NBA Owners are refusing to budge

The NBA lockout is certainly causing a big commotion, and there does not seem to be any end in sight. What started on July 1^st as a talk about how to divide the $4.3 billion in league revenue has turned into a three month long lockout. One hundred games have already been canceled and many analysts don’t expect there to be any more games until Christmas.

Last season the players were being paid 57% of the revenue. During negotiations the players offered a 53-47 split, which would be a loss of over $180 million dollars to the players. The owners, however, refused, proposing a 50-50 split. Deputy commissioner Adam Silver said, “What we told the union was that we were not prepared to negotiate over the B.R.I. split beyond the 50-50 concept that had already been discussed.” NBA commissioner David Stern has said the teams are experiencing over $300 million dollars in losses annually.

Owners have been pushing other requirements as well. They originally proposed a hard salary cap. This cap would limit the amount of money that teams would be able to spend on the player’s salaries. This was proposed in order to make it easier for lesser teams to be able to compete. The owners conceded to the player’s demand for there to be a flexible cap by creating a harsher luxury tax. This would create a situation where the teams can only spend a certain amount of money on certain purchases without being harshly taxed. The players argue that this would effectively institute a hard cap.

 Tom Ziller, a writer for SBNation put it best, “Canceling two weeks because the union won't approve a very hard cap-ish luxury tax in addition to giving up more than $200 million in annual salary is like flipping the Monopoly board because another player bought Marvin Gardens out from under you, while you have hotels on all of the green and blue properties.”

It seems as if we are going to be in for a very tough ride. Neither side wants to give in, nor are the owners refusing to negotiate the division of revenue. Negotiating sessions are going on for 16 hours a day; everyone is exhausted. Both sides don’t seem eager to resolve their issues. Players are leaving for foreign countries; others are talking about starting their own teams. The NBA will be in for a very rough few years if this doesn’t get resolved sometime soon.

Fans React to Lockout

NBA players and owners have been in a debate about money, and it has caused a shutdown of the NBA. There is little to believe that the lockout will be resolved anytime soon. "I feel like [the owners] aren't helping us out, they're not trying [to] meet us halfway with it,” complained Kevin Durant in an ESPN interview. Yet the owners and players fail to realize that there will not be any money to distribute if fans stop going to games.

Players have been preaching about their sacrifices to help the dispute come to a quicker resolve. But are the players the only ones that are sacrificing? With two weeks of the season canceled due to the lockout, the fans have lost interest in watching. This may last as long as Christmas, so the fans will leave the routine of watching the basketball game and find something else to spend time.

There were already fans losing interest in 2009-2010. The attendance was recovering in the 2010-2011 season, but this lockout may have been the last straw for fans. The time taken from the season has only angered the public. Basketball fan David Boykin expressed his frustration in a FOX Sports article, “It seems almost like a wasted effort.” This fight over the rich getting richer has irritated once loyal followers of the NBA.

If the lockout comes to a resolution, will there still be fans waiting to watch the games?

India's World Cup cricket victory

Final Score: Sri Lanka 274-6; India 277-4

The 2011 World Cup Cricket favorite's, India, beat Sri Lanka in the finals to win the World Cup for the first time since 1983 in Mumbai, India. For Sri Lanka, this was the second World Cup in a row that they have lost after reaching the finals. The win over Sri Lanka gave Sachin Tendulkar, the world's leading batsmen, his first championship in six attempts. However, Tendulkar was 18 in 14 balls this match. India's captain ,Mahendra Singh Dhoni, had his best performance in this match with 91 runs off 79 balls and ended with the match with a 6 to take India past Sri Lanka's total. The result also made Mahela Jayawardene vice captain of the Sri Lankan team the first batsmen to score a century (one hundred runs) in a World Cup final on a losing team. Jayawardene was the only Sri Lankan batsman to pass 50 runs for his team. After facing this loss, Jayawardene and the Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakkara both resigned from their post. Sangakkara was the third-highest run producer in the 2011 World Cup, scoring 465 runs in 8 innings being pass only by Sri Lanka's Tillakaratne Dilshan, with 500 runs, and India's Sachin Tendulkar, with 482. When asked about his resignation during an interview, Sangakkara said, “I will be 37 by the next World Cup and I cannot therefore be sure of my place in the team. It is better that Sri Lanka is led now by a player who will be at the peak of their career in that tournament.”