NBA Lockout Now Taking Away Games

Dennis Berry

Well now the worst thing that could happen to NBA fans has taken place. The lockout, which has been going on since July 1, has now taken away games. This week the NBA canceled the first two weeks of the regular season, which was set to start November 1.

Before that the league had cancelled the preseason, but that hardly matters. It’s one thing when you take games that have no real meaning. It’s another when you start taking games away from fans. That’s when you start to lose fans.

Of course it has been put out to the public that this scenario was possible for the past year. We were warned that the owners and players were too far apart when it came to a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. The great divide is over its revenue sharing.

In the past the CBA the players came out way ahead in revenue sharing. The players get 57% of basketball related income. Of course the owners want that number to come down. They want the players to get only 47% of the revenue. The players have only come down to 53% in their proposals.

There are other items that need to be addressed, mainly contracts and a salary cap. Of course that still comes down to money. Most fans do not want to hear about billionaire owners fighting with millionaire players over money. Now to be fair not all players are millionaires, but many have lucrative contracts.

The really disappointing aspect of this is that the NBA was at the start of what should be a great run. The league is filled with great young stars such as LeBron James, Chris Paul, Kevin Durant.

They were just coming off a great playoff run. There were great match ups, which ended with the Dallas Mavericks defeating the Miami Heat in the Finals. Ratings were up with fans tuning in to see if the Heat would live up to their own hype.

Now all that momentum appears lost due to a labor dispute. Owners are holding firm that they need more of the revenue sharing. They claim that some teams are losing money each year, yet they do not seem to provide any proof of that claim.

Obviously players do not want to lose the money they get from revenue sharing either. They have a nice piece of it and are not willing to give it up. Perhaps they would me more willing to let go of a little more if owners would give the proof that teams lose money.

Or perhaps the NBA needs to look at the NFL. The owners and players in that league were able to agree upon a 50/50 split of revenue sharing for their CBA. They were able to agree on a new CBA without losing any games, even preseason games.

The most shocking thing may be that the players are starting to lose the PR war. The most recent dent in the players PR armor came from Kenyon Martin, who sent out a string of not so nice tweets to people. Of course Martin came back to say that it wasn't him that sent out those tweets.

He should probably stick to what Derek Fisher is doing on Twitter. He trying to get players to show unity with the phrase let us play . That is far better than what Martin was suggesting to his critics.

Right now the players probably are coming up short in the eye of the public.The owner's telling everyone they are trying to negotiate with the players and get a fairer share of revenue. They are making the players out to be the greedy side and are unwilling to talk. If that keeps up it will not matter how many phrases the players come up with.

The only thing that we know right now is that an end to the lockout is no where in sight.

What do you think?

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