there is surrounding a meeting, a proposal or a leak of information from a "source," you have to take it with a grain of salt.

The owners are low-balling the players, and quite frankly they have all the leverage, so it's not surprising. In fact, the only ones who seem surprised by the owners actions and proposals have been the NBPA and Billy Hunter.

However, looking at the proposal compared to everything else the NBA has offered, this is the best deal the players have been offered, and it seems that it's the best deal that they will be offered.

Beyond that, I don't think the players union will have the support enough to decertify. There have been a few voices that have spoken louder than others, but decertification pretty much guarantees the cancellation of the season, and I'm not sure the players are willing to go through with that.

It might not be completely their fault that talks went this badly, but if they decertify the NBA public relations machine will pile the dirt on the players as they lay in the graves that they helped dig.

Still, the most intriguing part of this whole ordeal is that David Stern has said that if the offer is accepted by the players then there will be schedule with just 10 games chopped off.

The season won't be incredibly compact, as the league will add a week to the end of the year to stretch out the season just enough so teams are playing games at just a slightly higher rate than a normal 82-game season.

However, when you take into account the fact that teams will have just under a month to get teams ready, run a training camp and play a few preseason games, it's going to be a struggle to get into a rhythm early on.

That means a bad team with a hot start could find themselves in prime position to sneak into the playoffs, and a good team with a slow start could have trouble climbing their way back up the standings.

Either way, I just hope a deal gets done so we can see some professional basketball happen. I'd much rather see players on the court than players taking the owners to court.