[David Aldridge] Open Letter to NBA's players and owners

It's a decent read but I've OD'd on articles discussing the lockout that contain no additional news. It's an exercise in frustration. Yet I still scratch and scrape for any crumbs out there to satisfy my NBA cravings.

Maybe it's time to just give up completely on the NBA until late August. By then maybe both sides will start feeling the heat as the beginning of the season will be at stake. We are still at the point where neither side has any reason to budge.

 

I'm writing off the entire season. If it happens to come back, great, if not...then oh well. I'd sing a very different tune if the Rockets were contenders, but they aren't.

I feel for the players - they're being asked to give up a huge percentage (stop and imagine a 30% paycut) and the guaranteed deals, all with no give back in return.

I also feel for the owners and agree that they need a pretty major shakeup to allow at least 27 of 30 teams to stay in the black. You can't have a third of the league on shaky ground with troubling levels of debt.

 

this. i'm really shocked about how little i care about this. bring on hockey and college basketball if there's no season.

 

Ha ha ha, his proposed draft, if the entire 2011/2012 season is lost, has the Rockets drafting at number 14.

 

Next year draft:

14. Houston

15. Indiana

16. Philadelphia

17. Houston (from New York)

Can we get two better players because of whole year lockout?

 

Bleacher Report has Baylor at #9 in the nation in hoops next season. If it's on Bleacher Report, it has to be true!

also, you can watch the Coyotes play their final season in Phoenix before moving to Houston for the 2012/13 season!!

 

you mean the chron.com sports page??

don't tease me, bro.

 

I think it is still the players who are at fault, not the owners. First of all - aside from Donald Sterling - I'm pretty sure that every team owner in the league wants, not only to make a profit, but to compete for a championship. Under the current rules, where players can auction themselves off to the highest bidder, there is no way for an owner NOT to be caught in that trap of overspending, since the players that command those high contracts are a scarce commodity, the players have the owners over a barrel because their is always two teams that are in bidding wars. The owners have to build a fan base, they have to manage contracts, all the players have to do is reap the rewards of their talent.

Here is a novel concept, if all of the owners with teams that can't spend money like the lakers, lets just say that all of those owners, maybe 15 teams said, buy me out: contraction. Let's just assume for the moment that this happened (it never would because of what I'm about to say) what would happen then is the talent would be saturated, due to the nba draft, to the point where teams wouldn't even have to go through free agency to BUY a player. Then contracts would soon shrink because the owners would have the advantage rather than the players.

Think about it: what is the point to having 25 or so teams that never make the playoffs. If the owners said, I'm out. The point is that under the current system the sheer amount of teams in the league are a big reason why these players' salary have escalated.

 

I think that's worse.
Considering next year we might play worse...

 

Like the article, dislike the fact that he based his draft order on the MLB draft order after their strike instead of the NHL lockout..

They would be rewarding the ****ty teams twice for playing ****ty and not giving fairness to those that float in the middle IE: Rockets lol.

 

I sense a guy writing out of desperation because his particular job hinges on a swift outcome. He's right about what the players need to do and agree to a 50/50 split to kick things off.

 

It would be incredibly unfair if they kept the order like this year's draft...cleveland getting 2 1st overalls and 2 4th overalls is just too much. I would just do a random drawing with all 30 teams.

 

Actually I think Clippers get the first overall pick, and Cleveland only get 4th overall pick

 

Harrison Barnes to the Clips? Scary stuff.