Why I don't think the NBA will miss any games next year

I don't think they'll miss games. Both sides have made concessions and they are actually not that far apart. I don't listen to the crap they spew in public, that's just posturing like politicians.

 

They better not, and I hope not.

But 2 former NBA players (Charles Barkley and Rick Fox) have publicly stated that they NBA will not have a season completely next year-bold statement.

 

It took roids and about three years for fans to embrace beisbol with open arms again.
With all that revenue and fan interest this season has generated, it will be an extremely bad decision to not play ball for both sides. As to the actual negotiations, Jared Jeffries did not decide to give himself the contract he has. These owners have to be more responsible and stop blaming the players for what they've created.

 

I hope you are right but don't see it. They are very far apart and the players will only give the owners most of what they want after suffering huge salary losses. Money-losing, small market NBA owners won't feel any pain when games are missed.

 

In the latest proposal the owners essentially offered current players a good deal, the price is that players coming in later will pay the price. I think the current players will go for it because it doesn't affect them that much.

 

The larger market teams aren't what make the negotiations difficult. It's the small market teams driving this train that must be satisfied. Some of them will certainly lose more in a lockout than otherwise, but their pain will be relatively small compared to players missing game checks. This is what it's going to take to close a deal.

 

Baseball is not a good comparison to basketball. First off, baseball is the only real sport going on during the summer - so when it's not there, you see the huge void. With basketball, most people think the season is way too long and people are focused on football during the fall, so no one cares that much.

Beyond that, baseball cancelled their season mid-season. People were already invested in the season and its outcome. That's very different than not starting the season at all. We saw this in the last NBA lockout - no one really cared much and the fans came back pretty quickly.

The owners are going to go play hardball this time around, and the players aren't going to cave easily. That means an almost assured extended lockout. Like the NHL, this sport has major issues to work out in terms of their finances.

 

I think it will be much more difficult. The league has had minimum revenue the last 2 seasons unlike the seasons before. There's no reason to think this season will be different, in fact i think it'd be worst than the previous 2 seasons. Something Stern mentioned was that the players benefited more then the owners did.

 

I hope you're right and I love your optimism. Just not sure if I believe saving the entire 82-game season is a possibility at this point.

P.S. Fixed:

 

Agree with Carl.

In the end I think there is a lot to lose for the Owners and that they will get this done to have a full season.

But I am not a happy man that they are taking summerleague away

 

The thing is that the way Woj describes it, cheap bastards like Sarver and Sterling and fools like Kahn/Taylor don't care one way or the other if there is a lockout. After all, it's not like they are that concerned if the NBA goes to hell in a handbasket. And they have as much of a voice as people like Cuban, Riley, or Alexander. Stern needs to tell the first group of people to suck it, but he won't.

So it depends. I want a way to end the superteam phenomenom, but really I blame ownership for this in the end.

 

The whole superteam thing is overblown. Especially watching a Dallas non-superteam beat the prototypical superteam.

The other owners need to just build their teams better and stop giving non-superstars superstar money.

Also even though we all hate to admit it the superteams has helped the NBA in popularity.

 

Right, its not just owner/players, its rich vs poor and the players adjusting.

I think part of it is:
- Rich teams wont share (common theme there)
- Poor teams then have to make their money back from the PLAYERS' share
- Players and poor teams make their concessions.
- They look to the rich teams to say "We've made adjustments, how about YOURS?" But the Lakers, Celtics, Bulls and Knicks won't do anything. And why should they?

I think its cuz of THAT, there won't be a full 82 game season. The dreaded "revenue sharing" needs to be better but that won't happen without a fight, or ever.

 

That's not necessarily true. The NBA did suffer after the lockout, but that also was the end of the Jordan Bulls - a team that drew a lot of interest and had a transcendent superstar. Much of the NBA's popularity was built on Jordan. Like golf without Tiger Woods, there's a drop of interest when you lose that type of personality, especially when you've marketed him so aggressively.

And the bigger question for the two sides - and this applies to both sides equally - is whether any loss in fan interest and drop in the revenue pie is bigger than the potential gains they get by playing hardball. For the NFL, this is an easy question - both sides will lose dramatically. In the NBA? Not so much. The owners may actually be better off with a smaller revenue base but a stronger labor agreement. Players likely don't benefit by holding out, but they are being asked to make big concessions, which is going to be hard to sell.

In the end, my guess is that there's a big lockout, and in the end, the players still break and are the ones that get hurt the most. Not only do they get a weak agreement on their end, but they also suffer from whatever revenue loss the league might suffer.

But if the owners do break the union on things like sign-and-trades, salary dumps, etc - those things potentially make the league more competitive, which in the end would be a potential long-term net benefit.

 

This lockout will take a long time to come to an end. I believe I heard that 22 of the 30 teams are losing money every season. That is not going to get fixed very easily and that is why they are pushing for a hard cap, or something closer to it, than the current soft cap. That is why this lockout will last a while.

 

Fully guaranteed contracts are Killing small market teams. The Bucks have had to pay Michael Redd's Corpse Millions of Dollars with virtually no return on investment.

Not being able to use that money on a player that makes them better makes them suck.
Which in turns makes the fans not want to come watch.

And the Final result is the team looses money.

A buy out prevision needs to built into every new contract signed going forward.

All current deals should stand as is.

If we wont to see the same level of parity we see in the Nfl owners need to have that same ability to turn their rosters over when things are not working.

 

Superteams are a big problem. Its not so much having a very powerful team, but more about all the talent converging onto one team, leaving a void in the rest of the league. Having all the talent on half a dozen teams kills the interest and revenue of the rest of the league. It also seems to be the small market teams that suffer. The small market teams have to pay more to get mid level players in just to compete.

Here are some of the things I would like to come about:
-League needs to contract 2-4 teams.
-Hard cap. Allow for bird rights, but bird rights can not be transferred/traded. Bird rights would not go against salary cap.
-End S&T
-Shorten contracts and allow some sort of buyout of guaranteed contracts.