lockout

(Originally posted in the Stratford Star newspaper on November 17, 2011, in my  “Walsh’s Wonderings” column.) As a basketball fan, I am the least of anyone’s concern in the NBA. Both the commissioner, David Stern, and the head of the player’s union, Billy Hunter, regard me as little more than the wallet that carries their money. Amid the battle to win over public opinion, however, they’re forced to pretend they care about me. So here goes, fellas: Cancel the season. Please. While hoping for a restoration to sanity, I’ll settle for a Knicks ticket I can actually afford. I’ll never get it under the current system. The owners and the players are too greedy, counting on fans too stupid to vote with their absence. The owners set this failed system into motion, of course—their inability to work in the long-term interest of the game allowed the wheels to come off long ago. Now they’re taking it out on the people who can least afford it: the fans and the people who make a living off concessions, parking, or merchandising. The lockout is an excuse for the owner’s lawyers to do that which the owners can’t: fix the cash cow. If they’re counting on lawyers to fix basketball, that cow’s a goner. However, the players are even more deluded—someone forgot to tell them they already won the lottery. They’ve managed to make a living playing a child’s game, revered by millions for doing what we all grew up doing at recess. Now, in a stunning feat of entitlement, they’ve decided the league average of five million dollars a year in salary is not enough to stop them from taking their ball and going home. “Lockout!” they scream, yet some of the players should be locked up for their arrogance About 21 percent of N.B.A. players had undergraduate degrees in 2009, according to Debbie Rothstein Murman, the director for career development for the NBA union. This means around 80% of NBA players should otherwise be making the national average of $32,900 for their education level, according to the 2011 Condition of Education report from the National Center for Education Statistics. However, even the lowest rookie can’t get paid less than $475,000 under their current contract, and that’s before adding in licensing fees, appearance fees, and the free swag that accompanies these fully guaranteed contracts. I defy any player to find another profession that pays such a fortune to men with so little formal education. The players shouldn’t be knocking Stern, they should be building him a statue. Instead, they’ve victimized themselves in the same way NHL players did in 2004. Today’s hockey players still skate delicately around the corpse of that lost 2004-2005 season, when owners ground the players into a fine powder by imposing a hard salary cap and forechecking union head Bob Goodenow into irrelevance. The NBA union seems completely oblivious to its impending defeat, demanding no less than 53% of the overall league revenues (numbers that seem to change by the hour)…