Late Thursday afternoon, Gilbert Arenas explained the NBA lockout in terms that Twitter could understand. Turns out, he was just getting started. What follows is pieced together from his tweets Thursday night, including some grammar corrections for clarity. Via @Agentzeroshow...
The NBA Lockout, Explained By Gilbert Arenas (Again)
For the people who don't know why the'yre lockin out... I'll explain it in real people terms. Lakers, Dallas, Miami, Knicks, Magic, Bulls, Boston, and a few others always have the best chance at the top free agents due to city and money. So the smaller cities team can't compete. So they can never get better and they're always losing money. So since they cant control each other spending money on players, they want us to do it for them by signing a new deal. It's that simple.
But wait, there’s so much more.
All the older owners have made their money and selling to new buyers, and the new buyers are getting killed in these small cities. But no matter what deal gets done, free agents are gonna go to the same cities ANYWAY. That's why the same teams stay good and the same teams stay bad. The owners with the most money will try to buy the best players.
So like the Lakers just signed a 175 million dollar TV deal. But they don't want to share that with the rest, they want US to do it. I know people are like, "You make 20 [million] and are not worth it..." TRUE. But the man who paid me thought I was too him. You're worth what someone gives you.
I haven't been to one meeting but I know when unrealistic people are trying to make a statement they're gonna do it. It's like me saying I wanna play 52 minutes-a-game every night. "Well there's only 48." WELL find me four more minutes then. If not, LOCKOUT. Lmaooooooo.
So when you hear your team say we're REBUILDING all they're saying is buy our tickets, watch us lose. The Clippers have been rebuilding for 20+ years and made one playoff series. You can be like Oklahoma City and have young talent but eventually you're gonna have to pay all those players and you can't. And then what happens? Umm the famous REBUILDING.
Lol it's a rat race they're tryin to get out of, and they need us to do it for them. SMH.
I see people saying teams like Spurs and Detroit did it. Well, the Spurs had a great team that got hit buy the injury bug and got the number 1 pick and got Duncan. So from there they just built around him. The Pistons got lucky. All the free agents they got was very cheap but good players. And that's why they broke up. They were worth more then they were before.
So I don't see it ending sooner. Trust me, they're gonna sit back and let us kill ourselves like last time. So I'm gonna tell y'all the truth, but no disrespecting anybody. There's no need for all that. If you're boss wants to pay you less he has a right to try and do so. [But] even if they have pay cuts then what? Are they gonna give out free food with all the extra money they're gettng? Ummmm no. They're gonna get a new 20 million dollar scoreboards and still scream we're losing money...
The reasoning’s a little questionable in places, but on the whole, a lot of what he’s saying makes sense. In any case, it seems like a pretty raw distillation of the players’ perspective in the lockout.
As for the owners’ side of the story? Well, one more note from Gilbert.
Did the owners address the media?
They will never talk about it because 22 out of the 30 have no idea about basketball.
Just sayin... The man makes some good points.
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