Judging by the wailing and hand-wringing of media members who cover the professional sports business, you’d think that the current National Basketball Association labor impasse is an epic economic disaster with potentially catastrophic consequences, both in the United States and internationally.
Fortunately, that’s not true. The current dearth of major league professional basketball isn’t Armageddon. In fact, it may be quite the opposite.
The NBA season was supposed to start last Tuesday, but that didn’t happen because the billionaires who own and operate the 30 NBA teams have decided to lock out the players, many of whom are, at least on paper, millionaires themselves. The owners hope to crush the NBA Players Association and ultimately resolve the current labor dispute in management’s favor.
The major sticking point at the moment seems to be how best to divide the obscene amount of basketball-related income generated by the league each year. Under the recently expired collective bargaining agreement, the players were receiving 57 percent of it, while the owners had to make do with a mere 43 percent. But with the agreement both sides signed in 2005 ended last spring, the indignant plutocrats decided to take a hard line in dealing with their elongated hired hands. They want no less than a 50-50 split of the monies generated by the league’s gate receipts from all exhibition, regular season and playoff games; novelty, program and concession sales; proceeds from mascot and dance team appearances; 45-50 percent of the take from arena-naming rights; broadcast rights; and a myriad of other sources of revenue that makes the league’s annual income measurable in the billions of dollars.
Management’s unsurprising public stance regarding the current impasse is that the players are greedy, entitled ingrates. Equally predictably, the players’ union maintains that no one ever paid triple-digit ticket prices to see avaricious, middle-aged men in thousand-dollar suits (other than Michael Jordan, the former NBA superstar who’s one of the current owners of the Charlotte Bobcats) play basketball.
Some nominally bad things will continue taking place as long as NBA labor and management persist in locking horns. Arenas around North America and their adjacent parking garages will stay dark. Bigwigs accustomed to entertaining clients in corporate luxury boxes during games won’t be able to close deals over chateaubriand, caviar and goose liver paté. NBA staffers who sell tickets and/or advertising will stay laid off, or perhaps be permanently terminated. Game night employees who earn modest hourly wages pouring $9 beers, grilling $7 hot dogs, or hawking $10 programs will stay on indefinite furlough. Most of this is unfortunate.
However, another consequence of a lengthy labor standoff would be that fans who, for whatever reason(s), feel the need to pay exorbitant ticket prices to get a professional basketball fix every so often would find themselves looking for other ways to spend not only their time, but money that was previously earmarked for the already too-deep pockets of an NBA team owner or one of his far-too-rich young employees. And that’s potentially a very good thing.
Without the distraction of NBA basketball, fans will be getting a windfall of spare time, which, if managed correctly, should end up being quality time. Some might discover or rediscover the joy of socializing with friends and neighbors, or visiting with relatives they haven’t seen enough of recently. They could play pickup basketball themselves. They could join a bowling league, or volunteer at a local hospital, church, synagogue or library. They could help coach or chaperone their children’s activities, or dedicate themselves to some political cause in which they believe. Having special, themed family dinners might be worth a try, or, for those who are single, perhaps an old-fashioned dinner date might be a nice change.
Idle NBA fans could go to the movies, read a book, or phone, write or Skype old friends. They could learn to play a musical instrument, start their own blog or update their existing one. The list of things to do with all that found time ”“ to say nothing of all that found money ”“ is literally endless.
It’s true there are less productive ways to spend one’s idle hours than watching large men try to throw an orange ball through a metal hoop. But at least sitting on the couch watching “Dancing with the Stars” doesn’t require viewers to pony up a couple of car payments worth of cash for the privilege.
And while the rest of us are busy finding activities other than watching rich young men in shorts and tank tops running up and down a 94-foot-long, 50-foot-wide flat surface, the owners of all 30 currently inactive NBA teams and their erstwhile players might be learning something, too, which is that when there’s nothing to divvy up, there’s no difference whatsoever between 57 percent and 43 percent.
— Andy Young, an English teacher in York County and former head high school basketball coach, attended his first (and to date, last) NBA game, a 112-95 victory by the Washington Bullets over the visiting Boston Celtics, on Nov. 10, 1984.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
