Keys To The NBA Lockout

It has finally happened. When the NBA players union and the league's owners failed to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in a timely fashion, commissioner David Stern cancelled the first two weeks of the NBA's regular season.

We'd already missed a summer's worth of transactions, training camps, and the entire preseason. But with the cancellation of meaningful games, this argument among the rich will truly start to affect the thousand of people that work to make the game experience possible. Concession workers, security, folks in ticket sales, local bar owners, they will all suffer for the duration of the lockout. From lost games to lost business, this won't be pretty.

Many want to know what it will take to end this thing. The primary issues seem to be the split of Basketball-Related Income (BRI) and the insertion of a hard cap. In an attempt to make up for their past mistakes, the owners want to ensure a net profit every season. As opposed to making wiser decisions in free agency, they look to limit the amount of money players can make over the life of a contract. They want to cut the maximum length of contracts in order to lessen the impact of under-performing players

On the players side of things, they want no less than 53% of BRI (they earned 57% in the last CBA, and the owners want to offer them 50% now). They also want to keep the current luxury tax system that doesn't completely deter teams from spending to compete.

By all accounts, I'm a fan of the game, and up until the first two weeks were cancelled I took the players' side. As I delve deeper into what has happened here, I'm taking a more neutral stance and just hoping that the games return as quickly as possible.

Everyone deserves blame here. The owners should know better than to overpay players that aren't absolute stars (Gilbert Arenas, Eddy Curry, Rashard Lewis, Mike Conley, etc.). For that reason, they can't truly expect players to turn down the best offers for their services. A player can only earn this type of money for so many years. Sports is a punishing profession where most players abilities and careers diminish around their early thirties; they are looking to cash in now. In other words, a player wouldn't have a large contract if a team didn't offer it.

I've been very disappointed in the players as well. Yes, the excitement around summer pickup games was nice, and it is great to hear talk of unity amongst the league's stars. But, where was their sense of urgency this summer!? The lockout began in July and reports of serious negotiations didn't truly come in until late September. Star players just started showing up in the last several weeks. If they cared about having a full season, they would've sat in on negotiations much sooner.

So here we are with real games cancelled. The main party losing now is the players. With every game missed, they will be the ones missing paychecks. And as much as they push for 53% of BRI, every week of missed games means more money they will never see again. They've got to understand that they are negotiating with a group that includes billionaires. While they may feel their services are undervalued, the owners are their bosses (their extremely rich bosses)and they must put personal agendas aside to ensure that their is a competitive league to play in. As talented as these guys are, who else will pay them millions of dollars to put a ball in a hoop? The owners could easily walk away and return to the businesses that gave them the ability to buy a basketball team for roughly half a billion dollars.

It's on the players now to accept 50% of BRI, accept a harder cap, and accept the fact that their god-given talent was to play ball (not negotiate finances).