Posted on 11/28/2011 8:59:15 AM PST by SeekAndFind
NBA players like Kenyon Martin and JR Smith will have to finish out the contracts they signed with their Chinese teams this summer, Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski reports.
These players would have been sitting pretty if the NBA cancelled the entire season.
But that didn't happen. And now they're stuck in China while everyone else gets to play NBA hoops.
Here's what a source told Yahoo!:
"They can play, get paid (in China), and return to NBA in March. Or they can not get paid, and return to NBA in March."
Ouch.
It looks like the Nuggets — who will be unable to resign Martin, Smith, and Wilson Chandler since they're marooned in China — will lack some depth this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Chinese teams...all good capitalists..will take $$$ to let them out of their contracts..
AMAZING how quickly the players settled once the paychecks from the owners stopped, isn’t it?
Kind of hyperbolic to say “they are stuck there”. They have to fulfill the commitments they agreed to of their own free will. Poor babies.
The whole thing was stupid.. Millionaires fighting with Billionaires... about a sport NO BODY CARES ABOUT!!!
Unless you live in a major NBA market, literally NO ONE CARES....
This was just all out STUPID.
Nobody, not even the sports talk radio missed a beat when the NBA season didn’t start.. no one cares...
The Euro teams that were luring NBA players all included out clauses in the contracts in case the NBA got its act together. China’s not in out clauses apparently.
Anyone who remembers the start-up of the ABA knows how NBA players feel about honoring contracts.
Great learning experience for each one.
They will come home with a new appreciation of the good ole U.S.of A.
Hopefully they will just stay there, and not come back at all.Like Hamilton Jay said, I didn’t even know they were on strike.
I don't think the NBA is anywhere near it's peak as in the days from Wilt to Jordan, but it's got a worldwide following probably broader and bigger than any of our domestic sports.
I admit I was seeing some good in the NBA strike. Not because I don't like basketball, but because I like college basketball a whole lot more and less NBA would have meant more college on the tube.
It will take the NBA quite a while to get over this. 29 owners vs. 450 players. Such an elite group. The tier 1 teams, i.e. Lakers have tier 1 fans, i.e. hollywood types. Lower tier teams don’t have a chance.
Most of the house is corporate owned. It’s good to be a client of DeLoitte-Anderson-Cap Gemini etc.
And in laughable Sacramento, the Kings got a repreive from being an also ran in southern CA, their arena name was changed from ARCO to Power Balance Bracelets who just declared bankruptcy.
Nobody cares...
Get outside their major markets, and find someone who cares. Honestly, their season didn’t start and nobody missed a beat.
Oh sure folks will watch a game if its one, but die hard? IE games not on and it affects their lives? Nope, not at all once you leave their major markets.
Big difference from, yea, I’ll watch the game, and oh yea, I live for the game. NBA does not have a rabid fan base outside a few major markets. A season without NBA is an oh well to most folks... Whereas a year without Baseball or a year without Football would be a major blow to fans everywhere.
End of the day, a pointless strike in a sport that literally no one cares about. Much like NHL strike a while back. Doors closed and no one outside the major markets cared.
NBA is not a defining sport, it, like hockey is a secondary. Folks will watch it, but outside of their major markets, few live for it. They are overlapped by sports that folks truly care about, like football and baseball, so if they don’t have games, nobody really cares.
Unless you are Big Ears & his 95% voters.
If no one cared, how is that the NBA is billion dollar business?
You even had to modify your argument by using the ‘outside of their market’ non-sense.
It’s you who don’t care. Don’t use the collective ‘nobody cares’ to speak for all the rest of Americans.
Exactly, absolutely no one cares about the NBA. Which is why the moron owners and players figured they’d better get a deal done and start playing again (even though no one cares). They were becoming invisible and forgotten in the marketplace. Now the crappy sports channels will at least have to mention them.
Pro basketball has little grace as it once did and seems little more than thug ball today.
The real interest should be those folks that supplement their families incomes by selling pretzels or beers or whatever in the neighborhoods and venues.
They decided to play because they realized, that no one cares... a lost NBA season means nothing. How many people do you know that are in depression or even care about the NBA strike?
If the NBA strike mattered, it would be the lead story or at the top of ever sports talk show on TV and CABLE every day and night.. is it? Nope.. maybe a blip here and there, but nope, its not what people think about, care about, or are living their lives around.
I love basketball, I play it 3-5 times a week, played and loved the game my entire life, and yes if an NBA game is on, me and my friends will watch it if we are getting together, but do we plan our days around it? Nope.. we find something else to watch if we get together and no hoop game is on, and this is a group of folks who actively PLAY and Love the game, but the NBA means little to nothing to any of us, and we are not the exception, but the normal.
Outside the major markets, most folks don’t care one bit that the NBA is on strike. no one is breaking down doors, sending death threats to players or management, no one is beside themselves because of the threat of a loss of a season... its a literal non event should the NBA lose an entire season to this silliness.
The longer they go without it, the more the networks are coming to this realization too, putting the NBA’s long term TV contracts in jeopardy. Networks and cable may be locked into what they paid for the current contracts, but had they missed an entire season with the general public going “eh”.. I guarantee their next negotiations wouldn’t get the NBA the same $$ adjusted for inflation.
Its a non event, think otherwise? Go show me how much time ESPN SportsCenter has dedicated of its nightly broadcast time to the strike since its start. Ron Paul’s gotten more airtime than the NBA strike.
The reasons the long delay of the NBA season start doesn’t really matter to most folks are basically:
1) It’s still football season, fer cryin’ out loud. It’s kind of hard to get fans worked up over mostly meaningless early-season NBA games (see below) when the NFL is entering the home stretch.
2) The NBA season is simply too long. Cut that 82 game drone-fest to 48 games and watch how much more interesting those 48 games become. But with most of the league qualifying for the playoffs, is anyone really going to care what happens in November when the season doesn’t end until June? The same could be said for the NHL — the best regular season I can ever remember was the strike-shortened 48-game schedule a few years back. The reason they don’t, of course, is each extra game brings in that much more $$$, even if it cheapens the actual competition.
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