...Fans just want to cheer. They don’t care enough about the details, the numbers, the facts, to see how little the owners have actually given here and how dishonest they have been about trying. James Jones, a player rep more informed than most, was asked if he thought Stern was lying.
“Most definitely,” he said. “That’s the unfortunate part about it. None of that helps. The answer isn’t spin, isn’t being antagonistic, isn’t pointing fingers. It is coming back to the table and really working to get a deal done. A lot of the things he is doing are not helpful to the process.”
We, as fans, just want our games, our escape. Nobody goes to the amusement park to read contract language. So we feel like parents at a playground right now, surrounded by spoiled children. Come on now, kids. This is supposed to all be fun. Can’t we just play instead of fight? Emotion clouds. Greed infuriates. The coverage is droning and boring, unless Wade is yelling at Stern, and the truth is obscured because the commissioner is good at public relations. But the fan who can’t afford to take his son to an NBA game in a recession, already angry at the greedy millionaire who won’t just shut up and play, doesn’t understand why a man who gets to play a game for a living won’t just accept whatever the owners are offering.
The players are an easy target but not an accurate one. They already have agreed, in essence, to a league-wide pay cut that gives back hundreds of millions of dollars — and they have done it because the owners have run their business improperly, basically giving back hundreds of millions in concessions to help the owners police themselves. And it hasn’t been enough. It really is breathtaking in its stupidity and makes you wonder how these people got rich in the first place doing business this way. We build these wealthy men arenas. We invest in their product in more ways than one. And what do we get in return now? These successful businessmen have somehow figured out a way to take the paying customer’s sport and team and fun … but not the paying customer’s money.
