
A glum-looking David Stern.
The preseason? That’s been long gone. Now, the NBA is calling off regular season games as its protracted labor strife extends into what should’ve been the first few days of the 2012 hoops season. The announcement was made today: the first two weeks of the NBA season are gone, and don’t hold your breath for any progress any time soon.
“With every day that goes by, I think we need to look at further reductions in what’s left of the season,” Stern said to media in New York on the day of the announcement. “We just have a gulf that separates us.” Stern added: “The issues on the competition side to have 30 teams be as competitive as they can and tell out fans that our markets and our teams could compete for a championship if well managed have separated us greatly. We discussed the system and the system and the system and we are so far apart. We can’t close the gap.”
The NBA learned from the last lockout when I was a kid. If you make the players start missing checks, they’ll cave sooner, rather than later. Yes, the superstars have lots of money, but you don’t need to make superstars hurt, you have to hurt all the rank-and-file players that make up most of the union and who live from massive paycheck to massive paycheck. The superstars can play elsewhere, but there’s not enough room in Europe and Asia for the average ball player. They need the NBA; they’ll be the ones who pressure their megastar peers into caving once those mansion mortgages start defaulting.
At least we’ll always have your awesome video games, NBA.
Tags: NBA, basketball, professional basketball, National Basketball Association, NBA lockout, David Stern, lockout, labor strife, NBA labor strife, NBA cancels first two weeks of the season, NBA cancels first two weeks of regular season, sports, NBA calls off regular season games