Charles Barkley feels sorry for real victims of NBA Lockout
NBA legend Charles Barkley recently spoke about the ongoing NBA labour dispute and he revealed how he felt bad about it.
Barkley though didn’t have much sympathy for the owners or players. In fact, he was sorry for the many people who will suffer just as a side effect.
The NBA is not only about the owners and the players. There are many other people whose livelihoods depend on the games that the NBA provides. The staff members at NBA franchises, for one, have already been trimmed down by many
teams, and more are set to follow. Similarly, the workers at NBA arenas earn much less than the super stars on the court and now through no fault of their own, they look set to be deprived of salaries for a year.
"There are two groups I feel bad for," Barkley said, in an interview published by ESPN. "I feel bad for the people who work for these teams, because they're going to start laying off some of these people soon. And then I feel bad
for the people who work at these arenas. They're going to take the brunt of this. And that's unfortunate."
Charles comments hit home with a large number of NBA fans, who view the current NBA lockout as a direct product of greed on both sides. To the people who buy tickets and watch games, the fight over billions of dollars between the
NBA owners and players seems surreal. It is all the more frustrating when the disputes of the millionaires affect millions of fans in an adverse way.
Barkley is one of the few people in the NBA who speak their mind about everything, and never shy away from the truth. Even he though, couldn’t pick out a bad side in the current dispute, maybe because they are both right, or perhaps
both wrong.
He wouldn’t be drawn into blaming the owners, nor the players. Instead, Barkley expressed the opinion that in the current financial situation, both sides had some valid and invalid points. He referred to the claim that the NBA
teams have suffered losses over the past few years, but wouldn’t say what he thought about the exact figures given by NBA Commissioner David Stern.
"We've been in a recession for basically three years," he said. "I think it's disingenuous to think all these owners, with as much money as they've been paying, haven't been losing some money. I don't know the answer to [whether
they've lost as much as they claim].”
What Barkley, and the NBA fans, want is for both sides to make sacrifices for the greater good. The fans can only wait for so long before their frustration with the NBA as a whole, both owners and players, starts reaching dangerous
levels.
Tags: