You can’t read a story about the NBA without some kind of preface or caveat concerning the lockout. It’s either “if we have a season” or “whenever the season starts”. But Chris Sheridan, who just left ESPN and started his own website, has authored the most positive lockout story we’ve read to date. Here, I’ll just let him say it.
Here’s the dirty little secret about the NBA lockout, despite what both sides — the owners and the players — would have you believe:
They are a lot closer to a settlement than most people realize.
What? Closer than we realize? Last I heard, Derek Fisher was keying his demands into the side of Adam Silver’s car.
I believe a settlement will be reached that will not only save the season, but also enable the NBA to have an “all is forgiven” honeymoon period (similar to what the NFL just experienced following its labor settlement) in which the frenzy of free agents signings, trades, training camps and exhibition games will make everyone forget all of the doomsday talk they’ve been hearing all summer.
But… but… I’ve already made plans to retreat into the deep recesses of Burma (you most likely know it as Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me). They can’t be THAT close, can they?
If the owners come to the table with an offer that promises more money than the flatlined $2 billion in Years 1-7 that they have been proposing, they’ll be getting somewhere. So that’s the first thing to watch for.
Sheridan lays out a “save the full season” timeline in that link that basically pegs October 20 as the latest possible beginning of free agency where an 82 game schedule can be played. That kills most preseason games, but it saves the full season, and the revenues that come with it. Here’s how the piece ends:
So a settlement is coming, and I am here to tell you that it’ll likely come a lot sooner than most everyone else has been predicting. It’ll take a lot of back-and-forth over the remainder of September, but it can certainly get done when both sides can identify the middle ground and move there simultaneously.
With both sides reportedly meeting tomorrow, we’ll get our first chance to see if Sheridan is right or not. Regardless, this is the first piece of optimism I’ve seen since the lockout began. I don’t know if Sheridan is just being overly optimistic so he can be heard above the din of negativity, or if the rest of the writers are overly negative because, quite honestly, negative things are easier to write about this story. We’ve got about a month to figure it all out.
