I don’t know anything about the economics of the NBA lockout because quite frankly, I don’t care. When I think about sports I don’t want to think about economic implications, I want to think about the game.
Basically, all I know about the NBA lockout is that a bunch of greedy rich men are not allowing me to watch the best basketball players on earth play basketball, and that is quite irritating. In fact, we all should’ve been watching the NBA for the past two weeks.
From reading about the lockout I do understand that the economic implications are important. Owners are supposedly losing money (although this is widely refuted) and players are making exorbitant amounts of money (irrefutable). But honestly, these are a bunch of rich men who bought basketball teams and people men who play a game for a living.
I whole-heartedly agree with the notion that Malcolm Gladwell introduces in a piece he wrote for Grantland recently. In short, he argues that people shouldn’t be buying basketball teams to make money. Sports owners in general are usually extremely independently wealthy, with the exception of the now deceased Bill Veeck type (he’s the baseball owner who sent a midget up to bat in the ‘50s).
These owners have already made their money and now they want a toy.
Take Dan Gilbert of the Cavs. He owns Quicken Loans. Do you really think he bought the Cavs to pump more cash into his already quite full bank account? Or do you think he was like, “I’m really rich and the Cavs are for sale. It would be fun to own an NBA team.”
I’m going to go with the latter. Side note: Gilbert has been a generally good owner for the Cavs, but I do hope the “comic sans” font has been removed from his computer and he has someone filtering his access to the team’s website, for obvious reasons.
However, I digress, the real point here is this NBA lockout is one of the most idiotic situations I have ever seen. As ESPN’s Bill Simmons has been fond of harping on lately, the NBA just had one of their best seasons ever and now they are just completely off the map; thus killing all their buzz and instead creating an angry backlash.
Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much of a backlash yet; it’s probably the NFLs fault. But after the Super Bowl when all we have to watch is hockey and the obviously inferior college basketball for two months, there’s going to be some serious anger out there towards these greedy old men and already rich players who are depriving us of professional basketball. Especially in Ohio, I mean it’s not like we can go outside and do other things in February.
This kind of backlash is obviously never good for a league, in fact it can be debilitating (See League, National Hockey). That’s why, though I do understand they are quite far apart, having this lockout is probably going to be worse for the league economically than a deal where both sides have to give something up. In fact a comprised deal is probably much better for the league as a whole (Note: everything that’s been said also applies to Congress).
That’s where these situations end up anyways. Neither side is going to get an awesome deal, all this is, is some terrible PR for the league and idiotic posturing by the once great David Stern. History may still end up calling him great, but not in the short term after this he’s risking his legacy in this situation, and for what?
A deal can’t be that hard to reach and a quick note to both sides here: locking out because you’re not making enough millions makes you look stupid. When unemployment is at about 9%, nobody in the country feels sorry for you. Actually it just makes people pretty mad, especially when all they want is to watch some basketball.
That’s what the whole thing comes down to, where we started is where we will finish. The economics of the situation is much less important to average fan than the fact that on a random Tuesday night, we can’t turn on TNT and watch Derrick Rose play against LeBron James and Dwayne Wade. And it’s likely that we won’t see this happen at all this year. After the great season the NBA had last year, they are eliminating all of their buzz and likely skipping an entire season.
I guess if that’s what these extremely rich men want, that’s fine. Just don’t expect me and the rest of America to come running back whenever you greedy fools wise up.
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