NBA Lockout: It's On

Some ESPN capologist named Tom Penn just went on PTI and said there’s a 75% chance the NBA won’t have a season in 2011-2012. My advice: tune it all out (like you did with the NFL in April and May) until September. Here’s a problem the NBA will run into – come October, the NFL and college football are in full swing, and the World Series is going on. There isn’t going to be a clamor for the NBA. My guess (today) is that the season will start in February, right after the Super Bowl.

Here are two good NBA lockout reads for you, starting with Mike Monroe of the San Antonio News-Express:

"Stern and deputy commissioner Adam Silver will have us believe it is because the league’s business model is broken and requires a new system. The trouble with this argument is that owning a professional sports team is more of a hobby than business for many of the owners. Do you think Mark Cuban, who has a Forbes Magazine wealth estimate of $2.5 billion, loses sleep over the money he likely will lose on last season’s Mavericks, who had a player payroll in excess of $90 million (plus luxury taxes under the soon-to-expire CBA)? … There are owners for whom the model no longer works well for, and Holt may be one of them. If small-market teams such as the Spurs want to remain competitive, a hard cap would help, but so would revenue sharing among the league’s 30 teams. But that is something Holt’s fellow owners must agree to do, and that won’t be any easier than striking a deal with the players."

I also enjoyed this one, from Berry Tramel at the Oklahoman:

"The owners want a payroll cap, a hard cap, like the NFL’s. That won’t come easy. The NBA union appears entrenched against such a concession, though missed paychecks often make players rethink their position … Payroll caps don’t guarantee every franchise can compete. They do keep franchises from spending their way to victory. The great constant in baseball is not that the Royals or Pirates will lose. Those teams lose because they are mismanaged. The great constant in baseball is that the Yankees and Red Sox will win. Foul up on personnel, and the Yanks and Red Sox just write a check. You can’t do that in the NFL. You can do it to a certain extent in the NBA, which has a flexible cap that some teams pay no mind to."

Give the options, I’d much rather have an NFL-style cap than an MLB-style cap.

Our NBA lockout coverage will be similar to our NFL lockout coverage – we’ll ignore it best we can while still talking about the sport, trade options and free agent happenings, as well as the usual assortment of basketball randomness.