Via J.A. Adande, Sports Media Watch points out that Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell pretty much perfectly predicted today’s NBA lockout ... 13 years ago.
... And In Another 13 Years, David Stern Will Finally Retire
From the column, dated Nov. 6, 1998 (when the NBA was in the throes of its last lockout):
That’s what the NBA is doing now. Commissioner David Stern and agent David Falk, deputy commissioner Russ Granik and union head Billy Hunter, are doing a textbook job of setting the stage for years of anger, future strikes, erosion of public image and finally - who knows? - maybe 13 years from now, one final battle as idiotic as the one from which baseball is still trying to recover. ...
That ‘81 [MLB] charade, orchestrated by owners just like this NBA lockout, had some bad short-term effect on attendance. But the sport quickly regained, then surpassed, its previous popularity. The real damage reappeared only with time. Each succeeding labor negotiation became a bigger and more bitter piece of brinkmanship than the last. Finally, everybody went over the cliff together, consumed by their ancient accumulated animosity.
Read the whole snip SMW posted. It’s flat-out eerie. Boswell is officially as terrifying as Charles Robinson.
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