SURVEY RESULTS: Suppose there is no NBA this year?

You don’t care 65%

You hope they settle 23%

You hope they never play again 10%

As a quasi-journalist, two things frustrate me. One, someone writes my ideas before I do. And two, someone steals my ideas and gets more credit for it. 

While this poll was going on, the Philly paper wrote a piece entitled ‘Warning to NBA owners, players: You are not missed. What if a labor stoppage blew out an entire NBA season and nobody cared?'

Gee! He just took my article right from under my pen before I could write it. But, it does save me the effort of writing it. 

Here are a few passages:

...when fans are tired, they don't care. And when they don't care, you have no leverage. And when you have no leverage with a fan base, when the fan base doesn't miss the product that much, you may as well just fold up the tent. You've all but lost.

...right now in pro sports, football is Americana. The NFL's work stoppage took fans to the brink, and without Sunday pro football, or Monday, or even Thursday, fans would have gone stir crazy. (My heavens, fans might even have been forced to read a few books or study political issues a little harder in order to make sure we elected the right public officials. Perish the thought.) Now that's leverage.

Personally, I could do without football and a work stoppage wouldn’t have bothered me one bit. But NBA basketball is my Black Entertainment Television. I purchase the package, attend games in other cities when I travel, and even coach a fantasy team when I have the time. 

So, I do care. 

But if this thing isn’t worked out in the next few weeks, it’s over for the year. Honestly, most fans don’t start paying attention to the NBA until around Christmas, so they still have a slim chance to pull it off. 

Us Chester folks should care that Jameer Nelson and Tyreke Evans will not be working. But, then again, all most of us care about is Chester High basketball.

This area has a ton of college teams. Other than Villanova, I don’t watch too much of it. Those games are too intense for me. I just like to be entertained, and the NBA does it for me. But, we have Rahlir Jefferson at Temple and Nasir Robinson at Pittsburgh who will both put up monster seasons this year. 

Come on NBA guys. It’s not that serious. Let’s play ball.