With the owners and players coming to a tentative agreement
over the weekend that allows for a shortened season, are the worries for
cancelled season completely gone?
After the meeting over this past weekend, the players still
need to reconstitute their union, throw out their anti-trust lawsuit against
the NBA, and finalize the details of the new collective bargaining agreement
with the majority of the players and the franchise owners accepting the terms
of the deal. Training camps and free agent signings were scheduled to begin on
December 9th, but until all of the above items are met the lockout
remains in place.
According to an article by Michael Lee of the WashingtonPost, “A person with knowledge of the situation who spoke on condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the litigation said Monday that the
lawsuit and settlement and union re-formation likely wouldn’t occur until the
middle of this week or later.”
Basically, there’s a lot of work to be done on multiple fronts before
everyone can rejoice that a NBA season is here.
In spite of the uphill climb, David Stern remains optimistic
that the shortened season will happen. Which is great news for players, team
owners, and especially, the fans. Sports apparel companies will rejoice as
well. According to Emmitt Jones who writes for Sports Business Digest, “Adidas,
the official apparel provider of the NBA, was expecting to lose nearly $300
million if the NBA season would have been completely cancelled according to
some analyst. Granted, the company did bring in over $18 billion dollars in
revenue in 2010, but Adidas is not in the business of taking losses, regardless
of the size.” Even though a company the size of Adidas is able to weather the
storm of a lockout, many small businesses, that relied on revenue that NBA
games brought in, will feel a much stronger impact from the lockout…. If it
were to remain in place.
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