Finally the madness is done ... the NBA is back!

[NightHawk112005]

So was Starman right? Did the owners get it down to 37%? I'd be shocked if he was wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/sports/basketball/nba-and-basketball-players-reach-deal-to-end-lockout.html?hp

"On nearly every count, the deal favors the owners."


And you just wait and see when they crunch the numbers and see what gets excluded from BRI. It'll be close to 40 percent before they're done. Plus the players punt on all the peripheral issues.

And of course we're all forgetting the hidden revenues the owners keep out of the deal in the first place -- the 10-20 percent they stash in their pockets right off the top. But never mind that.

In the end it was a classic Obama-style negotiation for the players: Concede, capitulate, and then collapse under deadline pressure, end up settling for a worse deal than if you had just surrendered on Day One.

I don't seriously give a **** either way. I haven't watched an NBA game start to finish in five years.

Wait, it does? To me, it looked like the owners didn't get much out of this. It looks much like the system they already had with no hard cap and it still being very difficult to break a cycle of sucking.

It really doesn't matter to me overall, because the joy I'd get from the Pacers winning the NBA title is about the same as the Senators winning the Northeast Division. Hockey owns my heart and always will. But I'd like to have a little bit of reason to care about the NBA, even if it will always run eighth on my sports radar and would fall to ninth if college football ever gets a playoff system.

The players lose $3 billion over the 10-year deal by going from 57 to 50 percent. The rest of the terms haven't been announced, but early indications are that there will be additional restrictions on teams over the luxury tax, as well as the end of sign-and-trades for teams over the cap. Your interpretation that "the owners didn't get much out of this" is very strange.

We'll see how it looks when it's finalized. I really was hoping for the cancelled season, though.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

So was Starman right? Did the owners get it down to 37%? I'd be shocked if he was wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/sports/basketball/nba-and-basketball-players-reach-deal-to-end-lockout.html?hp

"On nearly every count, the deal favors the owners."


And you just wait and see when they crunch the numbers and see what gets excluded from BRI. It'll be close to 40 percent before they're done. Plus the players punt on all the peripheral issues.

And of course we're all forgetting the hidden revenues the owners keep out of the deal in the first place -- the 10-20 percent they stash in their pockets right off the top. But never mind that.

In the end it was a classic Obama-style negotiation for the players: Concede, capitulate, and then collapse under deadline pressure, end up settling for a worse deal than if you had just surrendered on Day One.

I don't seriously give a **** either way. I haven't watched an NBA game start to finish in five years.

Wait, it does? To me, it looked like the owners didn't get much out of this. It looks much like the system they already had with no hard cap and it still being very difficult to break a cycle of sucking.

It really doesn't matter to me overall, because the joy I'd get from the Pacers winning the NBA title is about the same as the Senators winning the Northeast Division. Hockey owns my heart and always will. But I'd like to have a little bit of reason to care about the NBA, even if it will always run eighth on my sports radar and would fall to ninth if college football ever gets a playoff system.

The players lose $3 billion over the 10-year deal by going from 57 to 50 percent. The rest of the terms haven't been announced, but early indications are that there will be additional restrictions on teams over the luxury tax, as well as the end of sign-and-trades for teams over the cap. Your interpretation that "the owners didn't get much out of this" is very strange.

We'll see how it looks when it's finalized. I really was hoping for the cancelled season, though.

Terrible that your hopes are dashed.

 

[Stitch]

So was Starman right? Did the owners get it down to 37%? I'd be shocked if he was wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/sports/basketball/nba-and-basketball-players-reach-deal-to-end-lockout.html?hp

"On nearly every count, the deal favors the owners."


And you just wait and see when they crunch the numbers and see what gets excluded from BRI. It'll be close to 40 percent before they're done. Plus the players punt on all the peripheral issues.

And of course we're all forgetting the hidden revenues the owners keep out of the deal in the first place -- the 10-20 percent they stash in their pockets right off the top. But never mind that.

In the end it was a classic Obama-style negotiation for the players: Concede, capitulate, and then collapse under deadline pressure, end up settling for a worse deal than if you had just surrendered on Day One.

