lawyers

(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) amidst an economy that’s long been on the inactive list.

Making no concession to common sense, the players claim a kind of leverage that defies logic. They stand on the assertion that, as the face of the league, the league owes its success to them. Funny how one of the real faces of the league, Michael Jordan, doesn’t see it that way. As an owner, he realizes there is only one NBA; no one else is stupid enough to match that business model. Only in professional sports do the employees feel they deserve more pay than the owners who built the franchise. Players and owners will lose a lot of money in a cancelled season, but only the owners have a shot to make any of it back. If history holds, most owners will be around to realize the cost savings of a new collective bargaining agreement, and their ability to make money from the NBA will far outlast the players’.

So I’m taking off my Knicks jersey and rooting for the No Team; let the player’s union decertify and watch as time and the courts show them the folly of their ways. Maybe then we can hope the owners are so desperate to regain their fans that they price their tickets accordingly. It ain’t much, but it can’t be any worse than when players got 57% of the revenue. Better yet, the nuclear option would involve replacement players and $10 tickets; toss the players and get the paychecks out to the real folks who work at the stadiums. I can’t afford a ticket to see Lebron or Kobe anyway, and a clean slate for the Knicks would be a dream come true. I’d still be nothing but the wallet that carries their money, but at least it’d be a smaller wallet.