Clearing The Court

Since it's Wednesday, and we're preparing for a holiday vacation next week, we thought we'd shoot from the top of the key, as they say in basketball, and tie multiple stories together today with one we've barely mentioned: the NBA lockout.

At first glance, these stories and the NBA lockout may seem to have little in common. From the coordinated attacks by city officials across the country on the Occupy movement, to the supercommittee meetings in DC, to the ongoing Penn State abuse disaster, to the NBA lockout, there is a common thread tying them all together - and it isn't just money.

It seems the battle between players and team owners right now is a third-grade game of whack-a-mole between multi-millionaires and multi-billionaires. To some degree, that characterization isn't completely wrong. NBA athletes usually make large sums, and owners make even more.

What the argument boils down to, though, isn't just a simple labor dispute between the team owners and the workers who actually do the work.

The problem the NBA is looking at is similar to what the supercommittee faces. In the supercommittee, the problem is that one side thinks those who have a significant amount of money should pay just a bit more in taxes, so that our entire country can benefit. The other side thinks those who have more should keep what they have - and to hell with those who already have too little.

In the NBA, the issue at hand is revenue sharing - both between the players and between teams. Every team must have a full roster and a full bench, and every team must have a full schedule of games to play. Some teams - like the L.A. Lakers, Miami Heat, and Boston Celtics - almost always make a lot of money. Meanwhile, some teams don't make as much, like the Indiana Pacers or Denver Nuggets. Without all the players and teams in the league, though, everyone loses.

However, some players and some owners aren't willing to share - much like most of the Republicans on the supercommittee.

There's another similarity, too. Like the not-so-secretly coordinated attacks on lawful and peaceful Occupy protesters that happened in many cities on Monday night, the team and league owners also appear to have been working together behind the scenes, while the players played by the rules and bargained through their union.

When league president David Stern issued an ultimatum, thinking the league would force the hand of the players' union, the union disbanded - allowing the players to attack the league and teams individually through their own lawsuits. Now the league is far more likely to have to fend off many smaller, individual legal assaults that can potentially do more damage. Think of guerrilla warfare instead of traditional fighting, where those who have must protect what they see as theirs from many different directions, instead of from a single enemy.

At Penn State, it now appears that current Assistant Coach Mike McQueary did stop the alleged rape of a ten year old boy by then Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky - but Penn State officials appear to have done nothing when McQueary told them. They were protecting what was their brand.

In a similar way, NBA players are more worried about their own individual brands, just as the team owners are worried about their brands. Both groups are worried more about their own interests, over all the other people in their communities who will be affected by an NBA season that doesn't look like it's going to happen.

If you can't figure it out, the single thread that ties all these things together is selfishness, at a level that would make any pro in any industry look like an amateur.

Maybe it would be better if there were a pro league for those who are blindly selfish - though we're not sure we could bring ourselves to watch that, either.