I Want My NBA!!!

G

groveChuck

U-matic Member
I want my NBA!

I write this with one eye on NFL and one on the forum, World Series coming up (snoooore!) but I want my NBA, dammit!

I want the entertainment, I want the excitement.
I want the action, I want the athleticism.
I want the threes, the dunks and the fadeaways, the defense, the jukes and the soaring.
I want to forget about the economy, and think about the ecstatic energy of the NBA.

Yeah, I want the Heat to redeem themselves after the disappointing NBA Finals (hello again, all you Dallas fans from the Finals!), but I want the whole league- large market Knicks to small market Charlotte.
I want them to fix it.
Because this isn't a "lockout", it's the owners and players (both culpable) boycotting the fans.

I want my NBA.

Here's the Miami Herald's Greg Cote with a great perspective:
There are no good guys in this NBA lockout. No victims, no sympathetic figures. Start there. The villains are everywhere. The villains are wearing suits and wingtips, and shorts and sneakers. The villains look like commissioners and team owners, and they look like forwards and point guards.
More galling than the self-defeating stalemate, you get the feeling both sides are oblivious to the fact theirs is the most spectacularly ill-timed sports labor dispute in history. Or maybe it’s just that the men of uncommon privilege involved in this mess are so financially well-off that relating to folks struggling down at the real-world level is impossible.

I wonder if commissioner David Stern and superstars like LeBron James have a clue that nobody out there in a badly limping U.S. economy wants to hear about self-entitled billionaire team owners and professionally pampered millionaire athletes in a room arguing over how to share $4.3 billion – with both sides so hell-bent on their own pockets that neither can bring itself to find the necessary compromise.
With joblessness over 9 percent nationally, how about Heat owner Micky Arison and star Dwyane Wade visit an unemployment office and try to explain their respective labor positions to an out-of-work welder who can’t feed his family.

The “Occupy Wall Street” movement blooms as an outlet of grass-roots frustration over the disparity in wealth distribution – what we used to call haves and have-nots – while the ultimate “haves” who are NBA owners and players boycott their own fans, in effect, because all that these rich men have evidently isn’t nearly enough.
The barons of sports get a free pass, come to think of it, when we consider the American caste system defined by wealth. We hold up to proper outrage the corporate CEOs who lavish themselves with exorbitant salaries and raises even as their companies fail and beg government bailouts. But how much less is the gulf between haves and have-nots in sports, when basketball players are making more money in one quarter of one game (yes, one quarter of one game) than many of their fans make in an entire year.

Fans being fans, we don’t begrudge our stars this lunatic chasm, even as we take out our second mortgages, obediently pay $30 to park outside the arena and wonder why a cup of beer has to cost $9. We don’t begrudge our stars when they are playing, at least, because they are of value then. They are some of our antidote to real life, the feel-good we count on, the diversion that is medicinal.

No loyalty?
It is when the games stop for no good reason or for what feels like avarice that we pause, and wonder if the loyalty that costs us so much is being returned.
It is fashionable and easy to paint Stern and club owners as the most wrong in a roomful of wrong here, but if Stern is right about the league-wide economic portrait – a net operating loss of $300 million and 22 of 30 clubs in the red last year – it is his responsibility to try and fix that.
A more independent voice, Forbes, reported the NBA had a net operating profit of $183 million last season but that 17 clubs lost money, and that the biggest bleeders were small-market Orlando, Indiana and Charlotte.

New model needed
By either numbers, one can see a new business model is needed. The owners in 2005 approved the very system they are now fighting to change, but times have changed.
The economic reality has.
If the existing system indeed has more than half the teams losing money, a different system is needed – along with a general acknowledgement that maybe giving an $118 million contract to Rashard Lewis wasn’t smart spending.
More than teams’ profitability, the NBA needs more of what the NFL enjoys: parity, and the ability of small markets (like Green Bay) to compete. Revenue sharing gets you closer to that.
So does either a hard salary cap or a more punitive “luxury tax” that discourages “have” owners from lording fatter wallets over their have-not brethren.
In canceling the first two weeks of the regular season Stern said this week, “We remain very, very far apart on virtually all issues.”

Season in trouble
That’s the-entire-season-is-in-jeopardy talk.
Somebody has to blink here, grownups.
A healthier NBA might require some reigning-in on player salaries, but rest assured no player would go hungry. That’s a promise.
LeBron and Chris Bosh both made $177,000 per game in Heat salary last season.
LeBron, with plenty of free time, sent a playful note to his Twitter followers this week asking when is the deadline for NFL teams to sign free agents, a sort of wink-wink that the former all-state wide receiver in high school might want to moonlight during the lockout.

