For those of you who find contentment, and even joy, in the continued lockout of NBA players and the pruning of the schedule, this is going to be a big year.
You will get to, on the 24th of this month, then the 8th and 22nd of November, etc., to hear the same cheery message from the graven image of David Joel Stern. Two more weeks of crap winter, two more weeks of crap winter, and on and on ad infinitum.
Its like a paycheck. Every two weeks, just like clockwork. And who doesnt want to get paid these days?
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Well, the NBA owners, who have done what sports owners have done since the advent of player unionsmake the players pay for the owners rampant stupidities and greed-mongerings. Even the Warriors guy, Joe Lacob, who hasnt been on the case that long, is standing at full height and wingspan with the other 29 suits who would rather flay than play.
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And hes supposed to be a basketball guy. Go figure.
Now you may, in your imaginary role as cruel corporate overlord, want to say the players are overpaid and deserve the haircut they are negotiating for themselves. It is, after all, easier for the average schmoe to imagine himself in a suit than on the open wing, waiting for a kickout pass for an open 19-footer.
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Well, get this, Einstein. Youre neither. If youre not a basketball fan, you could give a damn either way, so this shouldnt concern you at all. But if you are, you have to know only two things.
One, the owners locked the players out. The players didnt walk out. So if you had your heart set on games, it isnt the players who are keeping you from them.
And two, there is no known example of a player simply marching into the comptrollers office and saying, Ill take 22 million for the upcoming fiscal year, and make it snappy, Thelma. Ive got cars to buy.
The owners thought this was good business, and they did it, in mildly modified forms, since 1999. And their way out of it would have been to simply say enough times, I dont want to pay that guy that much. To create a system with a completely inflexible cap that treated all owners relatively equally, which is what they say they are agitating toward with this lockout.
But they devised the last system to allow for flexibility so that the most popular (read: richest and most fan-drooly) teams could retain their best players, and the other 22 or so teams could sit at the kids table and fight for the last eight playoff spots.
In short, what changed wasnt the owners ability to willingness to pay. It was their relationship to each other.
Oh, some owners are hurting. Most, because their other investments have been taking the same beatings you read about on the front page of the paper every day; a few, because they are such dreadful businessmen that they could lose money robbing banks.
But the bottom line here is what it was in the NFL lockout -- hard-line owners who want the union punished for having the temerity to be employees, fighting owners who just want the doors open and have run their operations well enough to make that the profitable option.
So David Stern will now come out every two weeks, each time looking a little more like the portrait of Dorian Gray, and announce, with the increasingly cadaverous Joel Silver at his side, that another two weeks have been lopped off the schedule.
Well, fine then. An owner who believed the games came first was just buried, and we all agree he was the last of his breed. We now have 121 owners who stand for themselves, and whatever Mark Davis decides he wants to be.
And if that system works for you, then congratulations. You just got Christmas every fortnight. Happy holidays.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for CSNBayArea.com.