Isiah Thomas says players not responsible for elongation in NBA Lockout
As it becomes abundantly clear that regular season NBA games will be lost, the blame game seems to have picked up. At the moment, the general consensus is that the greed of NBA owners and Commissioner David Stern is to blame for the fiasco.
Well, at least according to the players, and ex-players.
Miami Heat super stars Dwyane Wade and LeBron James arranged an exhibition game on Saturday, watched by a sell-out crowd of 4,000. The game was held at Florida International University, where Basketball Hall of Famer -- and past NBA players' association president -- Isiah Thomas was the head coach.
Thomas took the opportunity to exempt players from any blame in the current NBA lockout.
"The players aren't cancelling the game, so they shouldn't take the responsibility, nor should they have the fault of carrying the burden for cancelling games," Thomas said Saturday night. "They're willing and ready to play."
Although, Thomas is an ex-president of the players union, he has also served in the capacity of a head coach and an executive in NBA for many years. He can be considered to be someone who has seen both sides of the coin and his comments do carry some weight.
The principle dispute between the owners and players revolves around money. The players got 57 percent of it in the previous Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), but the league says they won’t give them more than 50 percent this time around.
That is the deadlock.
Owners point to losses incurred over the last few years while players argue they have sacrificed enough, having conceded plenty of ground from the previous CBA.
Now the players have decided to stand their ground. Free agent forward Caron Butler, who was part of the Dallas Mavericks NBA World Championship winning roster last season, said after the game that the ball is in the owners’ court; they are the ones who are cancelling games and not the players.
"The good thing about this whole situation is that the fans are thirsty for basketball, we're thirsty for basketball and we want to play it," said Butler. "Everyone needs to understand that we're locked out. We're not on strike. We're locked out. We want to play basketball, so when we're able to play basketball under the right terms, we're ready."
NBA Commissioner Stern had warned earlier this week that he will cancel the first two weeks of NBA regular season if an agreement was not reached before Monday. Although there is still some hope of a break through, the chances of the two sides merging on a single view point so quickly is hard to imagine.
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