Basically, what is holding everyone in the lockout back is how to split the league's ten billion dollars, or however much it really makes annually. The owners want a 50-50 split of the revenue, and the players want 52.5% of it. If they ever come to a decision, then they go to the salary cap issue... And if everything gets settled everyone can go back to choosing another diamond-studded anchor for their yachts.
Both the players and owners have a ridiculous excess of money, as you might just possibly be aware. The fact that they can't decide on how to split it up has every single working class American who has, or had an interest in the league shaking their head in disgust. Not just because of the loss of basketball (if you haven't tried it, college ball starts up real soon, and sure, the skill level isn't there, but they play a heck of a lot harder than NBA players. Tune in sometime), but because they are both so ridiculously greedy and have such a great amount of self-entitlement and, in the players case, didn't work nearly as hard in school as you did but just happen to have a natural ability that propels them to play professionally where their work is a game, that just so happens to have a salary equaling the total net worth of half the African countries in the world combined.
And you want to know stupidest thing about this whole lockout? Something so obvious staring both the players and owners in the face that they don't seem to notice? The longer this lockout goes on, the more money they lose. So they both want their 2.5% extra of the revenue, but if they miss a whole season bickering about it, they are just going to lose a ton of money in the long run anyway. Idiocy on the parts of all of them.
NBA players are even overpaid compared to the other major sports leagues. The average salary of an NBA player in 2010-11 was 5.8 million; in the NFL a season ago it was 1.9. And sure, you can say there's more NFL players, whatever, but NFL MVP candidate Arian Foster made $390,000 a year ago while NBA role player Rashard Lewis eats up 20-something million annually, or Darius Songaila, who saw the court for like a minute and a half this past season, made 4.5. There's countless other, better examples, but you get the point.
Part of the reason the players are so overpaid in the first place is because of the lousy, reckless spending on the owners part.
Brian Cardinal was never more than a big man who wasn't very good. Yet for the 2005 season, the Grizzlies decided to sign him to a six year, 34.6 million dollar deal. In the four years he played with Memphis, he averaged less than six points a game. An even more costly decision was the contract Rashard Lewis signed, that he even had to clarify himself, where he basically said, hey, talk to the owner about why I'm getting paid so much.
Whenever the NBA resumes, all of its fans will return, whether they say they will or won't now, and everything will be back to normal. But if things keep going the way they are going, there will be a ton of lost revenue that no deal can make up for (hence there being no pizza left, brilliant, I'm aware). What the guys in suits and players alike need to realize is that they are just digging their own graves right now, and would be much better off just taking a pay cut.
The owners have the upper hand; if there continues to be no progression and games until Christmas are canceled, they will just draw a hard line at a 50-50 split. The players will be forced to accept it, and will have lost out on all the money they could have made up until then. Meanwhile the fans at home just say suck it up.
