NBA Owners Deserve Most of the Blame

I acknowledge that the players may have become too powerful.  You look at how LeBron James left Cleveland in tatters, and how Toronto received nothing for Chris Bosh's departure.  Carmelo Anthony held Denver hostage while pushing for a trade to New York, and Utah traded away Deron Williams for fear he'd bolt in 2012.  Better get something for him now.  And the fanbases of New Orleans and Orlando have to be depressed about the odds of keeping Chris Paul and Dwight Howard, respectively.

But the primary reason there are no NBA games on tonight are the owners.  This is a lockout.  They are the ones forbidding their players from competing.

Here's a few columns I've found I agree with:

Money quote from the Boston Globe:

"In his memo to NBA players imploring them to make a deal, commissioner David Stern asked players to focus on the compromises owners have made. Then he mentioned backing down on a hard salary cap, roll-backs of existing contracts -- you know, the ones owners negotiated -- and the abolition of guaranteed contracts.

"How can you concede something you never had? It’s logic more twisted than a bread tie.

"NBA stars such as LeBron, Kobe, D-Wade, Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose aren’t just employees. They’re the product, and that’s the irony here. The NBA is trying to slay a monster it created."

Money quote from Sports Illustrated:

"If Jerry Buss, Jim Dolan and other big-market owners had been willing to share their revenues earlier and more comprehensively for the greater health of the league, could the division among owners have been headed off?

"Or look at it from the other side of the owners' room. If so many of these small-market owners had operated their teams more wisely and efficiently, might the bigger-market teams have been more willing to share money with them on good faith that they were investing in the health of the league?

"And then could the owners together have not inched forward on a few points of contention here and there in order to ensure agreement with the players?"

There's still time to get a shortened season, while the majority of the remaining fans don't hold the players to equal or greater blame (which was not true in the shortened 1999 season).  But the owners are willing to lose a full season, and many of them are, then they need to be prepared for the NBA to fall behind the NHL and MLS in attendance averages.  Do they really want that?