FanPost

Greed Theatre: the NBA Lockout Parable

 

As the NBA Lockout comes to a standstill, with no constructive meetings between the player's union and the league likely to occur until lost games and lost paychecks are imminent, the Greed Theatre between the players and the owners grows, furthering the contempt and mistrust of loyal NBA fans everywhere. 

Matt Moore from ProBasketballTalk recently wrote an article about NBA agents having a principle role in creating what eventually was partially responsible for the lockout: wanting the most money and the longest-term contracts possible for their players, and thus taking advantage of a broken system to guarantee that. 

Moore interestingly seperates the "sides" in the NBA Lockout Greed Theatre into not two, but six pieces: " the rich owners, the poor owners, the moderate owners, the superstar players, the role players, and… the agents". Each piece plays a part, each piece wants the most money possible, and everyone knows that it's simply not possible for everyone to get their way. That's why negotiation is a lofty but reasonable goal: because in this lockout, nobody is going to score a home run. 

The drama that we're seeing now is nothing compared to what it will be in a few weeks when additional pressure on the players, agents, and owners causes everyone to lose. Then all we can do is sit back and watch the action unfold, hoping that someone will fold.