While thousands protest the wealth distribution in our country…
For the second time in the past 13 years, the NBA will have a shortened regular season. With a deadline looming, negotiators for the league and its players’ union met for more than seven hours on Monday but were unable to reach an agreement, forcing NBA Commissioner David Stern to wipe out the first two weeks of the season.
[T]hey could not find common ground on division of revenues, the length of the collective bargaining agreement and such salary cap systems as contract length, percentage of annual raises on contracts and the luxury tax.
Yes I know Schmader has it in the morning news, but I’m posting this anyway.
Are you mocking the very few workers who’ve succeeded in tying pay to their employers’ corporate profits?
What a shame we didn’t build Howard Schultz that $500,000,000 basketball arena.
I am sorry that greed (on both sides) is going to cause financial hardship to the communities that need the NBA for jobs off the court. However, I think the damn basketball season is too long, anyway (come on! November to June!!?), as is the baseball season. So, missing a few weeks doesn’t bother me personally. But the NBA, owners and players, should know that the “99 percenters” out here think it’s tacky of them to be acting like assholes. Just like when the NFL did the same thing. Get your shit together, idiots, and stop fighting over millions when the rest of the nation is worried about putting gas in their cars.
@3, the dollars involved are crazy it’s true, but you’re suggesting these workers cave…on behalf of workers everywhere? How does that work?
@3: You can’t compare the NFL model to the NBA’s.
The NFL is a financially healthy league, and very popular. It really wasn’t that difficult for the football players and owners to find a way to split the riches.
The NBA is an unstable league led by an unstable commissioner. Most teams are losing money right now and attendance is down. The league depends upon a healthy economy to be profitable, while the NFL is possibly recession-proof.
NBA; Notoriously Boring Activity.
Pretending that the NBA players union is similar to most other trade unions is not useful. The majority of the membership barely has a middle school education, and the policies are driven by the top 5% of earners, generally to the detriment of the bottom 60%. Mix in shrewd player agents, knuckleheaded team management (often made up of former players), and publicly funded arenas and you have a situation that couldn’t be farther from your local grocery store.
As far as the economic impact, other than folks working at the playing facilities and some adjacent sports bars, it’s not all that bad.
http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/spo…
@7, if symbolic meaning could be argued away labor negotiations would be very different indeed. Until then…
I can’t really speak to this NBA dispute, but if it’s anything like the NFL dispute, then I’m sure the billionaire owners have done a masterful job of framing the debate in terms of the top 5 percent of players who end up millionaires, ignoring the 95% who barely get by.
@7: You’re citing overall effect on a region (sales taxes, etc.). You seem mighty cavalier about the tens of thousands of people who work for the teams, work at the stadiums, work at the sports bars, etc. None of them have any say in this matter.
You know, the 99 percent.
yeah, fuck them all. i’m still bitter.
What @11 said.
I’m with gloomy gus. Read Malcolm Gladwell or Matt Yglesias on this union issue. Sure, NBA players make tons of money compared to most of us, but NBA owners many, many times wealthier than any NBA star. Even Michael Jordan, who made most of his money in endorsement deals and not from the Bulls or Wizards, could barely scrape together enough to purchase a minority share of a small market team. Owners they are pushing the players to give up more.
Unions could use the lockout as a platform to convince some Americans that unions are needed to fight the wealthiest interests. People just aren’t sympathetic to players’ unions unfortunately.