I’m not really pro player or owner. I would like to see a deal that will result in the league not losing money, the players making their fair share of revenues (whatever that is), and a more competitive league where we actually have a chance to compete for a championship every now and then. The latter is especially important to the Jazz considering the young talent we are collecting. If anything, I am pro fan. I would love to see ticket prices cut in half so more people can afford to go to games. If the total ticket revenue is $1 billion this would cost the owners and players, on a 50/50 split of revenues, $250 million each. Simplistic, I know, and it won’t happen, but I can dream.
Rustbucket has gone out of his way to paint the owners in the worst possible light. Sometimes lumping them in with even bigger perceived injustices, like Kroenke with Walmart or Gilbert with the decline of the entire housing market. That’s fine, I think the owners have too much money and I take it all with a grain of salt. It’s been pointed out though that owners are wasting their fortunes on this and that and it made me wonder what the players have done with their wealth and whether you think they have any responsibility to the common good. I’m all about jobs, and for all their faults many of the owners, while creating wealth for themselves, have started and and/or manage business enterprises that create and sustain jobs. I won’t argue that they have made more than their fair share in the process but they do employ people and contribute to the economy. Do you think the players have the same responsibility? I read somewhere that the total salary number is around $1.6 billion per year. If you project that over a six year CBA, that’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $9 billion paid to a relatively small group of people. That’s salary only and does not include revenue from outside sources. Without looking it up, I would guess Dan Gilbert alone employs more people than all of the players combined. This seems to be a similar situation to Wall Street where tremendous wealth has been amassed that doesn’t really make nor do anything that benefits society as a whole (and I don't count 'The NBA Cares'). I’m just wondering if you think we should be occupying the yards of NBA players.