I don't seriously give a **** either way. I haven't watched an NBA game start to finish in five years.

Wait, it does? To me, it looked like the owners didn't get much out of this. It looks much like the system they already had with no hard cap and it still being very difficult to break a cycle of sucking.

It really doesn't matter to me overall, because the joy I'd get from the Pacers winning the NBA title is about the same as the Senators winning the Northeast Division. Hockey owns my heart and always will. But I'd like to have a little bit of reason to care about the NBA, even if it will always run eighth on my sports radar and would fall to ninth if college football ever gets a playoff system.

I get it. You're a white guy from the Midwest who doesn't like the NBA. Big shocker. You're not going to get a large number of people caring about the regular season, but more people care about the NBA than the NHL, especially come playoff time.

Heck, I'll watch the Nets when the season gets going.

 

[NightHawk112005]

So was Starman right? Did the owners get it down to 37%? I'd be shocked if he was wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/sports/basketball/nba-and-basketball-players-reach-deal-to-end-lockout.html?hp

"On nearly every count, the deal favors the owners."


And you just wait and see when they crunch the numbers and see what gets excluded from BRI. It'll be close to 40 percent before they're done. Plus the players punt on all the peripheral issues.

And of course we're all forgetting the hidden revenues the owners keep out of the deal in the first place -- the 10-20 percent they stash in their pockets right off the top. But never mind that.

In the end it was a classic Obama-style negotiation for the players: Concede, capitulate, and then collapse under deadline pressure, end up settling for a worse deal than if you had just surrendered on Day One.

I don't seriously give a **** either way. I haven't watched an NBA game start to finish in five years.

Wait, it does? To me, it looked like the owners didn't get much out of this. It looks much like the system they already had with no hard cap and it still being very difficult to break a cycle of sucking.

It really doesn't matter to me overall, because the joy I'd get from the Pacers winning the NBA title is about the same as the Senators winning the Northeast Division. Hockey owns my heart and always will. But I'd like to have a little bit of reason to care about the NBA, even if it will always run eighth on my sports radar and would fall to ninth if college football ever gets a playoff system.

I get it. You're a white guy from the Midwest who doesn't like the NBA. Big shocker. You're not going to get a large number of people caring about the regular season, but more people care about the NBA than the NHL, especially come playoff time.

Heck, I'll watch the Nets when the season gets going.

I'm not from the Midwest, I'm from the East Coast. The NHL playoffs are also infinitely more exciting than the NBA playoffs.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

So was Starman right? Did the owners get it down to 37%? I'd be shocked if he was wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/sports/basketball/nba-and-basketball-players-reach-deal-to-end-lockout.html?hp

"On nearly every count, the deal favors the owners."


And you just wait and see when they crunch the numbers and see what gets excluded from BRI. It'll be close to 40 percent before they're done. Plus the players punt on all the peripheral issues.

And of course we're all forgetting the hidden revenues the owners keep out of the deal in the first place -- the 10-20 percent they stash in their pockets right off the top. But never mind that.

In the end it was a classic Obama-style negotiation for the players: Concede, capitulate, and then collapse under deadline pressure, end up settling for a worse deal than if you had just surrendered on Day One.

I don't seriously give a **** either way. I haven't watched an NBA game start to finish in five years.

Wait, it does? To me, it looked like the owners didn't get much out of this. It looks much like the system they already had with no hard cap and it still being very difficult to break a cycle of sucking.

It really doesn't matter to me overall, because the joy I'd get from the Pacers winning the NBA title is about the same as the Senators winning the Northeast Division. Hockey owns my heart and always will. But I'd like to have a little bit of reason to care about the NBA, even if it will always run eighth on my sports radar and would fall to ninth if college football ever gets a playoff system.

I get it. You're a white guy from the Midwest who doesn't like the NBA. Big shocker. You're not going to get a large number of people caring about the regular season, but more people care about the NBA than the NHL, especially come playoff time.

Heck, I'll watch the Nets when the season gets going.

