On the NBA Lockout

I have been watching with an increasingly concerned viewpoint what the owners, players and league officials are doing to this game. Now I don't know all of the details of the negotiations, and have no labor law or collective bargaining qualifications, but I can speak of this situation from a fan's viewpoint, which I definitely am.

And what I hear through the news reporting is both alarming and disgusting. I hear of owners being called slave masters, players being labeled greedy and star players bolting to play in Europe and of course repeated calls for contraction. What will happen is that both sides are intent on killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Yes, there are too many teams in the National Basketball Association. There are markets which can no longer support or justify a franchise. Greedy owners are as much to blame as the players, driving up salaries by repeatedly working to outbid each other for star players. And let's face it, there are multimillionaire players in this league; so for some of them to characterize owners as slave masters is ludicrous.

The pie has become smaller due to economic and market pressures; everybody is going to have to take a smaller slice, and I think some teams will need to disappear. It's a market correction, something we ordinary folk who buy the tickets and subscribe to the cable and satellite feeds to watch the games have been suffering from since 9/11/2001. Welcome to tough times.

Sure the big stars can jump ship and play in Europe, but what about the mid-level and minimum salary guys who don't have that option? The players association should be fighting for them, but that's not been mentioned much. I'm afraid that reality has hit the players just like it has for every other American worker.

I am not gloating; I'm saddened because we're going to see a very different NBA emerge from this turmoil - when it does. It's not the die-hard fans it will lose; it's the casual viewers. Major League Baseball had a similar crisis in the previous decade. Remember they cancelled the 1994 World Series. What saved it was the Mark McGwire - Sammy Sosa home run record chase of 1998. Ironically that was discredited by steroids - but the new fans it attracted forgave baseball and they never left the sport.

There are no such opportunities in the offing for the NBA. Players and owners are all going to have to swallow some humble pie and figure out a way to give back to their fans while attracting new ones. Hiw about starting by lowering those outrageous ticket prices? If they don't do something conciliatory we may not see an NBA game until the 2012-13 season. By then it may be to late.