NBA lockout costing fans more than anyone

Editorial Board

Well folks, we can see a light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately that light is the final destination of no season.

The National Basketball Players Association took a giant leap toward that destination on Monday when they announced that they collectively rejected the owners’ most recent collective bargaining agreement offer.

Along with rejecting the owners’ latest offer, they also announced that they will be decertifying as a union.

The NBPA has never decertified as a union, which means only bad things for us fans. In 1995 the players, led by Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing, started a decertification movement which was eventually out-voted 226 to 134 in favor to accept the new agreement rather than decertify.

Think about this: On Wednesday night the Boston Celtics would be taking their talents to South Beach to play the Miami Heat in prime time on ESPN.

We mean, who would want to watch that? Not us, that’s for sure. Who cares if LeBron and the Heat will be better this year after a year of playing together? Who wants to watch if the veteran Celtics still have what it takes to keep up with the young guns?

Not us.

We’d rather watch poker or some random MAC college football game.

Pardon the sarcasm, but the whole ordeal has us a bit sour. The season is being delayed over absolute nonsense.

After the players were holding out for a 50/50 split for a weeks, they finally surrendered to that bottom-line number last Wednesday.

That means no matter what stuff they are haggling over, the players have still conceded to giving back $1.1 billion over the life of this collective bargaining deal and are not getting a penny more than 50 percent.

It’s no secret that even the Charlotte Bobcats owner Michael Jordan doesn’t care much about the players. One Eastern Conference executive, who is close to Stern, told ESPN, “He cares about the $100 million [former Charlotte Bobcats owner] Bob Johnson lost when he sold the team. He’s thinking about the money he’s trying to make over the next 10 years. He doesn’t believe half the players in the league deserve the money they’re making.”

So now it’s coming to a nuclear-war type of situation. Both sides were trying to create leverage. The players acting like they’re the victims, the owners giving ultimatums.

If they were going to decertify, they should’ve done it this summer when they had time to fix it before the season.

They were like college students — procrastinating the huge 10-page paper until the night before it’s due, then not getting it done in time and blaming the professor for giving them a “totally unfair” paper.

Much like how doing that as a student would give you a poor grade, this is not only going to cost the players and the owners money.

It’s likely going to cost fans the entire season.