I'm not from the Midwest, I'm from the East Coast. The NHL playoffs are also infinitely more exciting than the NBA playoffs.

The problem when comparing the two playoffs is that in hockey, the game is compelling to watch for 60 minutes of mostly constant action. In the NBA, you get so many starts and stops with timeouts at the end, and the last two minutes drag on for a half-hour, it's almost as if the first 46 minutes are semi-meaningless.

 

[Versatile]

Why does every conversation about the NBA lockout invariably end up with some asshole saying "Man, I wish (formerly, hope) the season were canceled."

I take four issues with that sentiment:

1.) You probably watched at least some of the NBA playoffs last season. Even if you barely watched, why would you be happy for fewer options?
2.) If you really didn't watch any NBA last season, why do you care about the NBA's existence?
3.) If your counterpoint is that the NBA creates more work at your newspaper, you would have to fill that space one way or another, right?
4.) No matter your relationship to the league, if you don't care, why are you posting in a thread about it?

 

[heyabbott]

Why does every conversation about the NBA lockout invariably end up with some asshole saying "Man, I wish (formerly, hope) the season were canceled."

I take four issues with that sentiment:

1.) You probably watched at least some of the NBA playoffs last season. Even if you barely watched, why would you be happy for fewer options?
2.) If you really didn't watch any NBA last season, why do you care about the NBA's existence?
3.) If your counterpoint is that the NBA creates more work at your newspaper, you would have to fill that space one way or another, right?
4.) No matter your relationship to the league, if you don't care, why are you posting in a thread about it?

Maybe, just maybe, there's a chance that if the NBA were canceled for a year, the players, when they come back, will have an appreciation for what they have and the game they can play so well. This appreciation will lead to a better brand of basketball, less predictable and more competitive.

 

[Versatile]

Why does every conversation about the NBA lockout invariably end up with some asshole saying "Man, I wish (formerly, hope) the season were canceled."

I take four issues with that sentiment:

1.) You probably watched at least some of the NBA playoffs last season. Even if you barely watched, why would you be happy for fewer options?
2.) If you really didn't watch any NBA last season, why do you care about the NBA's existence?
3.) If your counterpoint is that the NBA creates more work at your newspaper, you would have to fill that space one way or another, right?
4.) No matter your relationship to the league, if you don't care, why are you posting in a thread about it?

Maybe, just maybe, there's a chance that if the NBA were canceled for a year, the players, when they come back, will have an appreciation for what they have and the game they can play so well. This appreciation will lead to a better brand of basketball, less predictable and more competitive.

Or maybe we'd lose out on some of the last good years for stars such as Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant and more, along with key developmental years for many others.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Have to agree with Versatile here. I don't care a whit that the NBA regular season is back, but there are plenty of people who do, just as there are people who can't understand why I continued to care about the baseball playoffs once the Yankees and Red Sox were out of it. Watching it is a consumer choice just like a thousand other consumer choices ... and, don't like it? Change the channel. Or on Christmas, pop in one of the DVDs you got.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Just think how much better the nightly level of play would be if 20% of the franchises were contracted.

 

[Stitch]

So was Starman right? Did the owners get it down to 37%? I'd be shocked if he was wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/sports/basketball/nba-and-basketball-players-reach-deal-to-end-lockout.html?hp

"On nearly every count, the deal favors the owners."


And you just wait and see when they crunch the numbers and see what gets excluded from BRI. It'll be close to 40 percent before they're done. Plus the players punt on all the peripheral issues.

And of course we're all forgetting the hidden revenues the owners keep out of the deal in the first place -- the 10-20 percent they stash in their pockets right off the top. But never mind that.

In the end it was a classic Obama-style negotiation for the players: Concede, capitulate, and then collapse under deadline pressure, end up settling for a worse deal than if you had just surrendered on Day One.

I don't seriously give a **** either way. I haven't watched an NBA game start to finish in five years.

Wait, it does? To me, it looked like the owners didn't get much out of this. It looks much like the system they already had with no hard cap and it still being very difficult to break a cycle of sucking.

