There's going to be an NBA season.... right?

Last week, I flippantly threw out the possibility that the NBA may not have a 2011-12 season.  Now, what was only last week a "gallows analysis" look at what would happen in the NBA lost its damn mind and canceled at least part of another season, may be very probable.

The preseason is now gone, and, should a deal remain elusive through Monday, the regular season will start to get trimmed as well.  Sure, few really care about lost preseason games, but we're starting to talk real, honest-to-goodness regular season dates.  This would hurt everyone: owners, players, team employees, advertisers, broadcasters, the guy selling a parking spot for 20 bucks... frickin' everyone.  This is no way for a league to operate, important labor dispute or no.

I had been conditioned, from being force-fed Billy Simmons' Stern-as-Godfather meme, that NBA Commish David Stern, in the parlance of the times, "don't give a fuck."  However, it's been Stern who has been moving towards a deal, bringing the owners close to what the players recently asked for.  It was the players who spiked the deal, holding out for more than what they recently asked for, and then had union executive director Billy Hunter up there saying that they it could be months before they talk again.  MONTHS!

This hasn't been the implacable Stern that I was expecting.  Rather it's the players who are playing roadblock.  From: ESPN

“Our guys have indicated a willingness to lose games,” said Hunter.  Maybe it's just posturing, or maybe the players really don't give a fuck.  They probably should.  The owners have moved up from paying out 47% of basketball related income to a 50-50 split (with a chunk lobbed off the top).  It took over a year to get the owners to budge on that number and it's less than NFL owners got out of football's labor negotiations. 

While the players used to get 57% of BRI, lord knows they were never going to get anything close to that number again.  That number was insane, and was a root cause of much of "the Association's" financial woes.  I think the players need to take a closer look at what the NBA owners are offering.  Moving the owners up from 47% isn't the time to cut off negotiations; it's a number to work with. 

The owners have already given ground on a hard cap, salary roll-backs, and an opt-out clause, so all they're haggling over now is the final slice of the pie.  I'm usually a steadfastly pro-Union kind of guy, but it's time for the players to play ball and get this thing settled before we're all stuck watching Arena League Football in the dead of winter.