NBA Lockout: Players Decide If They Can't Win, Nobody Can
Earlier today, it was announced that the NBPA has elected to not accept the owners offer of a 50/50 split when it came down to the revenue made by the NBA. The players association has been working for months to attempt to get the owners to come up to 52 percent, but with no movement from the owners as they have been stuck at a 50/50 split since the beginning of this ordeal.
The players should have known from the start that they were fighting a battle that could not be won. They were a small bank attempting to beat a larger bank and it was obvious that those with the most money and the least to lose were going to win this.
The owners recognized that they can make it through a locked out NBA season with not much to lose compared to the players who will be losing their entire pay check for the year and we are now in the middle of a lockout that has persisted for nearly 140 days because of it.
The NBPA refuses to accept a deal that is the exact same as the one that they were offered at the beginning of the lockout and we might not see a season because of it. Give credit to the NBPA to stick by their guns for this long, but they're not going to win this battle and it might have just been the right thing to do by backing down, giving the owners their pocket change, and giving the fans what they want.
Because it's all about the fans, right?
It doesn't matter whose side you have found yourself on, we are all losing in the end because it turns out that the 2011-12 NBA season may be forever lost.
A season that had so much electricity and so much riding on it heading in will either be gone or reduced to a mere fraction of the games that need to be played in order to perfectly demonstrate the significance and magnitude of this season.
Not only do we miss out on the obvious stories of how far will the Miami Heat go into the post season, the Dallas Mavericks and their attempt at defending their title, and the progression of the New York Knicks, but we most importantly miss out on one of the few chances that we'll be able to see some of our favorite players in their primes.
Future Hall of Famers in Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, and Kevin Garnett, to name a few, all lose one precious year off of careers that are nearing their end. Each player has begun to show regression in their statistics and overall play and the 2011-12 season might have been the last year we will ever see these players near the top of their game.
The fate of the Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics, and San Antonio Spurs franchise now lay in the hands of key players who are on the wrong side of 30 and have seen significant injuries begin to pile up. Once proud franchises may not be the same for over a decade and we may have just missed out on our last chance to see Bryant work his magic, Garnett play that aggressive, fearsome defense, and Duncan consistently hit that 15-foot bank shot that's won him four titles.
Are you ready for the progression of MVP Derrick Rose, the improvement of John Wall and Kyrie Irving's impact on the city of Cleveland? Sorry NBA fans, but it seems that you're going to wait another few months before you find out what these young and developing superstars will do next.
The veterans that have made us love the game and the youngsters that are carrying on that legacy are now shrouded by a depressing black figure known as greed that has taken over this league.
This greedy, monstrous, and convoluted looking figure that has engulfed the world has now completely taken over the sporting world is depriving millions upon millions from across the world of the most entertaining sport in the world in basketball.
The game has taken on a life of its own over recent years and has become wildly popular on nearly every continent with the exception of Antarctica. With so many international players joining the league, basketball is taking the route of baseball and is now becoming one of the worlds most popular sports.
Think about it: there isn't a sport in the world other than soccer that transcends into every developing and industrial nation like basketball. The NFL's influence is mainly situated in the United States, MLB's has taken wide-spread fame in Central and South America and Asia, and the NHL is mostly popular to those in cold locations.
The NBA however has found havens in South America with many Argentinians and Brazilians joining the league, Europe with a considerable number of players from Spain, Italy, and the Baltic regions, Asia with China providing a huge boost in ratings and merchandise sales, Africa with key spots in the Congo and Nigeria, and even Australia where players like Andrew Bogut and Patrick Mills have made the NBA their home.
Explaining this whole mess to the United States is going to be difficult enough, but try explaining to the millions across the world that the fastest-expanding league on earth is now not going to play because of a few million dollars. They'll have no problem going back to watching soccer and getting on with their own problems before waiting out this ridiculous storm.
It's a depressing thought to know that monetary reasons will be the driving force behind the loss of an entire season of what was sure to be an excellent year for the NBA. The billionaires in one end wanted to make more money, the millionaires in the other corner didn't want to lose out on their money, and now the fans and the thousands of stadium workers will be suffering more than anyone else.