It really doesn't matter to me overall, because the joy I'd get from the Pacers winning the NBA title is about the same as the Senators winning the Northeast Division. Hockey owns my heart and always will. But I'd like to have a little bit of reason to care about the NBA, even if it will always run eighth on my sports radar and would fall to ninth if college football ever gets a playoff system.

The players lose $3 billion over the 10-year deal by going from 57 to 50 percent. The rest of the terms haven't been announced, but early indications are that there will be additional restrictions on teams over the luxury tax, as well as the end of sign-and-trades for teams over the cap. Your interpretation that "the owners didn't get much out of this" is very strange.

We'll see how it looks when it's finalized. I really was hoping for the cancelled season, though.

Terrible that your hopes are dashed.

May Nighthawk be cursed with covering the D-League.

 

[printdust]

NBA junkies are rushing ticket booths, getting their fix and with no qualms about being pissed over the labor squabble delaying their fix.

 

[JC]

So was Starman right? Did the owners get it down to 37%? I'd be shocked if he was wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/sports/basketball/nba-and-basketball-players-reach-deal-to-end-lockout.html?hp

"On nearly every count, the deal favors the owners."


And you just wait and see when they crunch the numbers and see what gets excluded from BRI. It'll be close to 40 percent before they're done. Plus the players punt on all the peripheral issues.

And of course we're all forgetting the hidden revenues the owners keep out of the deal in the first place -- the 10-20 percent they stash in their pockets right off the top. But never mind that.

In the end it was a classic Obama-style negotiation for the players: Concede, capitulate, and then collapse under deadline pressure, end up settling for a worse deal than if you had just surrendered on Day One.

I don't seriously give a **** either way. I haven't watched an NBA game start to finish in five years.

Nice spin Baghdad. You weren't even close to being right, like usual. Man can't believe Vick was suspended for life....oh wait

 

[Starman]

So was Starman right? Did the owners get it down to 37%? I'd be shocked if he was wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/sports/basketball/nba-and-basketball-players-reach-deal-to-end-lockout.html?hp

"On nearly every count, the deal favors the owners."


And you just wait and see when they crunch the numbers and see what gets excluded from BRI. It'll be close to 40 percent before they're done. Plus the players punt on all the peripheral issues.

And of course we're all forgetting the hidden revenues the owners keep out of the deal in the first place -- the 10-20 percent they stash in their pockets right off the top. But never mind that.

In the end it was a classic Obama-style negotiation for the players: Concede, capitulate, and then collapse under deadline pressure, end up settling for a worse deal than if you had just surrendered on Day One.

I don't seriously give a **** either way. I haven't watched an NBA game start to finish in five years.

Nice spin Baghdad. You weren't even close to being right, like usual. Man can't believe Vick was suspended for life....oh wait

1) Wait and see. Over the next days and weeks it's going to come out more and more the players believe they were ****ed. And they are, but they're agreeing to it.

2) Wait and see. Odds Vick gets through another year without more legal problems: Ohhh, about 49%.

 

[JC]

So was Starman right? Did the owners get it down to 37%? I'd be shocked if he was wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/sports/basketball/nba-and-basketball-players-reach-deal-to-end-lockout.html?hp

"On nearly every count, the deal favors the owners."


And you just wait and see when they crunch the numbers and see what gets excluded from BRI. It'll be close to 40 percent before they're done. Plus the players punt on all the peripheral issues.

And of course we're all forgetting the hidden revenues the owners keep out of the deal in the first place -- the 10-20 percent they stash in their pockets right off the top. But never mind that.

In the end it was a classic Obama-style negotiation for the players: Concede, capitulate, and then collapse under deadline pressure, end up settling for a worse deal than if you had just surrendered on Day One.

I don't seriously give a **** either way. I haven't watched an NBA game start to finish in five years.

Nice spin Baghdad. You weren't even close to being right, like usual. Man can't believe Vick was suspended for life....oh wait

1) Wait and see. Over the next days and weeks it's going to come out more and more the players believe they were ****ed. And they are, but they're agreeing to it.

