NBA joins the NFL as basketball locks out its players too

Well, now two major professional sports are on lockout mode.

The NBA joined the NFL in locking out its players from all team facilities for the foreseeable future after the NBA's collective bargaining agreement expired at midnight, July 1.

The NBA, which had its most successful season in years, maybe even in a decade since the last NBA lockout in 1999, is now in as much limbo as the NFL is right now.

"We had a great year in terms of the appreciation of our fans for our game. It just wasn't a profitable one for the owners, and it wasn't one that many of the smaller market teams particularly enjoyed or felt included in," NBA commissioner David Stern said. "The goal here has been to make the league profitable and to have a league where all 30 teams can compete."

While the owners and players, again, battle over the share of billions of dollars, fans, sponsors, businesses and the journalist professions, in general, all lose out.

Fans who have been paying big bucks to go to NBA and NFL games for years upon years have to sit and watch billionaires and millionaires duke it out to see who will make even more money. What hurts even more is the fact that the NFL is still in limbo.

Even though the NFL keeps sending out missives that an agreement is coming soon, their self-imposed "deadline" to have an agreement in place by July 5 is coming nearer and nearer by the day, and it is looking less and less likely that any agreement will come in the next week or two for football to resume.

Without the NFL and NBA, imagine what it will do this already fragile economy. Many NFL teams laid off hundreds of workers, and asked many more to take unpaid furloughs. NBA teams will likely do the same thing.

Sponsors like Budweiser, any car company you can think of, like GM, Ford, and Toyota bank on football and basketball to draw in big bucks for their commercial products. They are already on pins and needles with the NFL lockout, now they are on a bed of nails with this latest development for the NBA.

NBA free agency which was scheduled to begin July 1 has been put on hold. The NBA summer league has been canceled and preseason games haven't been scheduled.

Unlike the NFL which has a full seven month off-season, the NBA only has two and a half months to their off-season program. Basketball season usually begins in September when players return to gyms for training camp, with the opener usually starting in mid to late October. Now that's all in jeopardy too.

Roger Goodell and David Stern can tell you all they want that they care about their sports, and the fans, but let's face it they are pawns to the owners. The owners don't give two fiddle sticks about the fans and their feelings.

The NFL and NBA are businesses, and like any other business in a capitalist society, if the owners feel the need to lock out it's employees they have every right to do it. That is why the NFL players, who decertified are having a difficult time winning court battles with the Circuit Court of Appeals, because the owners haven't done anything illegal -- especially if the players (employees) can't agree on a new deal, and decertify themselves as a union.

It is not known at this point whether the NBA players union will decertify as well; negotiations will likely continue and be heated for about a month or so, before any rumors of decertifications come up, if it does at all. Hopefully it won't get that far.