100 Games Gone

"Both sides are very far apart on virtually all issues." -David Stern

David Stern has cancelled the first 2 weeks, 100 games, of the NBA regular season.  Games scheduled from November 1, 2011 through November 14, 2011 will not take place including exciting games that were taking place during that time frame like the Mavericks/Thunder, Heat/Bulls and Heat/Magic to name a few.

The owners and players are so far apart on issues that need to be solved that the cancellation of games were sure to come.  The main issue is the players wanting 53% of basketball related income.  The owners have offered a 50-50 split of the BRI and have already stated that the only way they would agree to a 53-47 split of the basketball related income is if the 53% was in the owners' favor.  The players received 57% of BRI in the last Collective Bargaining Agreement.


The cancellation came after both sides met for 13 hours over a span of 2 days.  In the 2 days sides focused more on the system issues at hand than the revenue split.  Stern and owners' goals are to allow for even the smaller markets to be able to compete with the larger markets.  Both sides do feel that contract lengths do need to be shortened for players but players did not agree with the luxury tax if a team was to go over its cap salary. Players feel that that the luxury tax would eliminate some teams paying players who would be scared to spend over the hard cap.

Players took to twitter, former and current, apologizing to the fans for the cancellation and prolonging of the lockout:

It seems like the two sides are not getting anywhere and its very sad for fans all over the world.  The last time the league cancelled games do to a lockout was the 1998-99 season.  The league cancelled games up until February and only 50 games were played.  Lets hope that this lockout doesn't get that bad as we are currently on Day 104 with no deal so far.  Players are scheduled to meet among themselves Friday in LA.