Okay, okay, how much fun is it to talk about commissioners of sports, instead of the actual sports? Who wants to talk about the chances of your favorite team making it to the playoffs or even having a chance at the title, when you can talk about the latest measures by the commissioner of the sport, right?
Of course, it's not just the commissioners of the sports. It's the owners of the team, and league officials.
The NHL wants to limit player contracts to five years, tops.
"It's the hill we will die on," said NHL deputy commissioner Daly. He also claimed that owners were insulted by what the players had suggested to them.
In the meantime, hopes for a season are growing slimmer and dimmer with each passing day. One wonders why NHL officials such as Daly seem actually willing to forsake another season entire. Are these good business practices? Does it make sense to possibly cancel yet another season, when fans are clearly going to be very, very pissed off, since this is nothing new?
Daly seems willing enough, or so it would seem. He was quoted recently as having "no new ideas" for the NHL labor talks. Is that a man earning his money?
In 1995, a shortened season was salvaged. it was 48 games for each team, and Gary Bettman has said that he would not permit a shorter season than that. But that was done after the lockout stretched into January. It is December now, and we are nearing the holiday season. It seems with the current impasse, the gridlock is likely to continue on into, and through, the holiday season. That would bring us to January.
At that point, the season is on the verge of being cancelled altogether.
But Gary Bettman and the NHL lockout are not the only places where officials are making news for the wrong reasons. In the NBA, soon to be gone NBA commissioner David Stern has fined the San Antonio Spurs $250k (see the article below for details).
Apparently, David Stern does not like the San Antonio Spurs very much. I can kind of understand it, in the sense that the Spurs probably are not that marketable. They just don't have the flash and high profile of, say, the Lakers. They never have, and they never will.
But here's the thing: the league goes way too far in their endorsement and favoritism of big teams, and the Lakers in particular. Read the article attached, and it makes mention that David Stern once declared that his dream NBA Finals match would be the Lakers versus the Lakers.
Really? The success, or failure, of the league should center around one team? You either love them (like many fair weather, bandwagon fans do - and I'm willing to bet that anyone reading this probably knows a fan of the team with the ugliest uniform and the flashiest image in basketball, and perhaps in all sports overall), or you hate them. Perhaps even loathe them.
I fall into the latter category (can you tell?). I just never really like when one team enjoys all of the success, and the Lakers are that team. I remember their five championships in the eighties, when they were team of the decade, and more recently, they won five more in the last decade. That's ten titles, and two team of the decade honors in three decades.
Are they really just that good, and deserve their success? Maybe. But what worries me is when someone like David Stern, being in the position that he's in, says something like that. I mean, really? You can't think of a better NBA Finals series than the same team against itself, when you are supposed to represent every team in the league? How can a commissioner of a sport actually say something like that out loud? And let's be frank, also: given the funny coincidence of the Lakers constantly winding up getting these strange deals where they pick up huge talents for not much (let's call a spade a spade), you begin to wonder if there is not a little favoritism going on. Is it really that unthinkable?
Maybe I am in the minority, but my nightmare NBA Finals series is one in which the Lakers are involved. I mean, really, they just make it to so many, that it is tiresome. The same team, year in, year out. How interesting is that? There are teams that never seem to make it. Some teams have never been there, and never even come close. There are other teams that came close once, maybe twice, and that's it. But the Lakers make it all the time, and I'm not entirely convinced that it's because they just seem to run things better, or are smarter. It seems mostly that they enjoy success because they are the more marketable team, according to key league officials, and so they get some breaks that other teams simply cannot compete with.
I mean, really. Why is it that you never hear about the Portland Trailblazers getting such talent for nothing, zippo. Or the Toronto Raptors? Perhaps the Washington Wizards? Or even teams that have actually enjoyed some success fairly recently, like the Utah Jazz, or the Nets (who seemed on the verge of getting Howard last spring, yet somehow it did not happen)? Why not the Knicks, since they are in a huge city, and I would imagine that they are marketable? Maybe the Celtics?
No, it seems it's always the Lakers that are favored. The Knicks acquire star talent, but not a solid team. the Miami Heat, who may be the new Lakers of the east, were also blessed recently with a load of talent almost overnight, although that was not necessarily foul play. The Celtics had such a scenario, as well. But did you notice that nobody has them with the regularity that the Lakers seem to? I wonder why that is, anyway?
But that's what we get, I guess. The Lakers versus the Lakers as the ideal scenario? That's the best, most interesting scenario that the supposedly best minds for the sport can offer? Not just one franchise that serves as the most annoying franchise in sports, but two?
Yes, Los Angeles seems to get all the breaks in basketball, somehow. They won ten titles since I started watching and paying attention to sports, and I'm not that old. They have also been there so many other times. Always, it has to be the Lakers. It's so repetitive, and frankly, I tend to lose interest and tune out when it comes to repeats. Why watch another Lakers finals, when I've seen them before, time and time and time again? Something is wrong here. Yet, this is what the league wants? More of the same? To the point that they somehow allow (encourage?) the Lakers to get all the breaks, while penalizing the Spurs for their success? Really?
Maybe that appeals to some. But personally, I was disgusted when the Lakers, yet again, somehow managed to get a load of talent in the offseason, with very high profile names to boost their chances of a title yet again. This is not the only team in the league. Hell, they are not even the only team in Los Angeles. How about spreading the wealth a little bit? Parody in the NFL, for example, may have it's drawbacks. But at least it also serves to break any one team's dominance (or make it far more challenging for a team to achieve such dominance), which makes things more interesting. Why can't the NBA follow suit? What are they so afraid of? It's not like the Lakers are destined to fail under such a scenario. Far from it. They just would not automatically succeed.
Apparently, that's just too much of a risk for David Stern and the NBA. God forbid we go the playoff months of May and June without having to see the precious purple and gold once again, right?
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nhl-owners-players-meet-3rd-085644819--nhl.html
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba--david-stern-stumbles-again-in-his-failed-culture-war-against-the-spurs-194828970.html
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