Comments on: Players talk lockout, sticking together at Durant’s event

By: zblott

zblott — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 04:39:10 +0000

@loza
That’s a laughably incorrect fact right there. If you believe they’re all first-generation wealthy, then they’ve already won the battle that makes the rest of us feel lazy and stupid for not making millions like them. Robert Sarver founded The National Bank of Arizona at 23 right out of college, but I’m sure it had nothing to do with his father being a very successful and prominent banker and businessman in the state, and the Fed would just let any 23 year old open a huge chain of banks. Try reading before making these types of statements.

By: loza6984

loza6984 — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:04:12 +0000

None of the current owners inherited their wealth. I believe all of them are first generation wealthy. They do however make many bone-headed moves.

By: zblott

zblott — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:49:07 +0000

@Chris,
You’re right – screw the players. I want to see the owners who inherited their wealth, don’t know the game of basketball, and who continually make boneheaded decisions that casual fans can recognize a mile away making even more money off of the NBA. Why give money to the employees when billionaires are around to take it? That would be absurd.

By: Chris Fiorentino

Chris Fiorentino — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:24:39 +0000

When I say profits, I mean money coming into the league after expenses. Maybe a better term would be Net League Income. You want to harp on the owners fudging the books, then you are just cynical. The fact is that the league is offering a 50% split of all Net Income into the league and the players want 52.5% of the Gross Income. Period. The owners have come up 7% on their initial offering of 43% while the players have come down only 4.5 from their initial offering. Once they get it out of their thick stubborn skulls that the previous CBA is no longer a starting point, they will sit down and negotiate from a better starting point. Maybe it takes a season of lost wages to do that.

In the meantime, the owners, most of whom don’t depend on NBA profits to survive, will do just fine making money in their other endeavors. The players don’t know how bad they are going to feel…they should look to the NHL players who pissed away a whole season over a couple percentage points, only to get a worse deal when they came back the next year.

By: zblott

zblott — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:09:10 +0000

This isn’t about splitting profits (owners are the only ones who make profits); it’s about how much players make. The players draw right around 100% of the fans and their money into the game, so screwing them over so that investors can make more when they’re already fudging the books so bad they won’t even show them to anyone seems like a really greedy thing to do. Again, owners are the only ones who make profits on a team (like when a franchise is sold for $250 million more than it was purchased for 10-20 years prior). This is about sticking it to the workers who make the game the one we love.

By: Chris Fiorentino

Chris Fiorentino — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:56:46 +0000

I don’t understand how a 50/50 split of profits is such a terrible deal. I truly do not. If the players are going to continue to look at the last EXPIRED CBA, then the owners are just going to take a year off to help them forget about it because it’s obvious that to the owners, that last CBA is a long distant memory and not close to what they are going to give up this time around.

By: zblott

zblott — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 16:24:23 +0000

There are a lot of reasons for fans to stick with the players throughout the lockout, including all the ways owners play with the accounting to invent losses for themselves (that’s why they won’t open their books to prove they’re losing money), we enjoy the game for the players not the owners, and the owners truly aren’t negotiating in good faith:

http://www.behindthebasket.com/btb/2011/10/24/why-youd-have-to-be-a-soulless-imbecile-to-side-with-the-own.html