THE NBA LOCKOUT: MAKING SENSE OF THIS MESS

By Dave Shepard, OTSL Analyst

When truly examining this lockout situation, where does the blame lie? As fans, who should we side with? The players or owners? When Jermaine O’Neal is making more money than Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Serge Ibaka, Eric Maynor, Thabo Sefolosha and the former Thunder forward Jeff Green combined, you are going to have problems. Great teams are also being hurt with luxury tax costs when they are paying guys like Rasheed Wallace over $7 million dollars to run to each three point line every single game.

The NBA is not having a lockout because of the lack of fan interest. Since the Jordan era, based on the finals ratings, they are the highest they have been. It is about the hyperbole when considering borderline good NBA players and paying them like they are franchise saviors. Tracy McGrady, once a high riser, is more of a high fiver, making more then $20 million dollars per year.

Rip Hamilton, Charlie Villaneueva and Ben Gordon are getting a combined $143 million. Has anyone heard anything about these three in the past two years? I am not asking that to be sarcastic. The most you have heard about these former UConn greats is a player-coach dispute involving Hamilton.

Here is how owners and franchises can make it work. Yes the Thunder flamed out against the Mavericks. Lack of experience coupled with an immature point guard in Westbrook hindered their chances of playing the Heat in the finals. However, they are well under the salary cap and there is not any player on that team who is over valued when it comes to their salary. They are a blue print for how teams can flourish and sell out, but do it where the owner can make profit, the fans are confident and excited consumers and the players can make a very good living to say the least.

I’m as big an NBA fan as it gets, but we can’t fool ourselves into feeling bad for the owners. They are the ones shelling out this money like it’s grilled chicken samples at the mall. The owners complain about over 2/3rds of the teams not reporting a profit, yet they have no one to blame but themselves. I’ve always been in favor of a “You Earn What You Get System”. I have never been a proponent of a system where the Greg Oden’s of the world (nice guy that he is) get hurt in layup lines, but in the process take over $30 million dollars from their team despite being, at best, nothing more than a solid bench player.

The players, like any other employee, need incentives and clearly there is no incentive when owners over pay, over value and truly under deliver. This lockout is a result of the the incompetency of the owners and if there is no basketball this season the blame falls squarely on their shoulders.

The Fine Line Between Genius And Madness

Bobby Fischer Against The World

by Sean Roman, OTSL Analyst

Madness is all too often the brother of Genius. These siblings are profiled in HBO’s documentary, “Bobby Fisher Against the World.” Near the beginning of another HBO gem, a nameless, faceless journalist in the early 1970’s says:

“Bobby, you’ve given virtually your entire life to the world of chess. What about Bobby Fisher the Man, what is he like?”

Bobby, very uneasy as he sits on a park bench, stammers and responds: “Chess and me, its like hard to take them apart. Chess is like my alter ego.”

Bobby Fischer was born to an activist mother, Regina, a single parent who raised Bobby and his sister in Crown Heights. Regina was a diligent individual; she was a telegraph operator, nurse, welder, and noted leftist with the distinction of building up an extensive F.B.I. file. Bobby took up chess at the age of 6, and was quickly discovered as a prodigy. At 13, he played a game known as "The Game of the Century." By 14, he was the youngest ever United States Champion.

On his way up to the Championship of World, he won 20 straight matches against the World’s Elite, a streak which permanently reserved his place in the pantheon of chess greats. Bobby played the game with a brilliance that is difficult to conceptualize if you lack a passion for chess. The year when Bobby beat Borris Spassky for the World Championship was 1972. Impoverished inner city kids were dying in Vietnam. A historic presidency was unraveling. The ideological war of political and economic systems was in full force. Somehow, Bobby was the most popular sportsman on the planet. Naturally, the focus on him was intense. This was a recipe for a great Fall.

What I found most interesting about “Bobby Fisher Against the World,” is the unintended look at Bobby's adversary -- “The World.” On the surface of the documentary, you will see the World's rightful indictment of the obviously mentally ill Bobby Fisher, whose various ravings are offensive and absurd. Look deep into this documentary and it becomes clear that the media and the public would tolerate and even worship Bobby, as long as he was at the pinnacle of success. At the time Bobby was winning, and he was our horse. His rebellious had both sexiness and appeal.

However, after Bobby had left the limelight for long enough and his skills diminished in his 1992 comeback, people lost patience for his nonsense. He was covered by the media, but was criticized as a pariah. The great question the piece raised is: why we are more apt to tolerate and forgive when someone’s excellence is in our presence. The answer has something to do with our fascination with the most powerful of four letter words – Fame.

In the piece, Dick Cavett most aptly explained the road Bobby traveled:

Fame is definitely a mixing blessing and almost everybody would admit that at some point in there life that they wish they had it. Once it starts, its fun. Then the fun quickly wears off when you want to be alone. Also, it is horrendous on the psyche of the young. It totally distorts their world.

THEY JUST HAD TO GO AND SETTLE THINGS!

Why we'd all have been better off if the NFL had stayed locked out

by Sean Roman, OTSL Analyst

The news hit me hard. There will be no NFL lockout after all. The gluttonous pigs on both sides of the NFL labor discussions wised up. If you were wondering about the list of winners, it primarily consists of the tiny percentage of citizens who are NFL owners, NFL players, or bookmakers. Fans may think they won; and the overwhelming majority of football followers are happy that the games will go on.

However, all of us who are regular folk and do not get paid by the league actually lost. We lost the only way to exact a small portion of revenge. How do the fans lose? When we captive customers visit a stadium, we lose each time we pay $30 for the right to park our cars. I dare say that this is the price that should be close to what it costs to get in the venue! It is simply a deductive truth that the working man in America losses when he pays the sky high ticket prices and concession fees when he wants to see his team live.

New York fans will lose as we continue to support the greatest sports fiction of our era, that we actually have a New York team Downstate.

Superbowl fans lose when they are charged hundreds of dollars for the privilege of watching a game outside that monstrosity in Texas.

If the NFL continued to bicker, maybe even for one season, that would have been a terrific result. The biggest message we could have sent this Fall is: "We don’t need you. In fact, my life will be richer without you." Our lives would have been enriched by having extra time for our families and loved ones. We would have spent that special day of the week dedicated to much more important things than watching grown men chase the oblong ball for sickening salaries. We would have been a lot better off with a break from the madness.