| 05 October 2011
To recall, the owners offered a 50-50 split of the BRI (or basketball related income), a 7% cut from last season's 57% share. But, the players countered with a hard 53% share. The union also wants a soft salary cap rather than the strict hard cap that the owners want implented. Those are the 2 biggest stumbling blocks for the regular season since Day 1.
The 22 small market owners claim that they lost $300 million in profit last season and would like to be guaranteed profit for, at least, the next 10 years by getting more of the BRI pie ($4 billion presently) and asking the players to take a gradual pay cut with a rollback. They also say they want better competition to win a title throughout the league. To them, having a strict salary cap will ensure that they can't hand out more bad contracts, and that the bigger markets (like the Lakers) can't add more stars to their roster than they already have.
The players are willing to take a pay cut and exceptions on a modified hard salary cap (supertaxes) but nothing less than 53% of the BRI.
However, if the first 2 weeks of the regular season are cancelled, both sides are looking at a $200 million lost in revenue in just those 2 weeks alone.
But at this point of the game, monetary losses and gains for both sides are nothing compared to the damages the NBA is facing if they allow regular season games to be cancelled.
Last season, the league saw an enormous increase in overall revenue from merchandise, ticket sales, advertisers and TV viewers. BRI went up by 4.8% from $3.6 billion 2 years ago to $3.8 in 2010-11, and total player compensation also increased by 4.8% from $2.07 billion to $2.17 last year. The NBA may be one of the top sports worldwide, but it's still not as popular as the NFL domestically.
The lockout has already shakened the already delicate relationship with current and new fans. If any part of the season is missed, there's a good chance that the NBA will see drawbacks from everything the owners and the players raked in last year.
Not only that, there's also a possibility that each team could see a drop in their season ticket sales or overall attendance should they continue to ignore the real source of their financial well-being.
Bottom line is: This lockout has been ridiculous from the get-go. What business, any business, can guarantee profit? Why can't the NBA players take the pay cut when their salary is larger than the players in the NFL and MLB combined even after the pay cut?
They can talk about doing this and that for the betterment of the league and for the fans all they want, but it's difficult to sell their lip service when their actions say they care nothing more than their own wallets.
At the end of the day, these billionaires and millionaires are fighting over something most of us regular people are struggling to earn a crumb of or even find the means to have an opportunity to earn every single day of every single week.
All we want is have our basketball back. Is that really too much to ask for?
