Lockout continues
As you may know, the NBA is locked out, meaning organizations can’t talk to their players at all. The NBA has already confronted the organizations with a threat, saying that if they find out that any team has talked to their players at all, they will be fined $1 million. As you probably have already noticed, all the pictures of current players have been taken off the official team sites and have been replaced with pictures of legends, past players, and team cheerleaders. It’s also the reason why you haven’t seen any new team articles that involve players (off-season interviews, locker room videos, etc).
Also, players are not allowed to use anything that is team-affiliated. This affects player workouts, because it means they cannot use the team-owned training facility. They also have to use regular planes (or their own private ones depending on how rich they are), or have to drive around on their own. Horrible life, huh?
What exactly is the lockout?
Well, basically… There’s “rules” for how all the contracts in the NBA work, whether that is player’s contracts, coach’s contracts, GM’s contracts, etc. Not only that, but there’s certain rules on how much the organization could spend on their team (called a salary cap), and once they pass that cap they start getting HUGE fines. Well, those “rules” are agreed to and have a certain set amount of time where they can’t be changed. So if they agree to those rules and the players get the better end of the deal and get a LOT of money (which is how it’s been for as long as I can remember), then the owners have to deal with it and keep paying the players that much until the CBA (collective bargaining agreement) expires.
So what happens when the CBA expires? That’s when the coaches and players get together and try to agree to a new CBA. For example, this year the coaches and owners were saying that the players make WAY too much, and wanted to get rid of the “guaranteed contracts” rule and also give players a 40% pay cut. This would help them make more money since they would be spending 40% less on players. However, the players were not happy with that and said that the pay cut is way too much. Since they couldn’t agree before the deadline, the lockout began. Now the NBA is locked out until the organizations and players can work together to make an agreement.
The longer this goes, the more it favors the organizations (although both would be getting hurt by not getting paid). Players, although they might still have contracts and are supposed to be getting paid, will not be paid since there is no CBA and therefore their contracts are non-existant at the moment. This means that every game that is not played this season will mean another game that those players are not getting paid for. So the players should agree to a pay cut soon before they lose tons of their money by not playing games. Once the players are losing money from lost games, they’ll start getting desperate and will agree to an even bigger pay cut (in my opinion), so the smart thing for them is to agree to one now before they lose out on even more money.
I’m guessing this lockout will last maybe about 50 games.. I don’t believe it’s going to be the entire season but at this pace, it’s definitely not going to be resolved before the games start so I’m sure that we’re going to miss at LEAST 20 games. One can always hope, but let’s stick around and find out.
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