The NBA announced today that arena workers in every NBA city will go without paychecks for the first two weeks of the NBA's regular season. The announcement came after a nearly eight-hour meeting between the NBA and its players failed to yield a new collective bargaining agreement between the two camps.
The NBA (led by David Stern, who is rumored to make well into eight figures annually) and the Players Association (with Los Angeles Lakers guard Derek Fisher, who has made nearly $58 million over the course of his NBA career, at the lead table) could not come to terms on how to institute needed changes to a system that has resulted in wild spending on free-agent players, escalating ownership costs and team price tags, and record revenue.
As a result of this impasse, NBA arena workers and local businesses will suffer great losses while the owners and players stick to their guns. While some economists protest that missed games rarely affect a city's economy because discretionary income tends to go from one form of local entertainment to another, this doesn't take into consideration the cash spent on out-of-town entertainment options such as Amazon.com, and is cold comfort to those who are now going to struggle to make ends meet as the NBA and its players dig into their negotiating stances four months into this lockout. The mood amongst the NBA arena and local business owners leads you to believe they could care less that the family of four took in a play instead. When BDL corrected the bartender by pointing out that, technically, he really "could not care less," BDL was asked to leave the bar.
With no future talks on the horizon, and the owners warning that they'll now roll back the dubious "concessions" they made in order to make up for their own lack of income from the missed games, all indications point to, at best, a lockout that extends until January. As was the case the last time the NBA canceled games due to a labor negotiation in 1998.
When reached for comment as to how it would affect his family's bank account to be without at least 30 NBA games to work off between now and a few weeks after the holiday season, one unnamed arena security guard muttered something that is unprintable for a family website.
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