Steve! Steve wake up!
Wow man, great to see you again. The accident was pretty nasty but we’re happy you’re ok. You’ve been in a coma for the last six months, it’s October now.
What’s happened since you’ve been out? Well, since I know you’re most interested in basketball news let’s just start with that. The Mavs won the title – and no, it hasn’t shut Mark Cuban up. But that’s ok, it’s better than hearing the doublespeak coming from David Kahn. Unfortunately, the NBA did enter a lockout after the CBA expired.
Why did they enter a lockout? Well, a lot of the the NBA teams are losing money. Er… that’s debatable, I guess it depends on how the accounting works. Players have been getting a lot of the money from the NBA in previous years and their salaries have been growing. Meanwhile, the owners are millionaires/billionaires and are complaining about money.
That seems to confuse a lot of people, and the opinion is that owning an NBA team should be an automatic loss because the owners “love the spotlight” – which, of course, is a useless argument because other than Mark Cuban, Paul Allen, James Dolan, Dan Gilbert, Jerry Buss, Mikhail Prokorov and MJ, there aren’t really that many high-profile owners. That’s only seven dudes out of 30.
Why should a business operate at a loss? The idea seems to be that you can’t have a lavish “toy” business for show and have it be successful too. You know that my Dad has that coffee shop he bought on the cheap for fun and so he can have a place to hang out and drink coffee last year? Well it’s fixed up now and finally starting to make some money – not enough to supplant the real family business – but he has a “toy” business and he’s upset when it’s not making money. Kind of stupid the NBA owners can’t have the same, eh?
Really, it’s been hard to understand the players side in all of this. They’ve been trying to play the “helpless laborer” card when they make more in a year than we make in ten. Plus, the fact that Andrei Kirilenko made $17.8 million dollars last season doesn’t really help their argument when some players are grossly overpaid.
Part of that is because of the owners spending money on players that suck. I think it’s more than OK to try to implement a system in which the owners can save themselves from their own stupidity. We got close to having real discussion, but talks have broken off a few times and sometimes they haven’t even met at all over the summer.
At one point in time, Kevin Garnett randomly showed up and said they weren’t going to budge: always a helpful negotiation tactic. Dwyane Wade yelled at David Stern during a meeting and, as always, Derek Fisher is furthering his post-NBA modeling career by looking extra fly during press conferences when the rest of his constiuents show up wearing white t-shirts and goddamn sweatpants.
We’re looking like this year’s holidays will pass without NBA games, which is an atrocity. Baseball is as boring as ever and football is, well, football. It doesn’t look good man, but I’m hoping by the time you’re out of this hospital bed things will be looking okay.
Hell, the Simpsons voice actors went through a lockout situation a few weeks ago which was very similar to the NBA players and owners ordeal. They wanted a cut of the revenue that the Simpsons franchise was worth – billions of dollars, don’t you know – and didn’t want to take a pay cut. I think it lasted like, 10 or 12 days? Doesn’t that just make your head spin?
Steve? Steve? Can you hear me?
Dammit. Nurse!
