Face Facts: The NBA Season Is Not Going to Start on Time at LinesMaker

Face Facts: The NBA Season Is Not Going to Start on Time

Nov. 1 was going to be a fun night. The Dirk Now­itzki, Jason Kidd and the rest of the Mav­er­icks were finally going to get their cham­pi­onship rings (or what­ever) and Mark Cuban was going get a ban­ner raised to the rafters in Dal­las. Then the Mav­er­icks were going to take on the Chicago Bulls in what would be a fun matchup. Right as that ended, the next gen­er­a­tion in the west — the Okla­homa City Thun­der – were to take on older gen­er­a­tion not ready to go qui­etly, the Los Ange­les Lakers.

The NBA was going to open its new sea­son that night in grand style.

Now, NBA are­nas will be dark.

That’s not offi­cial, yet. But after labor nego­ti­a­tions went nowhere over the week­end, in the next cou­ple of days you can expect the NBA will offi­cially can­cel at least another week and likely the rest of the NBA pre­sea­son schedule.

Actual reg­u­lar sea­son NBA games will not be far behind.

It’s going to take at about a month from the day the own­ers and play­ers reach a hand­shake agree­ment to the first NBA reg­u­lar sea­son game. Today is Oct. 1.

Saturday’s labor talk went on for more than seven hours with no real progress — and they didn’t even address the biggest issue, the ele­phant in the room, how to divide up “bas­ket­ball related income.” (What did they do for seven hours, watch col­lege foot­ball and eat nachos?) The two sides plan to meet again Mon­day and Tues­day, but both sides keep using phrases like “far apart” and “gulf” to describe the talks. There is no rea­son to expect a big break­through in the imme­di­ate future.

And if there isn’t reg­u­lar sea­son games will be post­poned. The league will hold off as long as it can on mak­ing that for­mal announce­ment, but it’s going to come. Brace your­self for it.

It is pos­si­ble for the sea­son to be delayed a cou­ple weeks and still get in the full 82 games. That, how­ever, means you think there will be a break­through in the next cou­ple of weeks that will allow the clock to start toward a reg­u­lar season.

Team facil­i­ties can open a few days after a hand­shake labor deal is reached. But it is going to take a cou­ple of weeks for the attor­neys to ham­mer out the lan­guage and for both the own­ers and play­ers to for­mally approve the deal. Then there will be a con­densed train­ing camp with a fren­zied free agent sea­son on top of it. Each team will have a hand­ful of exhi­bi­tion games. Then the sea­son will start. In 1999 dur­ing the last lock­out, that all took a month.

Both play­ers and peo­ple tied to own­er­ship I’ve spo­ken to have thought that there would be a par­tial sea­son. Nobody thinks the whole thing will be lost (that con­ver­sa­tion is for around Christ­mas if we are still locked out).

What is clear after this cru­cial week­end of talks is the own­ers really want to pres­sure the play­ers — the first missed player pay­check would not be until Nov. 15. Mean­while the play­ers are bet­ter pre­pared and more uni­fied than they were last lock­out. Nei­ther side is break­ing, nei­ther is really will­ing to move off their cur­rent lines very far. There is not a spirit of compromise.

With­out that spirit, there may not be an NBA sea­son at all.

But for now, just know the NBA sea­son will not start on time.

Related Posts:

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• Cow­boys RB Choice, Not Mur­ray, to Start vs. Rams
• Another Sea­son Ends With Steel­ers DE Smith on Injured Reserve
• Another Sea­son Ends With Steel­ers DE Smith on Injured Reserve
• Oil­ers Tab Khabibu­lin to Start

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