My fantasy:
SETTING: League offices, New York City. Main conference room. Everyone has a note pad, a pitcher of water, head phones, tickets to Les Miz.In the room are the 29 owners of the NBA and the 29 player representatives.
OWNERS: Thank you for coming. We have called this meeting today to tell you we're disbanding the National Basketball Association on account of fiscal differences. We know, most of us have so much money we can use it as fire-starter, but enough is enough. The lockout is now officially a lock-up. No hard feelings. Just turn in your courtesy cars and we'll call it an era. Also, we're giving you the league.
PLAYERS: Show us the money!
OWNERS: You don't understand. You can quit pleading poverty. Unbutton your silk suits and listen. WE ARE GIVING YOU THE LEAGUE. The logo, the name, the theme song, Hannah Storm, everything. Run it like you want. Pay Kevin Garnett his $120 million. Pay him $240 million. We don't care. We're going back to being businessmen, back to what got us in the position to throw money at you guys, Dumpsters at a time. To tell you the truth, we're looking forward to it. Just the other day, we were reminiscing about how much fun it was to have employees sucking up to us, instead of the other way around; when we ran businesses that actually tried to make a profit.
Look, we're not blaming you. It's all our fault. We looked in the mirror and the enemy was looking right back at us. We're the ones who keep caving in with all this ridiculous cash. We're the ones who keep raising salaries and ticket prices, appeasing no one and alienating everyone. We're Eva Peron on a bad day, and we know it. A regular inflation machine. Three years from now, somebody will toss a twenty down for a cheeseburger and it won't be enough. Four years from now, Shaquille O'Neal is going to buy MGM and star in his own movies. Who wants to be responsible for that?
We're good at selling computer software and automobiles and managing huge real estate empires. But put us in front of tall All-Americans with a sweet J and we have no self-control. No conscience. Our arenas have turned into corporate parties. No admittance without a cell phone. The parking lot is nothing but Lexuses. We priced out high school kids long ago; now we draft them.
PLAYERS: You're really giving us the league?
OWNERS: All yours. Knock yourselves out. Want 63 percent of the income? How about 100 percent? Don't want a salary cap? Don't have one. Drug checks a hassle? They're history. Think the draft is unfair? So long, draft. Want everybody to play in New York and L.A.? Up to you.
Run your league any way you want. No longer do you merely have to go to practice. After practice you can find an arena to play in, make sure the concessionaire is ordering enough 32-ounce beverage cups, negotiate a deal for the parking, think up a catchy radio ad, nail down a halftime act, pay the utility bills, keep your advertisers happy, keep the dancers happy, negotiate the TV deal, slap league logos on T-shirts and find places to sell them, hire a team plane with gourmet chefs, return calls to about a hundred agents, making each one think they were first on the list, and phone that 18-year-old true freshman at North Carolina and tell him you'll pay him $7 million and build his mom a house, or 7 percent above whatever Barkley's making, his choice, if he'll play for you next year.
And find somebody to sing the anthem.
PLAYERS: But all we want to do is play ball for millions and drive free cars.
OWNERS: Then hire somebody to do all that for you.
PLAYERS: Will you do it for 60 percent of the profits?
OWNERS: Nope, 70 percent.
PLAYERS: Would you consider 65 percent? . . .
FADEOUT: Owners-turned-employees exit conference room, players' arms draped solicitously around their shoulders. Last sound heard is this: "What if we throw in a courtesy car and a nice, fat per diem?"