Nba 2010-2011

gbgary said:
thank you sir! people in the media still talking about what miami didn't do instead of talking about what Dallas DID do. loser talk instead winner talk. crazy.
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Heh, I thought most people didn't give Dallas defense much credit. They were outstanding to be honest. Yeah, maybe LeBron could've done more, but he didn't, mostly because Dallas defensive schemes were great. Even though I'm no Dallas fan, I've got a lot of time for Dirk and Kidd, great players and specially Dirk, I thought he was one of the few good guys in NBA.
 
Anybody watching the draft?

Cavs choose Irving as the #1 pick. 4 international players picked in the first 7 picks.
 
Watching it on ESPN, a lot of international players being picked so far.

Best part so far has been the ESPN guy saying Vesely has great taste in women, I think she is trending on twitter now.
 
So a lock-out it is.

We just need a lock-out for Baseball now and everybody can watch Hockey!

This is ridiculous. On a side note, that'll just make the finals loss hurt more and longer for the Heat, while for Dallas that sweat taste will just last longer.
 
What is it with lockouts in US Sports? As far as I understand the lockouts have happened because the owners and players cannot reach some sort of agreement but I don't understand why they need to come to an agreement in the first place?

I suppose with the lockout, no trades will be allowed. Someone on ESPN raised an interesting idea that the Heat trade James for Howard. Don't think this will happen but that would be a great move for the Heat.

Also, wtf is Artest thinking changing his name to 'Metta World Peace' :wenger:
 
ha_rooney said:
What is it with lockouts in US Sports? As far as I understand the lockouts have happened because the owners and players cannot reach some sort of agreement but I don't understand why they need to come to an agreement in the first place?
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Because it's A) a closed system, and B) usually the only option for players of that sport. No promotion/relegation and a lack of foreign leagues that can pay the same sort of money that the US teams pay means that the league essentially has a monopoly, and is ripe for collusive action to weaken the players' bargaining positions. To keep from tipping the balance of power completely into the owners' hands, players unionize.
 
Wilbon on the lockout....

NBA lockout will dwarf the NFL strife
Next to the current NFL lockout, the NBA's problems are distressingly monumental

By Michael Wilbon
ESPN.com
Archive

The NFL ought to be embarrassed to call its little labor dispute a lockout. No regular-season games will be missed; no preseason games will be missed. When all is said and done, not a single day of training camp will be lost. How dire can it be if the commissioner and the union chief are flying around the country together, all chummy like the stars in a buddy movie? The sum total of the damage from pro football's work stoppage will be the sacrifice of a bunch of manufactured and overstated offseason activities that didn't even exist 20 years ago and don't need to be on the sports calendar now.

The NBA, on the other hand, is about to show the NFL how to conduct a truly contentious labor war and stage a lockout likely to do real damage in terms of dollars, goodwill and reputation.

The NFL was never going to miss anything meaningful.

The NBA might miss the entire 2011-12 season.

Yes, the two sides are that far apart. They're miles apart. The only thing that passed for optimism came and went during the feel-good NBA Finals when the two sides had a few days of civility. This isn't a matter of figuring out how to split up profits, which is what the NFL faces. This is how Tom Penn, ESPN's expert on professional basketball's financial matters, put it Wednesday: If the NFL labor dispute is a sprained ankle, the NBA's is a torn ACL and a ripped Achilles. NFL teams still make money; it's just that instead of $30-40 million a year in profit, they've been down recently to, say, $9-10 million.

The NBA, meanwhile, has teams losing real money. The league says 22 of 30 are operating in the negative; the players association would surely say it's fewer than that. Either way, it's reasonable -- if not downright inescapable -- to conclude there are NBA teams awash in red ink. It costs less for those owners to keep their arenas closed than to stage the games. The owners of those teams want a harder salary cap than exists now, and probably a cap that down the road becomes not just harder, but hard, period. The owners say that's a must, while the players say a hard cap is a no-go. Instead of the players getting 57 percent of basketball-related income, the owners want something more akin to a 60-40 split in their favor.

In other words, the two sides ain't close. They're not even close to close. They're further apart, actually, than they were in 1998-99 when the entire season came within 24 hours of being canceled.

