NOT TO BE DENIED!: Locked Out - Point/Counterpoint

NBA:

“We’re not going to lose any money. I’m not going to be commissioner of a league that is comfortable [losing money]. Because I don’t have a group of owners who find it acceptable for me to have that conversation with them."

“You don’t have $4 billion worth of revenue and pay out over $2 billion in salary and benefits to lose money. It’s something that we have sort of gotten used to as the revenues have gone up … but the world has changed about the prospect for all franchises, the world has changed for a lot of reasons – and economically – and now people who make investments in buildings and things expect not to lose money.”

-NBA Commissioner David Stern

Players Union:

As for the owners, they can inject all the fuzzy math they want into the equation about how many teams are losing money and how much, but humor me for a second while I get rhapsodize rhetorical:

1. How many of these billionaires actually rely on their teams to make ends meet?

2. How is it that every time a team gets sold, it fetches more folding money than the last time it was up for bids?

Stern orates about wanting the owners and players to be equal partners. I assume that means losses and profits. Fine, so fix it that the players get half the profit when the franchise is sold and half the annual write-offs.

You know who really deserves a seat at the table? No, not paying customers; they apparently enjoy having their pockets picked, no matter how deep.

It's the arena ancillaries, especially in smaller markets -- from team game-days to vendors to parking lot attendants, all whom badly need those 41-plus dates to help balance their own books -- in addition to neighborhood restaurant owners, whose existence might not totally depend on pre-and-post-game traffic, but get to maintain/increase staffs because of it.

These are the only people I'm really concerned about.

Don't make me pretend I care what happens to the owners or the players.

-Peter Vescey, NY POST

NBA:

"The expiring collective bargaining agreement created a broken system that produced huge financial losses for our teams. We need a sustainable business model that allows all 30 teams to be able to compete for a championship, fairly compensates our players, and provides teams, if well-managed, with an opportunity to be profitable."

"We have made several proposals to the union, including a deal targeting $2 billion annually as the players' share -- an average of approximately $5 million per player that could increase along with league revenue growth. Elements of our proposal would also better align players' pay with performance."

- NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver

Players Union:

"For anyone who wants to extrapolate these numbers to the rest of the league, caveats apply. These are six-year-old financials for a single team in the NBA, where market size is destiny and where, for instance, New York's books won't look anything like Milwaukee's. What's more, this is about as close a look as you'll get at the financial workings of a sports franchise, and even then the balance sheets are hopelessly opaque. But that's partly the point. In the modern era, franchises are owned by businessmen who approach their teams as one of many interconnected wealth-generating mechanisms. As in Fort's example above, the real value of one asset (the Nets) can't be known without looking at the numbers for another (the Barclays Center) and another (the rest of the Atlantic Yards development), and so on. There's nothing illegal or even wrong with that, but in such a system you can see very quickly why incentives for owners often fall irreparably out of plumb with the wishes of their fans — owners want to maximize revenue (which is their right), and fans want to win (which is their nature), and both Wayne Huizenga and the folks in the grandstand at PNC Park will tell you that these goals aren't necessarily compatible."

-Deadspin: How to make a $7 million Profit look like $28 million Loss