Among life’s little irritations is coming back home and no one noticing you were gone. Boy, must the NBA be blushing today.
Has anyone missed Antonio Davis? A show of hands if anyone knows who I’m talking about. But there was Davis explaining how he and other players would force themselves to do what they hated, sign autographs and stuff.
Hey, who asked?
What was the most important thing the NBA should have learned from chewing on each other’s thumbs for the last six months? Huh? This is what. Nobody cared. Nobody noticed. Nobody had one bad moment because Michael Jordan wasn’t ragging Reggie Miller, because Karl Malone wasn’t picking or rolling, because Allen Iverson wasn’t ignoring the open man.
And how many eardrums are healthier for not having to endure “Rock ‘n’ Roll, Part II” during timeouts? Although I have to admit I kind of missed doin’ the “Locomotion” with Little Eva.
Sure, a few unfortunates were charged with keeping track of exactly how many days, games and dribbles have been lost because of the labor idiocy just ended, but for the rest of us, I think our indifference could be represented with a shrug.
Wake me when the playoffs start, which is all the basketball that matters anyhow. Will a 50-game season eliminate the worst teams so the rest of them can get on with finding a champion? Absolutely. That’s about the number of games most players actually bother to play anyhow.
In fact, the shorter the season, the better. Thirty days hath September, all the rest have basketball.
We should get a season now when every game means more, one long pre-playoff playoff, except what we’re going to get are pulled muscles, bad chemistry and missed jump shots. It’ll be April before the Bulls learn each other’s names.
This is what they all deserve, all the self-satisfied nits of the NBA, the players, the marketers, the managing generals, the agents, the shoe shoppers, all convinced they were the reason for the glory and prosperity of the game.
Even the faultless Michael Jordan was reduced to insignificance by events, his presence in the negotiations carrying less weight than the fuel it took to keep his waiting limo climate controlled.
What will Jordan do next? I expect he’ll let us know by memo. I’m Back. I’m Not Back. One of those.
Here’s my take on this buzzer-beating, season-saving, union-stomping, owner-gloating, overdue labor-lockout resolution. They got together to save a sport while they still had a sport to save. If they had let this season die, they would have had to hire mourners for the funeral.
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Well, that, and if they hadn’t resolved it there would have been a revolt among the rabble, the rabble being those several hundred guys who usually are identified as DNP-Coach’s Decision. They might not be able to get into a game until it doesn’t matter, but their votes were equal to any of Patrick Ewing’s.
And speaking of the estimable labor leader, Mr. Ewing, he was not even included in the final negotiations, so all that posturing and skewed logic he had fronted for all those months was meaningless. He was as used by his union as he ever was by the NBA.
Here’s the short of it. One day an NBA player can make $33 million, and the next he can make only $14 million. The players not only lowered their ceiling, they pulled it down on top of themselves.
Players already making a bunch of money still can make a bunch of money. That business was, as they say, grandfathered in. Considering the age of these guys, grandfather is the right word.
Not only did the players lose this thing, they were routed, like the Clippers against the Bulls, like Tony Kukoc against Anthony Mason, like P.J. Carlesimo’s neck against Latrell Sprewell’s thumbs.
Sure, there they were Thursday, the little clump of managing idiots, explaining how they wanted to get the fans back. David Stern, his own smug self, reassured us that he was a fan, like the hair club guy who is also a client, I guess.
Stern announced that the owners had accepted the terms of the deal unanimously. Who would vote against total victory? Not even OPEC.
I particularly was impressed with the union clerk, Billy Hunter, who promised that the players will do whatever it takes to get back in touch with the little people, that is, those folks usually being pushed aside by entourages and bodyguards.
“It will be healthy and refreshing,” Hunter said. Healthy and refreshing for whom, he did not specify, but I’m willing to guess that Shaquille O’Neal’s next grunt will be as hostile as his last one.
Nothing will change. Neither owners, players nor agents learned anything from this. Everybody lost, except, for a change, the fans, who found out, marketing be damned, that they didn’t love this game after all.