A couple of days has passed and the stark realization is settling in that the first two weeks of the NBA's regular season has been cancelled and that the NBA Lockout isn't going away anytime soon. CBS Sports writer Ken Berger takes a look back at the negotiations and how the NBA finds itself in this position. Berger also takes a look at what lies ahead and while a deal is there for the making, it may become more and more difficult to obtain the longer the lockout runs and the more losses that is incurred along the way.
Based on our experience, guess what could happen then? The back-schmack over whether the owners are offering the players 47 percent or 50 percent would come back-schmack to haunt us, only with a twist this time: Having lost about $200 million from the two weeks of canceled games, the owners would be trying to recoup that money with their next economic proposal.
Conventional wisdom suggests that the best offer from the league could have already came and went. Now the league will be looking to recoup the losses from the cancelled games which could take a potential revenue split and tilt it a few percentage points in the direction of the owners. If the two sides couldn't agree before actual dollars were lost then how are they going to be able to agree on a plan that also recoups losses. The answer is that it isn't likely.
Of course very little of these negotiations have suggested that conventional wisdom should be applied or expected. If that was the case then we would likely be talking about free agency right now and not failed negotiations.
One thing is for certain, all optimism has vanished and while the league and the union could very well make a deal soon, it doesn't appear imminent at this point. Instead it looks like a long gold winter without basketball. A 50 game season is better than no season but it pales in comparison to a full 82 game slate. By the time the league does return, the damage will have already been done.
At the end of all of this, one side will be ultimately be viewed as the winner. At this point I don't see how that could end up being the players but I have news for both sides. You both are losers. True you have more money that a simple writer like me could ever dream of but you are losers because you failed to capitalize on one of the greatest seasons the league has ever enjoyed. That is long gone now and by the time you return only the die hards like me and a few others will remain. In that scenario there are no winners.