NBA Lock Out

Welcome to my blog! This is the very first post, of my very first blog, ever. You may be wondering what this blog is all about. Well, everything… and nothing. You see, each day as I go about my routine, I see and hear thing that I find funny, ironic, absurd, aggravating and sometime even infuriating; but always interesting. I often feel compelled to share my thoughts and opinions about these observations with anyone who will listen, but I frequently have to repeat myself several times in order to adequately spread my propaganda. This can become extremely tedious for me and, I’m told, quite annoying to others, so in the interest of time, and saving relationships, I have decided to start this blog where I can post my thoughts and opinions for all to ingest and digest as they see fit. I should warn you that some of my posts will be quite serious in nature, while others are likely to be complete BS. Either way, I hope to present topics that are thought provoking and sometimes entertaining.

Ok, so let’s get started. I haven’t exactly been following this whole NBA lockout thing very closely. Work, school and family have kept me so busy lately that, if not for all the media coverage, I wouldn’t even have noticed that the start of the 2011-2012 season had been delayed. Even with the regular progress reports on the nightly news, I really hadn’t been paying much attention to what it was all about. That is, until I saw Derek Fisher talking to reporters a couple of nights ago and sounding as though the players are being victimized by team owners. He was talking about how the players didn’t ask for this lock out, and that they just want to play ball but the owners won’t let them. Hmmm… for several weeks now I’ve been hearing about players unions, the players rejecting the owner’s deals and so on, and I’m thinking, “you must not want to play ball too bad.” I mean, how badly are these players being exploited by the owners that they would sacrifice doing what they love, playing basketball, by repeatedly rejecting the owner’s offers? So, I decided to look into it and here’s what I found.

Apparently, the two issues that the players and owners can’t agree on are salary caps and revenue sharing; revenue being “basketball related income” such as souvenir sales. Currently, the average salary for an NBA player is $5.15 mil per year, with top stars earning as much as $24.8 mil per year. This figure doesn’t include the average revenue shares of $4.5 mil per player annually or corporate endorsements of up to $28 mil per year for some players. What the owners are purposing is to put a salary cap of $45 mil per team annually which comes to an average of $2.7 mil per player per year, and cut revenue sharing from 57% for players to 50% for players, for an average of $4 mil per player in annual revenue shares. Ok, so let me get this straight; players are currently making an average of $9.7 mil in salary and revenues per year, plus endorsements, and the owners want to cut them back to $6.7 mil per year plus whatever endorsements they can get.  Really? These players can’t survive on a mere $6.7 mil per year?

Ok, I have a couple of problems with this. What ever happened to playing “for the love of the game?” Why do these players require such exorbitant compensation for the privilege of getting to do what so many young men can only dream about? Perhaps is not so much a love of the game that brought them to the NBA as it was a love of the money.

Now, I know what some of you are probably thinking; It’s not fair that the players are being asked to take pay cuts plus take a smaller percentage of revenues; especially considering they have to split their share of the estimated $4 billion in annual revenue 496 ways (number of NBA players) while the owners only have to split their share 30 ways (number of NBA teams). Well, why shouldn’t the owners make more on revenues? They take a bigger share of any losses and they have to pay all the salaries. Basically, the NBA is a business; a corporation with each team being a franchise of that corporation. The coaches, staff and players are employees of their respective franchises. This is how business works and nobody in the real world expects “employees” to earn more, or even as much, as their bosses. I don’t hear anybody complaining about Bill Gates being a bazillionairre while his CEO earns less than $1.5 mil per year in salary and bonuses.

I have talked to several basketball fans and the general consensus seems to be that these players need to get over themselves. Not only because the fans are anxious for the season to start, but also because they’re feeling a little insulted. The average NBA fan earns less than $50K per year so it’s a bit difficult for them to wrap their heads around the idea of these players squabbling over a $3mil pay cut when they’re already making almost 200 times the annual salary of the average fan. Here’s an idea; let these NBA stars spend one season playing for the same salary as their average fan and we’ll see how fast they go running back to accept a deal.