A two year lockout would either end my life, or finally free myself to do other more productive things.

Anyway, pretty scary stuff. It would be sweet in the end if they contracted like 5 teams, moved one to Seattle and one to Vegas.

There's like, no reason in reality to contract 5 teams.

The second the economy rebounds they'd just expand again. It's a business. Contracting 5 right now would be prudent and do wonders for the overall talent level and competitiveness of the league, but it would cause chaos the second the leage expanded again (and lord knows it would).

Vegas would make Miami/LA/NY/CHI it's whores when it came to free agency, too.. 99.9% of the nba free agents would tell their agents "Get me to Vegas, at all costs".

Maybe they shouldn't pay people $20 million dollars a year to play the game, lower costs, lower ticket prices, lower everything and take it back to the people.

I like sports and haven't been a any baseball, football, hockey or basketball game in years. TV is making live attendance obsolete, especially considering all the costs involved.

I mean, do you realize how much month $10 million is? If I made $100k a year, which I don't, but which I'd be tickled to do, it would take 10 years to make a million, 100 years to make 10 million. I say screw all the athletes. They deserve an extremely healthy salary to do what they do, but damn...

This goes to actors as well.

the athletes in the NBA have made a fixed percentage of the net receipts for years - it can't be their fault

I'm aware. The owner's of professional team sports are greedy and moronic, with no self control. My favorite team, the Yankees, are the biggest culprit. They negotiate with themselves. The A-Rod debacle was their biggest let down for me as a fan. I wished they would've stuck to their guns and not re-signed him after he opted out. Instead, they overpaid him and raised prices.

The players will take any salary those morons give them.

I wish someone would mount a protest campaign and leave stadiums empty for a week in every sport. Show them that the fans won't be walked over and that they need us more than they realize.

I think it's coming soon, based on the economy and Simmons' article

Those protests have been tried before they never seem to get any traction

I know, just my dream. Any team created after I started watching sports I hate.

It's a business. Every business in America is going through change right now.

I like Simmons more than anyone, but to write a whole column about how a business isn't profiting as much as it once was right now is kind of silly.