The entire NBA season is fading further and further into oblivion.
NBA commissioner David Stern’s deadline came and went Sunday evening. Stern had sent a proposal from the league owners to the Players Association that was a take-it-or-leave-it type of deal in which there would be no more negotiation.
The players decided to leave it.
The Players Association is expected to disassociate from the league soon, which would all but end hopes for any part of a basketball season. The lack of compromise and unwillingness to bend by either side has ignited outrage from fans.
Some have pointed to the NFL, which was able to secure a final-hour agreement to save the season without losing any regular season games, as a similar example.
But the NBA can’t work a deal just like its football counterpart. The differences between the two leagues are polar opposites.
The NFL is the country’s most successful sports league, and its lockout was founded on owners and players arguing about which side should get a bigger piece of the enormous revenue pie the league rakes in.
The NBA is losing money. The owners are fighting for a bigger piece of the revenue because numerous franchises are losing substantial amounts of cash each year. It’s getting to a point where the league was even considering contracting teams because it couldn’t afford to fund them all.
As many as 13 owners have stated they would benefit financially from a canceled NBA season.
That’s not the case in the NFL. Football is America’s most coveted sporting event. The television deals and advertising revenue is through the roof while the NBA is struggling.
The difference between the two can be seen in media coverage.
The NFL coverage garnered nearly all the attention of sports talk shows, television shows and Internet stories. Granted, the NFL lockout occurred in the summer when there were fewer sports going on, but the NBA lockout has been a sidebar from the get-go.
The NBA is instead looking more like Major League Baseball circa 1994 when the World Series was axed because of a player strike.
It took baseball years to recover from the strike in terms of fan popularity. Not until the 1998 chase of Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa did baseball win back some of its fans.
Some still haven’t come back.
Losing an NBA season may not be hitting home just yet, as most people are enthralled in either college football or the NFL right now. But for those that have followed it, stop putting all the blame on the players.
Both sides are at fault, but if there is any side that should shoulder more of the blame, it’s the owners.
The owners allowed players’ and coaches’ contracts to get as inflated as they did. The owners didn’t reel in the overspending when they first realized they were on the verge of a major crisis.
Instead, owners continued to spend and continue to throw boatloads of money on undeserving players in search of a championship.
One side is attempting to make the other look greedy and vice versa. Instead, both sides are coming out of this with egg on their faces and in jeopardy of losing the people who care most about their product.
 
Rob Landry is a 23-year-old mass communication senior from Mandeville. Follow him on Twitter @RobLandry85.
 
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Contact Rob Landry at [email protected]