NBA Lockout: What went wrong?
Comments(0) Blog Link to external blog: NBA Lockout: The NBA’s Nuclear Winter — Where Do We Go From Here? – Gabe Feldman
As of this moment, it looks like there will be no NBA this season. Sad news for fans all around the world, however, fans are not the real losers here. Sure they lose out on all the enjoyment they would have gotten from the games, but thats about it. The real losers are those businesses who rely on the NBA season to earn their revenue. Places such as sports bars, restaurants and hotels all use the NBA season to attract customers into their venue. The lockout directly leads to losses for the businesses and there is really nothing they can do about it.
Gabe Feldman’s blog touches on this issue and another main issue, which is the salary cap. Since 1983, the NBA has been under a soft cap, meaning there were always mechanisms to get around the salary restrictions. However, the owners have proposed a hard cap similar to the NHL, which states that a team cannot spend over a certain amout of money per year. This is where the debate starts as the players vowed to never agree to this kind of system.
There have been terrible contracts signed within the last couple of years that have had players being much too over paid. All it takes is one bad deal to cause a league-wide inflation in the salaries offered to the players, and by introducing a hard cap, this would totally be prevented. The players have to realized that for the well being of the sport, a hard cap should be used. This is a main issue, however it is not the only one, and the debates will continue to escalate until a deal has been reached.
