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Lockout!!!

freakazoid said:
I say we shut it down for two years and see which side gains a new perspective.
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Let's balance that idea a little more: let's just blow up the league. Players walk on their deals and owners eat their debt. I wonder which side gains more perspective.
 
It would be hilarious enough reading the stories of NBA players after one year of losing paychecks. Two years would be a parade of misery. In that time, the worst NBA owner story would be a guy suffering through sympathies at the yacht club over '88 bottles of Lafite Rothschild and the indignity of knowing their net worth is crumbling towards 999 million taking them out of the billionaire club.
 
The teams and the players have made each other lots of money, and could continue to make money together for many years. But the idea that they one has to 'beat' the other and 'win' the negotiation is putting the entire money making venture in jeopardy. If they can ever realize they are only fighting themselves they will reach agreement, until then they are killing each other. don't-give-up.jpg
 
NUMBERICA said:
Let's balance that idea a little more: let's just blow up the league. Players walk on their deals and owners eat their debt. I wonder which side gains more perspective.
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I'm guessing one side would still be rich, while the majority of the other side would find out what it's like to have to work for a living.

Seriously though, let's forget about hypotheticals. Let's cancel the season and see which side gets a dose of reality. If the players can start their own league or find a better life in China, then more power to them.
 
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You are way too optimistic for your own good. I've tried that myself several times throughout this process...
 
colton said:
You are way too optimistic for your own good. I've tried that myself several times throughout this process...
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I'm not optimistic. I'm delirious. And if I don't see a pro basketball game soon I'll become homicidal. I have to believe. Or I might hurt things.
 
Maybe I'm reading this totally wrong (and let me have it if I am), but it sure seems this lockout is producing some strange politics -- particularly anti-free market politics among conservatives.

In conservative Utah, we're most strongly supportive of the owners, and eager to call the players greedy. Meanwhile we're supporting the owners in trying to instill as many anti-free market policies as they can. All evidence suggests that if the NBA were truly a free market, the "greediest" players would get more money than they do now.

And why not? In a truly free market, they deserve it. They are among the world's 500 best at a very marketable skill. The owners? Not so much. You can't tell me that compared to the players there's not two, three, 10 or even 100 times as many people in the world who couldn't competently own an NBA team. There may not be that many with the cash on hand, but there's certainly that many with the skills.

Anyway, it seems that the strong Utah support for the owners is either a small-market thing (which probably factors in partially), or a more fundamental belief (superseding faith in the free market) that ownership confers the natural right over labor to control wealth. (. . . I'll end my neo-Marxist screed now.)
 
That's the problem with a free market society. Everyone is trying to get as much as they can without any thought to the overall good.
What if everyone held out for their own "worth".

You are already filthy rich, and in a different class than most human beings yet still you feel you are entitled to more.
The fact is the players may have a marketable skill but they can't run the show on their own. Most have no idea how to run a business. They do in fact need the owners.
The owners give them the market for their "skill".
 
Team based pro sports are not a free market - never have been and never will be. The free market model doesn't work if you want a league with any degree of parity and teams spread out across a country. Free market is WalMart and Home Depot in major markets with Ace Hardware at best in small markets. Free market is not the NBA or any pro team sport and frankly makes no sense as a basis for discussion unless one wants to completely tip the current system upside down. If you really go free market, small market teams simply become the D-league to 10-12 NBA teams.
 
The issue is not about free market. Free market is exterior. The limiting of government intervention into the marketplace. What is at issue is who controls how a business is run. Is it the owners who have taken all of the financial risk? Who have a responsibility to not only the players, but shareholders, concession folks, security, janitorial staff, etc. or is it the players who take no financial risk? Who get paid their guaranteed contracts no matter what, can walk away with no financial liability if the leaque fails (other than the lack of a paycheck).
 
Guaranteed contracts are not given in the NFL for the most part because the injury factor is so high. In the NBA, although there is some risk of injuries the chance is much lower than in football. Baseball has an even less chance for serious injury and thus they even have longer guaranteed contracts. Why the NBA has ANY guaranteed contracts is beyond me! NBA players have the worst reputations for off court shenanigans, work ethic, and dangerous leisure behavior than any other professional league! Heck, 3/4 fourths of the NBA probably still packs! They've got "posse's" they hang out with that have been incarcerated more than once! And besides all that.....everybody in town knows they take plays, quarters and whole games off when they feel like it!
 
All unionized workforces are an attempt to limit market forces, by design. Doesn't mean they are necessarily bad, it just is what it is. In an industry like professional sports the business models are necessarily different than say GM or Walmart. The services produced are specialized, there is a high barrier to entry in the market, there is a limited market with a more or less known demand curve. The individual entities (the teams) are not in business competition with each other, they are in it together. If the smaller teams fail, the bigger teams do not win. That is opposite of any true free market. And it isn't really like basketball is competing with baseball or football, although in a way they do compete, but more for advertising and media dollars than for fans. As the NBA or baseballs lockout shows, not many fans cross the line and add really much larger numbers of fans to the other sports. They are not true substitute goods. But in a free market generally the bigger players win when smaller players lose (fewer mom-and-pop corner grocery stores = larger revenues for Walmart). So really the free-market assessments of the NBA are not valid.

But I think the reason fans are more supportive of the owners generally is because we are emotional creatures. The owners have done not much beyond painting this as a business move. The players have done a poor job painting it as anything more than a greed grab. Even though we know that in the end the players are giving up money, when you hear someone who makes $5 million per year complain about agreeing to a deal that guarantees them fewer millions and claiming they are taking food out of their family's mouths, when overall unemployment is so incredibly high, alienates the average fan. I guess bottom line is whiny spoiled multi-millionaires that most fans probably secretly believe really never earned the money playing a "game" are less sympathetic characters than owners trying to run a profitable business that drives so many other jobs. At least that is likely the perception that many fans have.
 
Here's a link explaining the latest on the negotiations:

https://bleacherreport.com/tb/bc9na

And here's the main point for those of you who don't want to read the whole article:

Bottom line, if the attorneys can find a compromise on the key issues — division of revenues, structure for the salary cap and exceptions, etc… — then the union will be reformed (and the lawsuits dropped), the “B list” issues (draft age restrictions, drug testing, and the like) will be hammered out and the deal will be voted on by both sides. Games would start in a month.
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