my opinion is fuck the owners, but I’m pretty violently anti-capitalism these days. I’ve been saying for months that the players should start their own eight team league, I saw Simmons got into that a bit in a recent column, and just now I saw that Amare said the players have begun talking about it a bit. nothing would make me happier then to see bozos like Dolan and Sarver left with entirely worthless franchises. actually nothing would make me happier than to see the constantly insufferably smug David Stern begging for change on the corner, but that’s I guess too much to ask.

that said, the combination of changes to the bri and system that the owners are demanding are ridiculous. no other sport gives players less than 52% bri. if i were the union i would be more likely to give on system because bri has upside.

Problem with that scenario, obviously, is it could take months to work its way through the system. At that point, it becomes a pretty heavy gamble on the part of the owners, who could then stand to lose a hell of a lot more than the players.

Cripes my head hurts.

And the owners, naturally, wanted drastic changes (including some sort of super-duper luxury tax to punish teams like the Mavericks and Lakers from continually going over the cap – something that the Knicks would plan on doing, as well).

Also, and I know this is totally random / borderline irrelevant, but I find it interesting that Stern — a guy who’s donated almost exclusively to Democratic candidates over the years — once again finds himself representing the theoretical “other side” in the debate of labor vs. ownership. Obviously, pro sports should not be viewed through the prism of your ordinary labor scenario. But still, it makes you wonder whether Stern really believes in his side of the argument, or whether it’s simply a matter of necessity vis-a-vis his position. What tipped me off was a quote from Hunter which in turn quotes Stern as saying something to the effect of “this is the deal the owners must have.”

Anyway, just a couple of random musings on this bile-dark day.

Jim Cavan (@JPCavan):
I WAS FOULED!

Seems like there are quite a few TrueHoopers in NYC — might be interesting to see if we can’t field a few teams out of it.

If this goes down, I’m in.

If I’m in the area at the time, I’d be in. I would even avoid cigarettes for the entire day of the game.

@cgreene

I think if the owners agreed on 53%, the players would be completely fine with the modifications you mention, depending on their specifics.

The thing is, running a team should not be simple. Bad GMs should have to pay for their bad decisions, rather than having a do-over button for every mess up. There would many more deserving players who would get screwed by a more restraining CBA than there would undeserving/overpaid ones.

Think about the teams that succeed in the NBA. How many terrible signings have they had? The spurs with Richard Jefferson maybe, but even there they didn’t give up anything other than cap space for him. Good GMs don’t take stupid risks.

There’s some sense to the argument that these terrible contracts are too punishing, but in most cases, if you play your cards right, you can turn an old team full of overpaid players into a young .500 team with a very promising future in 3-4 years. You just have to commit to the rebuilding process, something the knicks stubbornly refused to do. That to me sounds fair.