NBA Likely to Save 2011/2012 Season: Confessions of a Pro-Lockout Sports Fan
By Baron von Rupp on Sunday 27 November 2011, 18:15 - In the News - Permalink
It seems
that Tony Parker's tenure in ASVEL green will be sadly cut short.
Zut alors. For a few glorious weeks, it really looked like the
billionaire vs. millionaire pissing match that was the NBA lockout was going to
last the whole season. Would've served them right.
Would've served me right, too.
"Alas, poor lockout, I knew him, Horatio..."
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet
"You don't know what you got 'til it's gone"
—Cinderella, Night Songs
So they're going to get a deal done after all.
According to ESPN.com, l'equipe.fr and every other sports news service on earth, the labor dispute that once threatened the entire 2011/12 NBA season is likely to be resolved in the coming days.
Too bad.
Why, you ask, is this not a good thing?
- First, I found it comically disgusting that NBA players, the most over-payed and well-protected professional athletes ever, wouldn't agree to the owners' revenue-sharing proposal last season. Newsflash: NBA players are very, very well compensated. At a time when your average American is genuinely struggling, for six months they refused to play basketball for a living because there weren't enough zeros at the end of their paychecks? Please: you were deep into Latrell Sprewell territory there. It is, in fact, a little too bad that most of them won't end up broke and unemployed like he did, because they're guilty of the same hubris.
And the owners? While it seems they had some legitimate gripes, it's pretty hard to feel sorry for the 1% of the 1% when the ultimate rich-guy hobby gets a little too spendy. They could always sell their precious teams and buy some yachts, or a couple of those little planes that crash all the time, to keep busy.
- Second, I would've liked the lockout to have destroyed the whole season so the NHL, a vastly more entertaining league that is mysteriously unpopular stateside, wouldn't look so stupid for having lost an entire season earlier this century to what was a much more justifiable labor dispute.
- Third, I won't get to watch Tony Parker and Ronny Turiaf lead ASVEL, my local French league team, for roughly seven euros per game—season ticket price, upper deck/center court—to Division A glory. Nor will I get to see other French NBA refugees such as Nicolas Batum and Boris Diaw come rock the Astroballe in front of raucous, capacity crowds (ASVEL has sold out every game since Parker announced his intention to spend the lockout here in Lyon, playing for the team of which he is part-owner). He recently observed that the lockout looked like it would last until at least January, and that he and Turiaf could "commit seriously" to the ASVEL campaign through the holiday season and maybe beyond. Oh, what could have been...
- Lastly, the search engine-friendly gravy train for my sports channel at technorati.com is now out to pasture (how's that for a mixed metaphor?). I was hoping to milk that for an entire season: I'm not sure, but I think French Divison A basketball, much improved though it may be, is going to be slightly less popular in the anglophone sports universe sans NBA superstars.
And hey, I've got a family to feed!
