With fans waiting on pins and needles for the Owners’ Wednesday deadline, it might serve everyone involved in the actual negotiations to think about this recent ESPN poll. Keep in mind that it refers to “permanent” damage to the league’s popularity.
If there isn’t a season this year, I probably will have to seriously reconsider trying to make covering the NBA a huge part of my life. I bet you I won’t be the only one…
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You should read this if you want to know what exactly the Owners are offering both now and after Wednesday.
6 responses to “A Quick Graphic That the NBA, Both Players and Owners, Should Check Out”
Never believe the polls. NBA fans will come back once the lockout ends. That Poll just shows how people are feeling at this moment. That can change months from now once there season starts back up again. It has gone so far that I doubt that any ultimatum will change the outcome. The season will be lost. That’s all.
My guess is this nonscientific poll is more of a message of the moment, as JT said.
The damage is the big whole in the Association wallets, and that’s been there for years.
The constant barrage of output along these lines and the fact that so many people voted almost proves the poll wrong.
Apathy is the opposite if love/hate. I see little apathy in the poll.
Say what you will, but if next year isn’t better than the last, then that’s long term damage in my book. It’s permanent in the sense that it will set the sport back years, and likely won’t be made up for through rapid growth as a result of itself.
I would say that 100% of people should agree that it’s permanently damaged the reputation to some degree. The question is, how much?
The worst lockout in American sports history, the 2004-2005 NHL lockout took about 5 years to get back to pre-lockout levels. I would think that the NBA could recover a bit faster since it is a more popular sport, but that is just a guess.
Of course, there is the matter of where the NBA may have been if they hadn’t had the lockout, etc.
In the end, however, the damage from owners having neither the ability to run the NBA profitably or the interest in running it at loss is the root. Fixing that is worth whatever, since that continuing on will result in the inevitable destruction of the this league. It will be replaced by another if it fails, but THAT would be the real setback.
What’s everybody’s take on this deal that the owners are offering? It looks decent to me.
I think the deal is very close the current one with the exception of BRI and limits some flexibility once teams get into the tax. It doesn’t seem to really stop stacking, but it will limit flexibility. So, the system was conceded so they could get a certain amount of profit.
I do think this flexibility loss is going to upset the players, especially after a 12% paycut when raises are the typical thing they see after a year of play . . . that or the couch. The tax payers are, almost by definition, those that really choose to spend. Other will spend, sure, the reduced competition will result in lower salaries for free agents, even after the BRI split.