NBA Lockout: Day 1

Given the NBA is my least favorite of the four major sports I'll attempt to be as impartial as possible....

Ehhhh...who am I kidding?!?!  I hope the lockout goes on and on and on and the whole league goes under!!

A good recap of the current situation here:  http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?STORY_ID=20316

I especially like the part where they say that NBA players are now no longer under the NBA's anti-drug policy!  And have you heard?  Kobe has gone to Germany to have a "controversial" knee operation done.  In it his blood plasma is taken out, concentrated and then injected back into his body.  The cool think about Platelet Replacement Therapy?  You can add HGH into the plasma and it remains undetectable.  Wanna know who else underwent this "procedure" for "knee problems"?  Tiger Woods...

Anyway...

Preposterous you say (to the leagues collapse)!  Likely true...but I still think the league is in for a very rude awakening when it comes to the changes needed to the sport, lack of true fan/public interest and the rough shape many of the teams are actually in.

The NBA needs a HARD salary cap like the NHL and it likely needs contraction of the number of teams as well.  I think at least a hard cap is going to result from this lockout.  Why?  Well, unlike the NFL, the NBA loses money...and lots of it.  I know firsthand of what I speak and can say that even the most successful, recently championship winning teams are hemorrhaging money.  Not only that, but much of the NBA ownership is not good old boy money like you see in MLB and NFL but new, ego centric money--Think the bankrupt Maloofs, etc.  I have no trouble believing that only a handful of NBA teams are profitable as I've only seen a single franchise report a profit so far and it is seemingly only the stingiest of franchises that can make this happen in the current environment.  I laugh every time I see an NBA team that is losing money and yet shelling out several million to subsidize the WNBA on an annual basis because the NBA/ESPN/ABC want to be politically correct and prop up a league that no one cares about, watches or has interest in.  My first starting point if I was an NBA player?  Demand that the NBA stop subsidizing the WNBA and use those funds to better the finances of what should be the NBA's sole focus--the NBA.  I can't even imagine how disastrous the WNBA team financials, if broken out, look.

Secondly, I think the NBA will find itself with little support for getting back to work.  Take a look at the NBA franchises.  And I'll just use the ones that bolster my point most clearly.  Houston, Memphis, New Orleans, Sacramento, Golden State, Phoenix, Minnesota, Charlotte, Washington, Orlando, Miami, Atlanta, Cleveland, Toronto, New Jersey.  What do they all have in common?  Awful, horrible, pathetic, front running, no passion fan bases.  Atlanta might be the poster child for this group having lost numerous franchises over the years and being infamous for having 1/2 full ball parks while the Braves have been in the playoffs.  These are NOT locations with rabid fanbases where fans show up through thick and thin, living and dying with their teams.  The NBA is LOADED with franchises in areas like this as they tried to expand the brand into Southern and more African American centered populations.  Now its going to come back to bite them.  No one in these cities (relatively speaking) is going to be up in arms about there being no Atlanta Hawks games or no Golden State Warriors games.  Its the classic--If a tree falls and there's no one to hear it, does it make a sound?--question.

So good luck to the NBA and its players...They'll need it!