The NBA is going to miss games, and the smart money is on the league missing lots of games. A new group of owners who paid a ton of money for their franchises since the last work stoppage 13 years ago are ready to sacrifice the season. The six owners who have both NHL and NBA teams saw first-hand how sacrificing essentially an entire season led to an overhauled NHL with slashed costs, and they're drooling over the prospect of an NBA with similar cost certainty.

This dispute, ladies and gents, starts at contentious. David Stern, while he won't want a missed season staining his legacy as commissioner, nonetheless said last week that once a lockout starts, the league's offers will only be lowered, which doesn't exactly sound like good-faith negotiating. There's very little reason to be optimistic, other than the fact that Stern and union chief Billy Hunter were the same guys doing these exact jobs 13 years ago and are acutely aware of the damage the sport sustained then. Hunter has even said it took at least six years for the league and its players to get back to where they were before the 1998 lockout.

Yet, the lockout is in place as of 12:01 a.m. Friday, even though the NBA -- thanks to a compelling past 12 months and 2011 season -- stands on the verge of a boom cycle, even though every single indicator of interest is up. The owners are determined to come up with a new system more profitable to them and the players say they're stronger and smarter and more prepared than in '99 and won't cave as easily as they did then.

While there are players out there who say they have hope the season will begin on time, November, December and January seem already lost if the prevailing mood is any kind of indication.

Hunter told reporters Thursday it's too early to call it an eventuality, saying, "I hope it doesn't come to that. Obviously, the clock is now running with regard to whether or not there will be a loss of games, so I'm hoping that over the next month or so there will be a sort of softening of their side and maybe we have to soften our position as well."

Still, there's not a ton of optimism floating around. ESPN's Penn, who has the experience of working for a couple of small market teams (Portland and Memphis) and practically dealing with all 30 teams in the league, told Tony Kornhesier and me on Thursday's "PTI" that he'd put the odds of the season being canceled at as high as 75 percent. Charles Barkley said recently it wouldn't surprise him if the season was canceled.

Stern and Hunter can hope for a full season, but at least they aren't misleading anybody by predicting a quick end to the dispute. Stern said, "These kinds of things take on a life of their own, and I just don't know where their life is going to lead."

Does that sound like a realist talking, or what? Hunter's latest characterization was, "The gap is too great."

Could the two sides be moving forward with less energy? It's eerily reminiscent of 13 years ago when the union and management went more than 40 days without any kind of bargaining session, which led Barkley to savage both sides for dragging their feet. And officials from both ends of this dispute, 13 years later, characterize the two sides as being further apart now than they were then.

And to think: Back during the NBA All-Star break, both parties were thinking that a quick resolution to the NFL labor dispute might help push basketball's two sides to move fairly quickly.

So now, as the sport with the greatest hold on the nation moves closer to resuming activity, basketball exits stage left, not only failing to cut into pro football's sizeable lead but failing to capitalize long-term on 12 months of being front and center in a way no marketing exec could dare have dreamed. Very quickly, the NBA has waved bye-bye to momentum and goodwill, and hello to uncertainty and an annoyed if not outraged fan base, most of which is sophisticated enough to know that a great storm is brewing just over the horizon.
The NBA lockout promises to make the NFL's longstanding lockout look like child's play - ESPN
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Good read. A lock-out would hit the legacies of some great players as well which is a shame.
 
The 2011-2012 will most likely be lost now, even though a meeting is already scheduled for next week. Both parties don't look interested in what the other have to offer, and neither is in a position now to give up, the players got their ego, while the owner got their money.

A question here is though, can't another sponsor/owner offer to organize a new league with the players and leave the old owners behind with not a penny in their pockets? I mean isn't it possible to play basketball in America without Stern's permission?? Just organize a new league with new sponsors and/or owners, and I'm sure there is enough money to go around if things stayed just the way they are right now (which is what the players want).
 
Danny1982 said:
The 2011-2012 will most likely be lost now, even though a meeting is already scheduled for next week. Both parties don't look interested in what the other have to offer, and neither is in a position now to give up, the players got their ego, while the owner got their money.

