In the spirit of holiday cheer, the news of canceling the season can only bring bad joy to the players, owners, businesses, workers, cities and most importantly, basketball loving fans. Causal fans have already left, turning their attention to either the football season that is in state (despite having a “lockout”), hockey games (that had a lockout in 2004 but is now happily playing hockey) or any college games (which to my understanding has very few if any issues in dealing with splitting money between its team and players.) The NBA has already taken a turn for the worst. Like in a earlier column, the NBA was behind in fans and viewers by a lot to the NFL and MLB. Now with no season, fans are gone, business has suffered and the NBA has dropped towards the bottom, as the MLS (major league
soccer
football
David Beckham) has swooped in and captivated quite a few.
So why is this lockout taking soooooo long compared to others? Well at this point, its not even the longest. The MLB became the first major sport to cancel their season in 1994-1995 as they could not come to terms. Taking note, the NHL cancelled their 2004-2005 season as they were unable to come to terms in time. The recent NFL lockout took 136 days before Robert Kraft and his magic “Kraft” came and saved the day. The NBA? They are on day 140 and it doesn’t look like there is a near end in sight. Not only games are in jeopardy of being cancelled, but the season itself. The reduced 50-game season is coming to fast no. Courts and judges take forever. Why do you think death row prisoners often don’t actually die until years later? And just for fun, the MLB and the NHL saw many fans alienating their sport for other interests and watched attendance plummet. It is no surprise or shock that the same would happen to the NBA.
So the major point for the lockout: Money. Is this a surprise? No. Every major sport have had issues about money. More specifically, how are they going to split the revenues between the teams and players and how much to pay the players. Owners of NHL and NBA teams, where their revenue is much further short than those of the NFL and MLB, want a salary cap. They also want a bigger cut in the revenue pay as they have to try to keep their team afloat (see Seattle Supersonics). I like the idea of what the NHL did with their revenue. For their most recent agreement, they have agreed to adjust the salary cap each year and guarantee 54% of the total NHL revenues to the players. Player contracts were also guaranteed and that players’ share would increase if the revenues hit a certain benchmark while a pool of money from the top 10 grossing teams would be split with the bottom 15.
Of course, this also means that there is a salary cap and it seems that the NBA is rather strict on what it wants.
It seems that while it is rather easy to point to a single issue, money, there are more issues underneath that owners and players can not meet halfway. Players want something of a guarantee contract, while keeping the mid-level exception and the “Larry Bird” rights. This of course is after they want at least 54% of the NBA revenue. Owners, however, want to have some type of salary cap so that small market teams (think Michael Jordan and the Charlotte Bobcats) can compete with the big market teams (really, do I have to actually type big market teams?!?!?!)
I do hope that the season can be saved in a sense that it will have 50 games. I am not optimistic and if history is a lesson, more than one major sport is willingly to forgo a season, alienate fans, lose a ridiculous amount of money to get what they want. If anything, when the NBA does come back, they better be giving free food, free drinks, free parking and a crazy amount of prizes at games. Cause while games are fun to watch (if they are close), the atmosphere is what you really go for. Otherwise, just sit at home and watch!
At this point, let March Madness begin early!
*Sources include:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004–05_NHL_lockout
http://aol.sportingnews.com/nfl/feed/2010-09/nfl-labor-talks/story/nfl-lockout-ends-owners-nflpa-10-year-deal-2011-season-cba-labor-agreement
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=1856626