Professional Basketball May Take a Year Off to Find Itself

The National Basketball Association reportedly lost $370 million during the 2009-2010 season. Unhappy with the devastating financial tolls, the owners have asked players if they’d be cool taking slightly less money in the future. Naturally, they responded by throwing a temper tantrum and threatening to go on strike…again.

With the league’s collective bargaining agreement set to expire at the end of the season, both the players and owners associations need to come up with a new deal that will attempt to rob the other blind.

According to ESPN, the owners have requested that the players adjust their salaries to make the teams “less of a giant financial black hole.” The players, however, claim that they “don't really see that the argument's all that compelling for the changes that they're asking for.”

Wait, did nobody show these guys the $370 million worth of losses?

“It seems like things are doing all right and so our position is that we want to do what's best for the game," said New York Knicks guard Roger Mason Jr., a member of the players' executive committee.

Well, now that we know that they want to do what’s best for the game, it seems unlikely that they’re going to allow a lockout, right?

"I think it's highly probable that there will be a lockout and that's what I'm preparing for because I don't see anything else right now," NBA Player’s Association Executive Director Billy Hunter said.

Damn!

Punishing the fans seems like a nice route to take. It worked well in 1999. Maybe the league can just force players on the injured reserve to walk up and down the aisles at home games with a small tin can and ask people for donations to make up the difference?

If this were to happen, LeBron James would need to have 342 school teachers combine their salaries to help make up for his one year of unemployment. That seems like a pretty mean thing to force a 25-year-old to do.

This just seems like a situation where nobody wins. Except, of course, the sport of hockey which will catapult into the top 18 of America’s most watched sports if the NBA takes a sabbatical and NASCAR calls in sick for 2011.