It's tough that a $20 million per year man like Rashard Lewis will be without a job for the next few months, but at least give a thought to Joe the janitor who makes a living from October to May by sweeping up the messes that 20,000 strong leave behind 82 times out of the year.
Both sides need to put this thought into perspective rather than one side arguing for more money and the other fighting for their pride.
The janitors, concession stand workers, broadcasting teams, cheerleaders, the parking lot vendors, the countless maintenance workers who make every stadium tick, and the trainers on each teams staff will be without pay and without a job until October of 2012.
The lockout could not have come at a worse time either considering how television ratings and ticket sales have been at their highest since Michael Jordan's heyday with the Chicago Bulls. With the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers rivalry renewed and the introduction of this Miami Heat super team, the NBA regained its popularity and began testing MLB as the second most watched sport in the United States.
So who exactly wins from the NBPA rejecting the owners deal? No one. Absolutely no one will win from this. The NBPA will have its pride of not backing down and just taking the offers deal, but they're also going to go an entire season without a much-needed pay check.
The owners will still have their lucrative amounts of money, but will see a minor inconvenience in their bank statements when they see millions of dollars not there because of the loss of the NBA.
Most of all though, we suffer. It is believed that the players make the NBA, but this is a fan created league that has helped strengthen and solidify this league as a significant part of the sporting world. The players might put on the show, but we're the ones shelling out the money to watch 48 minutes worth of basketball, paying $50 to a parking vendor just so we can avoid a long walk from the stadium, and paying upwards of $300 for authentic jerseys that might have cost less than $10 to make in some sweat shop located in Taiwan.
Lockouts have occurred and they've only rarely been helpful. The MLB was in dire straits after their lockout in 1994 and the NBA had a lot of trouble with the loss of Michael Jordan at the end of the 1997-'98 season and then dealing with the lockout-shortened 1998-'99 campaign. The NHL had an entire season wiped out in 2004 before coming back stronger than ever and that might just be the one exception to the lockout having a negative effect on sports.
The NBA won't be coming back strong after this crippling blow. This is a right hook from Mike Tyson, a sack at the hands of Lawrence Taylor, and a Kobe Bryant game winner in your face all rolled up into one tremendous package that's only going to hurt everyone involved.
The players made their statement by rejecting every offer the owners gave to them and it's now landed us in a situation far worse than what we ever envisioned during the lockout.
Thinking there's going to be a season at this point would be comical. Had the players accepted the deal, commissioner David Stern announced that games would start on December 15th and that there would still be 72 games which means only ten regular season games would be lost. The entire NBA world outside of the players were on their hands and knees begging for the players to accept this deal so that we could move on.
Those players that we have come to idolize over the past years did the exact opposite by rejecting the deal and prolonging this deal further than it ever should have gone. Understood that the players don't want to give in to the owners, but at what cost? You're losing the admiration, faith, and support that millions of fans have given you for decades just because of a few million dollars that might reduce your contract by a few fractions.
Both sides are wrong in this whole situation. The owners shouldn't be asking for a bigger cut when its the players that put on the shows and the players shouldn't be so stubborn when they claim that they're sorry to the fans and how they're trying their hardest to get a season together. It turns out that their own pride meant more to their well-beings than the fans and stadium workers who are depending on them for entertainment and a pay check of their own.
The only winner here is greed.
It made its appearance once again and it won and now the sport that we have grown to live is going down the tubes because of a slight discrepancy between the billionaire owners and their million dollars employees. I wish I could be writing about a positive result out of this depressing period of the NBA, but I cannot and I'm not going to point fingers at anyone because this whole situation is on the shoulders of both sides.
Are you depressed, yet? You should be. This transcends sports and gives a wide-range reflection on our society as a whole as we find out just who exactly runs this world: those that create the gears and lay down the infrastructure or those that make those gears move and continue to improve those gears.
