Why Carmelo Anthony’s Brilliant NBA Lockout Plan Can’t Happen

Of course, that could never happen.

It’s not just a semantic point, either: the very term “lockout” precludes the players from being allowed in. The reason players aren’t allowed to ply their craft is because owners and Stern have decided that the league can’t go on without reforming the system.

The real problem with ‘Melo’s off-the-cuff solution is that, as these two sides have proven over the past two years, not a bit of progress is made with a flashing red siren in place. Look at when all of the progress before the lockout was called was made: in May and June, right before the July 1 deadline. In the run-up to the lockout deadline, the league conceded on some requests and the union offered up a proposal with cuts to the revenue split.

Since that deadline passed? No one iota of progress.

But progress will likely come over the next few weeks as an unofficial deadline to save training camps and preseason gets closer. Deadlines are the impetus for everything in this negotiation. It’s pathetic that the two sides couldn’t make any progress in the two years of off-and-on negotiation they participated in. And it’s pathetic to know that given another year, they still wouldn’t do a thing.

What’s been proposed among NBA writers before could make ‘Melo’s plan work, though: hold a huge chunk of players’ salaries in escrow, play the season while negotiating, and pay back players what they’d be owed under a new system once a new deal is approved. But just approving the right conditions and escrow level for that deal would be like moving Everest, and the NBA and union haven’t exactly instilled confidence that they can agree on any small detail. So even a plan like that, with the players’ consent, would be far-fetched.

It all makes you want to curl up with a Roald Dahl and hate grown-ups for a while.