Hate the owners, not the game

I’m going to go on an editorial rant, so indulge me for a minute. There is this asinine pro-owner argument out there, permeated by likes of veteran basketball reporters like Bob Ryan and Bill Simmons, and it’s driving me crazy. They say that the owners are on the right side of the labor dispute because the NBA players have had it too good for too long, that too many extravagant contracts have been given to the likes of Rashard Lewis and Gilbert Arenas, and that the owners essentially need to be saved from themselves with more rigid restrictions.

If you feel that way, fine. If you believe the NBA needs a fancy new CBA to prevent owners from dishing out incredibly dumb mega-deals to the first flash in the pan that catches their eye, okay, whatever. I won’t even dispute that the league needs it. However, why that feeling also translates to support to the owners, the very people everyone acknowledges as those responsible for handing out those contracts, is baffling to me. This would be like if Barack Obama ruined the country, but people still wanted to vote for him because they liked his plan to fix the problems of today, problems that he himself created. It’s a never-ending cycle where people never get to budge from their positions.

(By the way, there was nothing pointed about that Obama analogy, as I was just making a point. Swap Bush for Obama and it’s the same message. Aha, now you don’t know what I believe. Was I just covering my bases, or was I overcompensating for a political leaning earlier? Who knows.)

It’s especially sad because the anti-player argument is an incredibly simplistic one to take, and it’s a shame even seasoned basketball analysts have gotten suckered into it. Athletes are overpaid, and everyone knows it. Everyone’s always felt it. Go watch the Ken Burns Baseball documentary, and you’ll hear stories about fans complaining about baseball players’ salaries a hundred years ago, when they were only making thousands of dollars. Now they make millions, if not tens and hundreds of millions, and some owners are losing money. It’s not hard to make the connections in your head. It’s obvious who the blame goes to on the surface.

However, one of the points constantly overlooked by fans is how exactly the players get so stickin’ rich in the first place. The owners pay them. We tend to look at athletes as representatives of the city, and we take it personally when they fail, as though they’re wasting our tax dollars. But it’s the owners who give them those lofty contracts. It’s the owners who continue to escalate the salaries of these players by bidding higher and higher for them. The bar for a big contract used to be a couple million dollars. Then one team, in an effort to get better, said, “I know how I can get you on our team. Here’s even more money.” And a few years later, the bar was moved even further. And even further.

Player contracts haven’t expanded because of player greed. They expanded because the owners wanted them to. They expanded because Jon Koncak, Shawn Bradley and Tim Thomas were, at different times, handed contracts that made them richer than James Worthy, Shaquille O’Neal and Steve Nash respectively. They continued to raise the bar, dollar by dollar. They paid the bills and were happy to give the players all the money in the world, so long as it made their team better, which could lead to greater television and attendance revenue. If anything, the lockout can be pinned to owner greed.

So when the owners locked out the players, and I can’t emphasize that enough -- when the owners locked out the players, and effectively shut down the league, one could have imagined the public turning against the owners, much as they turned against the unseen suits lording atop the Wall Street skyscrapers who were responsible for the mortgage crisis. Instead, it’s been the opposite. Somehow, it’s the players how are coming off as spoiled bitches, even though the players are perfectly happy to continue under the current rules and that it’s the owners demanding more money in their pockets. Even though it’s the owners who created those very same bylines when they forced the last lockout in 1999, bylines they now want to eradicate.

My point is this: the NBA players may indeed need to sacrifice a little money. It may be financially necessary for the league’s continuation, to some degree. However, our sympathies shouldn’t lie with the owners on any level. It’s the players we should care about. It’s the players we pay attention to, and follow relentlessly, and watch on TV, and pay to go see. Why should we shed a tear when the billionaires claim they want more of the pie, even though they’ve always had control over the player’s union, even though owning a sports team is little more than a side project to them, and that the ones actually doing all the work -- the players -- would be the only ones sacrificing their primary income?

Say what you want about the players, but they’ve earned their paycheck. You may disagree with just how large that paycheck may be, but you can’t dispute that they’ve put far more effort into making money from basketball than the owners ever have. You can’t say the same thing about all the owners. Most of them try, but what about the Donald Sterlings and James Dolans of the league? If the NBA players really do cave, like a lot of fans want, and they agree to a 50-50 BRI revenue split, all that would do is benefit the horrible owners who allowed the Rashard Lewis and Gilbert Arenas contracts in the first place by rewarding their futility with more money, while taking less away from the players.

It’ll be like the bank bailouts, only, people would be happy about it. I want basketball as much as the next guy, but I don’t think the players should be the ones we demand pay for the owner’s mistakes. And if that means delaying the start of the season, so be it.