NBA

I didn’t care at all about Hip-Hop. The Sixers had never given me reasons to care. In a self-proclaimed “blue-collar” city, Hip-Hop represented none of that. He wasn’t as silly or entertaining as the Phanatic and had no real “roots” in town. His trampoline dunks were nice, but no one cared about seeing that happen for the thousandth time. No one cared at all. Anyway, the main point of this move is, again, to build up goodwill, part of a larger effort to gain more fans. It’s not the first move, and hopefully not the last. Announcing slashed ticket prices [...]

When thinking about the possibility of a lost NBA season, I cringe. I cringe because the millions of NBA fans out there will see no basketball played at the highest level in the world for at least a year. I cringe because the situation was so avoidable. I cringe because one side cares only about greed, the other about workers’ rights when the minimum salary is in the mid six figures and the work force is based largely on natural talent. I cringe because thousands of people will lose their jobs in a dispute between people who can afford to [...]

I’m hoping that this is the last day of the lockout. I’m also unsure of whether it will be or not. Regardless, I’m doing this post now because I’ll be out all night cheering on MAC football that shouldn’t feature 100-something points, because Temple’s involved (and that’s hopefully when the labor situation resolves). While I had been intending to focus on twitter-gaming this week, I, like many others, read Ken Berger’s article today on the “Hard-Line Nine”. It just so happens that the Sixers are among the hard-line teams. The following is an excerpt from Berger’s column, “Despite the risks, [...]

We’re two days away from the arbitrary D-Day, so things could get interesting, especially tomorrow. But I’m kinda sick of talking about all that crap. So we’ll play a few twitter games over the next few days. Tonight: #FakeBroussardTweets, from today (and courtesy of @AdamKoscielak, editor at Sun N’ Gun, who was also about the only person besides me to try this specific hashtag out) The inspiration: from Chris Broussard’s Twitter account today. It’s possibly the worst tweet of “sources” ever. Why? Well, it took sources to say that there won’t be a consensus in the player’s voting. No crap. [...]

Credit goes to Stus.com – that cartoon works perfectly for what’s going on right now.  Day 126 – when certain players rose from the union to make a move. And probably not for the better of everyone. From Howard Beck of the NY Times: Negotiations to end the N.B.A. lockout will resume Saturday amid a new threat to labor peace: a disillusioned faction of N.B.A. players. About 50 players, including some All-Stars, are willing to dissolve their union if negotiations again falter this weekend, or if the talks produce a deal that they deem unpalatable, according to a person who has [...]

Tonight would have been the opening night for the Sixers, who would be out of the country and in Toronto playing the Raptors. I’m not feeling well, though that probably has nothing to do with the missed game. On that note, Ed Stefanski, on his quest to demolish the Atlantic Division, is now GM for the Raptors. As Sixers GM, well, he didn’t have a successful lead role. But I think it’s fair to say that he wasn’t terrible, either, and that it’s also fair to say that NBA GMs in general are difficult to evaluate, especially in only a [...]

Yes, I’m bringing the vigils back, since we’re actually missing games. Some people have found creative ways to pass time during the lockout. NBA journalists have become hotel loiterers. Casual fans have become casual. Some devoted fans have become psychotic. ESPN is resorting to simulating games in the DDL Chat. Sixers fans have been learning how to spell “love” correctly. Me? I’ve been keeping myself busy with class, work, this (well, in the last week everything else got in the way, plus there’s been no lockout resolution), and trying to sleep. And with the NBA gone, my main source of [...]

Crap. Here are the games the Sixers will miss, by my count. – November 2 at  Toronto – November 4 vs Minnesota – November 6 at  Orlando – November 9 vs Houston – November 11 vs Milwaukee – November 13 at LA Clippers – November 14 at Portland Obviously, we knew this could happen. But with recent movement on both sides, I figured the deal would get done, especially since so much seemed to resolve itself in recent days. That didn’t happen. This part of the schedule was easy, in my eyes. While there are more road games than home [...]

The NBA is expected to cancel the first two weeks of the regular season if no progress is made by Monday on the current deal. According to Chris Sheridan, the sides are 2.4 percentage points apart on the BRI split. So essentially, here’s what we have: – major revenue sharing agreement between the owners – no hard cap – a 2.4% BRI gap Now, using the $40 million per percent BRI calculation, the league and its players are $104 million apart per year (Ken Berger, cited by Sheridan in his article, has it at roughly a $80 million gap). That’s [...]

So now that my rankings are done, I want to talk just a bit about the labor situation. Earlier this offseason, I talked about my general pessimism with the NBA labor negotiations. Though some preseason games have already been canned, nothing in the regular season has been decided. While people will miss paychecks, players have not. No deal yet, and no timetable set. Anyway, some updates on stories that may marginally impact you: Andre Iguodala interned on Wall Street with Merrill Lynch. Maybe the NBPA can turn that into leverage – you know, the threat of investing the Maloof’s money [...]