Soon Kobe's Nuclear Winter A Reality

**Koolaid_Man** · 11-08-2011

Occupy the NBA? The Players’ Nuclear Option

By: Elrod Enchilada
Nov 08, 2011 11:58 AM EST

As an aside, my sympathies run with the players. This is an entertainment industry with enormous economic “rents,” and the battle is over who should get the rents. If the players do not get the “rents,” the owners will, not some unemployed worker in Pawtucket. In my mind the 400 or so greatest basketball players in the nation, and arguably the world, have a far greater claim to them than the owners.

I sense mine is a minority position among the fan base. Many fans, based upon the Internet sites I visit, assume the owners’ side and regard the players as greedy millionaires who have no concern for the fans or the game. I imagine this is because most fans are accustomed to seeing extremely wealthy people earn massive incomes on the labor of others and find that fully appropriate. And they have no idea about how the monopolistic NBA is an industry that has little in common with traditional “free market” industries. It is not exactly like high wages are going to drive the good jobs overseas, or drive up ticket prices. Ticket prices are set by what the (monopolistic) market will bear, and player salaries have almost nothing to do with it.

Ticket prices will not be lowered as a result of the players getting lower salaries. That money will go into the owners’ pockets. The battle is over the spoils of the revenue pie.

Indeed, in the NBA the owners as a rule contribute little of value to the basketball experience itself. They mostly screw it up by hyper-commercializing the experience. In effect, the owners pay a fortune to earn the right to live off the value created by the players. It is a largely speculative investment; they create no jobs and develop no new technologies or industries.

The main risk they take is that the players might win in collective bargaining to get a larger slice, since the scab—oops, I mean “replacement worker”—option is not viable in an entertainment industry based on “rents.” No one is going to pay hard money to watch a bunch of fat duffers or playground hacks play basketball.

Read more: http://basketball.realgm.com/article...#ixzz1dB7rSMQj

**ElNono** · 11-09-2011

Kobe's nuclear winter was The Skunker and it's only going downhill from there...

**Giuseppe** · 11-09-2011

The Skunker!!!

**Venti Quattro** · 11-09-2011

Nuclear winter with a nuclear contract

**Giuseppe** · 11-09-2011

But, it's Kobe chomping at the bit. The selfish Kobe. The alone Kobe. In his element. The non Champion Kobe--caught twixt Championship proclivity as a shadowed possibility and the specter of Jabbar as a new & exciting probability if he can just get onto a hardcourt where the scorekeeper is activated.