2) Wait and see. Odds Vick gets through another year without more legal problems: Ohhh, about 49%.

OK Baghdad.

1) It is no where near 37%

2) Vick and a thousand other players were not suspended for life.

 

[NightHawk112005]

Why does every conversation about the NBA lockout invariably end up with some asshole saying "Man, I wish (formerly, hope) the season were canceled."

I take four issues with that sentiment:

1.) You probably watched at least some of the NBA playoffs last season. Even if you barely watched, why would you be happy for fewer options?
2.) If you really didn't watch any NBA last season, why do you care about the NBA's existence?
3.) If your counterpoint is that the NBA creates more work at your newspaper, you would have to fill that space one way or another, right?
4.) No matter your relationship to the league, if you don't care, why are you posting in a thread about it?

I didn't watch the playoffs. The reasons I wanted the NBA to go away are that I love the NHL and want it to grow even more in popularity, I wanted to watch ESPN squirm without it and I wanted to see even more college basketball on television. No NBA games would mean that the time has to be filled with something. ESPN doesn't have the NHL and could only show so many documentaries before they decided to run more college basketball games. I was really hoping for Ivy League Fridays, especially since Harvard looks very legitimate this year.

During the playoffs, it would mean more opportunities for baseball, soccer and tennis to be televised. That's not fewer options, that's more options. If the NBA was gone, I could potentially get to watch more sports and leagues I really like, as opposed to those I only half-heartedly follow. That's why I have a reason to care. No NBA would have been good news for the sports that are 1 through 7 in the pecking order for me, except for No. 3. The NFL wasn't going to be affected one way or another.

 

[Stoney]

I don't seriously give a **** either way. I haven't watched an NBA game start to finish in five years.

Oh c'mon. Starman, literally for YEARS I've been seeing these long-winded posts from you predicting this coming NBA labor armageddon in 2011 that would result in the complete and final crushing of the players union, an absolute hard cap, the abolition of all guaranteed contracts, entire seasons lost and, most recently, a drop in the players BRI share to around 37 percent. I'm confident you've posted more words overall on this topic than anybody else on this site.

But now that the absolute doomsday scenario didn't quite pan out as predicted, your tune becomes "you know, I really don't care about this stuff." Please.

 

[Stoney]

4.) No matter your relationship to the league, if you don't care, why are you posting in a thread about it?

This. And this question should not just be posed to this one guy about this one thread, but to a bunch of posters on damn near EVERY thread about NBA issues.

I've never gotten why so many here seem so obssessed with constantly announcing how they "don't care" and supposedly "never watch" the NBA (despite the fact that some of those same folks will post about games come playoff time), almost as if they think that's some sort of badge of honor.

Seems like if you truly don't care about something, you'd simply ignore threads about that topic. I don't watch tennis, but it has never occurred to me to jump on every tennis thread to announce that fact. More than any other sport, NBA haters seem inordinately concerned with bragging about how they're supposedly unconcerned. Why is that?

 

[Ben_Hecht]

4.) No matter your relationship to the league, if you don't care, why are you posting in a thread about it?

This. And this question should not just be posed to this one guy about this one thread, but to a bunch of posters on damn near EVERY thread about NBA issues.

I've never gotten why so many here seem so obssessed with constantly announcing how they "don't care" and supposedly "never watch" the NBA (despite the fact that some of those same folks will post about games come playoff time), almost as if they think that's some sort of badge of honor.

Seems like if you truly don't care about something, you'd simply ignore threads about that topic. I don't watch tennis, but it has never occurred to me to jump on every tennis thread to announce that fact. More than any other sport, NBA haters seem inordinately concerned with bragging about how they're supposedly unconcerned. Why is that?

In no other major team sport is the regular-season less relevant. The NHL has parallel issues, but it's not nearly as bad as big-league roundball.

FAR too many games (given the nature of the sport), and scheduling frankly-hostile to players' health leaves players no other out than to pace themselves to a degree which, frankly, cheats the fan base and is often an insult to human intelligence.

 

[Bubbler]

I'm pumped. Another .450 season from the Bucks!