Things aren’t looking great for the NBA this upcoming season, or rather, if they’re even going to be having an upcoming season, because the players have rejected the latest NBA offer.
This is the closest it has ever been to losing an entire season of play. It’d be weird to have a year without basketball, right??
The union representing the players broke up formally and vowed to take matters to federal court. Which means that because they’re no longer unionized, they’ll be filing an antitrust lawsuit saying that the lockout wasn’t legal.
Commissioner David Stern took the most dramatic route possible though, and claims:
├óΓé¼┼ôWe├óΓé¼Γäóre about to go into the nuclear winter of the N.B.A.”
Come on.
We understand that basketball and the NBA is a great entertainment past time here and brings in loads of money for the cities’ teams’ economies, but we can’t help but feel like everyone in the NBA is ridiculously overpaid to begin with — so it’s nice to see that the players were basically willing to cut $4 billion in half for the cause. Which means that despite the league’s claim of losing $300 million dollars a year, we aren’t really seeing enough concession on their part for Stern to act “nuclear winter” like he is.
On the other hand, one of the anti-trust lawyers, Mr. Kessler, had claimed that Stern treated the players like “plantation workers.” To that, we also say, “Come on.” As it’s BASKETBALL and they get paid a ton of money to play a sport.
It’d be nice if people would just stop being super greedy for presenting or playing a game and just get back to it. Even with all the pay cuts and concessions on both sides, it’s still a ridiculous amount of money for everyone. There. We said it.
[Image via AP Images.]