Lockout Shmockout

I was surprised to see such virulent anti-player (i.e., anti-worker) sentiment during the lockout. I shouldn’t have been. The anti-labor thing has been going on for a long time. When the labor union movement started in the U.S. about 150 years ago, the wealthy elite that owned most everything (yeah, the same 1%) had enslaved workers with inhumane treatment, subsistence wages and a generational cycle of hopelessness.

Other than that, capitalism was faaaantastic. Manifest destiny? You bet. We’re numbah one! And even today (well, up till recently) capitalism is considered cool. You know, Mozart operas, wow, yeah. The NBA, also wow, great stuff.  You just don’t want to bother your pretty head about what lies behind the Oz-like façade.  We want our bread and circuses, even if the bread is stale and the circus is rigged.

Unions, the consequence of lousy working conditions, become agents of significant social change (while the 1% did all they could to destroy them) and a middle class evolved. So why are unions today so despised? A tipping point came during the Vietnam War when George Meany, fat cat head of the AFL-CIO union combine, made a speech endorsing the war. When the unions abdicated the higher ground, they lost their moral force. That failure, combined with the pro-management administrations of Reagan, Nixon and the Bushes, has brought unions to their current redheaded stepchild status.

A common theme is that the players are greedy. (Funny, the owners are rarely called greedy.) That criticism is especially bogus in light of the recent negotiations. The players didn’t want more. They agreed to give back a huge amount of BRI and several other concessions. Turns out that when people said “greedy” they meant “uppity.”

C’mon, most of the players are black and all of the owners are white. That’s what was behind David Stern’s take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum, followed by the dagger, the vicious little twist that the owners wanted to get across to their hired hands: If, by a certain date, you don’t take our offer of a 50-50 split (it had been 57-43 in favor of the players!) then we will offer less. Namely, 53-47 in favor of the owners. And that’s what happens when you try to run away from the plantation.

The NBA players are just like retail clerks, restaurant workers, construction workers. They all want their fair share of the pie.  The big difference is that the NBA players are actually able to get their fair share, or come close, because they are unique talents–450 guys that this country and the rest of the world can’t get enough of. The NBA, a multi-billion dollar monopoly, is an exceptionally big pie, with relatively few people sharing it. Why shouldn’t the players make millions?  They are the artists, the best in the world. They are irreplaceable. They entertain the hell out of us and make many more millions for the owners, the media and the advertisers. They are the NBA.

Not the owners, for god’s sake.

Owners have not been coerced into signing players to big contracts. Those contracts were freely entered into, with both parties accepting the potential for risk and reward. How does that make the players greedy? The owners have had a sweet little tax-exempt private club going on that the players, by decertifying and threatening to go to court, could’ve finally ended. I was hoping they would, just to watch the owners try to PR that away.  Though the players had more to lose in the short run, the owners had more to lose in the long run. The elephant in the room is this: Without the owners, there will be a league; a different league, that’s all. Without the players, there can’t be a league. Bite on that, owners.

And the problem for the league was not big markets and small markets. Revenue sharing solves those problems. The problem was rather (relatively) smart owners and stupid owners. Despite their sweet set-up, the owners claim losses of $300 million last year. Those losses weren’t because of an unfair labor agreement, but simply the ineptitude of the owners. The NBA is the goose that laid the golden egg, and you’re losing money? Please. Some small market teams did poorly, like the Cavs or the T-Wolves, but mostly because they drafted poorly and made poor personnel decisions. Some small-market teams, like Oklahoma City and Memphis, who made good personnel decisions, did very well last year. The owners are demanding that the players pay for the owners’ mistakes.

Is the upcoming 66-game season going to help or hurt the Lakers? Probably neither. The condensed schedule (featuring an occasional back-to-back-to-back) will be a problem for all teams but especially older teams—like the Lakers. But the good part for the Lakers is the shortened season—sixteen fewer games. That should make up for the difficulties of the schedule.

The Lakers have other problems. For one, they are getting old. Kobe, especially, has become increasingly fragile even though he’s about as great as ever. In that context, the possible loss of Shannon Brown to free agency looms large. Not only was he the team’s most athletic player but he backs up Kobe. Without Brown there is no backup for Kobe.

Nor does the team have an adequate backup for Andrew Bynum. If they insist on sliding Pau Gasol over when Bynum sits down, they’re doomed. A backup is needed not only to rest Bynum but to take over the position if he goes down.

Then there’s the point guard problem.

Of course, nothing can be understood until the free agency period. The teams can make offers now but nothing can happen until December 9th. Then we’ll know if the Lakers have a chance to do the Dwight Howard-for-Bynum deal. And we’ll know if they are going to cut Metta World Peace and the $21 mil and 3 years left on his contract. They’d still have to pay him but, because of the new “amnesty clause,” that money would not count against the cap, as it would have in the past, thus giving the team a nice amount of money to get a good free agent. A small forward, for example. That’s a great opportunity for the Lakers who, without the amnesty clause, would have virtually no wiggle room to improve their roster, except for the now-watered-down mid-level exception that has a 3-year, $9.4 mil cap.

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