A question here is though, can't another sponsor/owner offer to organize a new league with the players and leave the old owners behind with not a penny in their pockets? I mean isn't it possible to play basketball in America without Stern's permission?? Just organize a new league with new sponsors and/or owners, and I'm sure there is enough money to go around if things stayed just the way they are right now (which is what the players want).
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Player are under contract
 
Players will play abroad, Kobe's apparently negotiating with Besiktas (he'd be better off resting imo) & Williams has already agreed a contract with them. Melo & CP3 said they're interested in playing in China.
 
ha_rooney said:
Players will play abroad, Kobe's apparently negotiating with Besiktas (he'd be better off resting imo) & Williams has already agreed a contract with them. Melo & CP3 said they're interested in playing in China.
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The Basketball Euroleague will suddenly become interesting to watch! :lol:
 
What's the latest with the lockout? Any hope?
 
Still locked out and from what I've read a few US journalists think the entire season might be missed; others don't expect anything until February 2012. Apparently NBA is not as popular as NFL in America so the pressure from the fans to sort out the lockout is not as great as it was for the NFL lockout, also each owner has their own agenda so it's more complex.
 
Bollocks, i was just getting into the NBA. Was gonna try and catch a few different games this year to try and pick a team to support.
 
Artest is willing to play for a couple of thousand whilst other players want millions to play abroad. Hopefully he improves his shooting.

Stern has said that there is the possibility of contraction. It's a fair idea as there are a few mediocre teams in the NBA and playing 82 games is too much as you can pretty much guess who the playoff teams will be. How they go about reducing the teams is a different matter.
 
I always thought the NBA regular season should consist of 58 games. Every team plays all the other teams home and away..
 
All the non-NFL regular seasons are way too long. Especially considering in the 2 82 game seasons ones, half of the teams make the playoffs so it's irrelevant anyway. Need to shorten the playoffs not the regular season, because revenues will take a monster hit if regular season is hit hard at this point.
 
Zen said:
All the non-NFL regular seasons are way too long. Especially considering in the 2 82 game seasons ones, half of the teams make the playoffs so it's irrelevant anyway. Need to shorten the playoffs not the regular season, because revenues will take a monster hit if regular season is hit hard at this point.
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The playoffs are amazing though, they'd be daft to shorten that. That's what draws the highest TV audiences which attracts the big TV money. Especially with the rise in viewing figures the season gone by.

If anything is to be shortened, it'll be the regular season I think. Although I'll be gutted as its less basketball to watch.
 
The players just look weaker to me than the owners.. If I was to bet on a side to give in, I'd put my money on the players..
 
Excal said:
The longer it goes, the more apparent it is that no one gives a shit about basketball being gone until February/March or so.
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It's what the idiots in the NBA don't realize...they aren't as big as the NFL, congress gave a damn about football, the NBA could lose an entire season, and most wouldn't bat an eyelid.
 
Kornheiser and Ryan were talking about the differences between NBA, NFL and MLB during their strikes. In MLB and NFL, the marquee names were showing up at hearings, talks, etc. and then in the NBA they're all either going overseas or doing their own thing.

Bottom line: NBA is a "me" league not a brotherhood or team.
 
MrMarcello said:
Kornheiser and Ryan were talking about the differences between NBA, NFL and MLB during their strikes. In MLB and NFL, the marquee names were showing up at hearings, talks, etc. and then in the NBA they're all either going overseas or doing their own thing.

Bottom line: NBA is a "me" league not a brotherhood or team.
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Not defending the players(who would?) but the NFL players didn't really have an option of going elsewhere...and I suppose the MLB players could have gone to Japan...but that's it.

The NBA players are being offered millions and millions to play in Italy/Spain/Turkey - so you can understand why some are seriously considering the offers.

But I hear you...it shows a lack of commonality, and more importantly, the the elite players really don't care. They're still going to get their max contracts.
 
Kobe is going to play in Italy during the lockout, he's reached an agreement (not signed yet) where he receives $3 million for the first 40 days of the season.

Bad move in my opinion, he needs to rest himself not go play more basketball. At least he will be allowed to return to LA if the lockout ends. I wonder if the other superstars will follow and take offers from other countries?
 
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