Ah, the idle rich. Must be nice to be both idle and rich.
Poor D-Wade? He somehow got by on only $173,000 per game last season. And because each sacrificed so all three might be joined – the nobility – Miami’s Big 3 were not even on the top tier of NBA high salaries.
Plenty of players make more than $200,000 per game. And of course a superstar’s team income is augmented royally with endorsement dough from Nike, T-Mobile, etc.
That is why it’s such a hoot to hear analysts surmise that the players’ resolve to keep fighting may begin to fray when it gets to be Nov. 15 and the first of the bi-monthly team paychecks isn’t there.
Really? Seriously? You think Wade needs that check to make ends meet, do you? Figure LeBron might have to apply for food stamps? How about Bosh in a paper hat working the drive-through line at McDonald’s?

Rich athletes
Forget superstars. The average NBA player’s salary is $5.5 million a year, the highest average in any American team sport.
Players being asked to make a slight financial sacrifice from a starting point of extreme wealth for the good of their sport and league does not strike me as outrageous.
What is fairly outrageous is the NBA’s mega-rich continuing their penthouse stalemate over who gets how many millions when the people who want to be their fans are down there fighting through this economy and trying to pay bills.
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I hear ya. I am not only a fan of the sport but I derive a good portion of income from working as a camera operator for Fox Sports' coverage of the OKC Thunder's 40+ home games.
 
Damn, Terry, then you're really feeling it, as are a couple of my friends!
Let's get this game going again! :beer:
 
I've been doing multi-camera sports stuff for several years. I have worked a lot of college sports for Fox Sports, ESPN, TNT and even our local cable company. When the New Orleans Hornets moved to Oklahoma City for two seasons after Hurricane Katrina, I was made part of the crew. Later, the Seattle Sonics were moved here and repackaged as the OKC Thunder and I, once again, got the nod. As to how to get your foot in the door, and not knowing what city you live in/near, I would suggest starting out with a local cable company that covers high school and/or college sports. You will learn how to set up a facility for a broadcast, the roles of the different camera positions (game, chase, slash, handheld, etc.), how to "sell" shots to directors, the fine art of listening to the director and announcers at the same time while covering the game and helping to tell the story of the game.
 
Depends on who the other camera operators are on the crew but I'm always on a build-up. I tend to split my time between slash and chase (tight).
 
Worked the Kevin Durant charity game officially titled the "US Fleet Tracking Basketball Invitational" in OKC last night. Might be as close as we get for a while. : /
 
LOCKOUT IS OVER!!! Christmas Day Games On!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/s...reach-deal-to-end-lockout.html?ref=basketball

On nearly every count, the deal favors the owners, who had sought an overhaul all along.
The players made significant concessions, including a reduction of up to $300 million year in salaries, $3 billion over the life of the agreement.

Based on tentative agreements made earlier this month, it is expected to be a 10-year deal, the longest in N.B.A. history, with an option for either side to terminate it after six years.
It will include a significant pay cut for players, along with shorter contracts, smaller raises and a more punitive tax system to rein in the top-spending teams.

The deal was reached about 3 a.m. Saturday, on the 149th day of the lockout, after a final 15-hour bargaining session at the law offices of Weil, Gotshal and Manges in Midtown Manhattan.

“We’ve reached a tentative understanding that is subject to a variety of approvals and very complex machinations,” the league’s commissioner, David Stern, said, “but we’re optimistic that that will all come to pass, and that the N.B.A. season will begin on Dec. 25, Christmas Day, with a tripleheader.”

Training camps and free agency will open, simultaneously, on Dec. 9, giving teams two weeks to prepare.

The three Dec. 25 games are likely to be the ones that were on the schedule: the Boston Celtics at the Knicks, followed by the Miami Heat at the Dallas Mavericks and the Chicago Bulls at the Los Angeles Lakers. The rest of the schedule will be reconstructed and released in the coming days.
 
Heat = C300 (expensive, hated, probably going to be good)
OKC = hacked GH2 (cheap, savvy, good)
Celtics = AF100 (don't you dare say sh*t about it)
Spurs = 5Dmkii (dynasty, last legs?)
 
ThisHideousReplica said:
Heat = C300 (expensive, hated, probably going to be good)
OKC = hacked GH2 (cheap, savvy, good)
Celtics = AF100 (don't you dare say sh*t about it)
Spurs = 5Dmkii (dynasty, last legs?)
Click to expand...

Ha ha, love it!

'Cept the Celts = AF100? No, no, no!

#1, as an AF owner, there's no green on my cam (other than the green I earn!)
#2, Celtics are more like original HVX200- fantastic in it's day, old technology now (or in the case of the Celtics, really old technology!!!)

Jordan Scott Price said:
Mavs = DVX100


:)
Click to expand...

Sorry Jordan, I love (and have) the DVX, but its golden days are over, the Mavs, too!
Plus they're not quite as beloved by all as the DVX!

Let the talkin' begin!!! :furious3: :)
 
Anyone here remember the quality of play after the lockout of 98-99?

I wonder if the players are in basketball shape.
 
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