Miami Heat star LeBron James expresses optimism over the NBA lockout
Miami Heat super star LeBron James revealed in a recent interview that despite of all the negative development recently regarding NBA labour talks, he is still optimistic that the season will be saved. At the moment that seems
a very remote possibility though, given the fact that the NBA owners and the National Basketball Players Association are still worlds apart over a new CBA and their last meeting landed in hot waters.
Things have further been complicated after the NBA Commissioner David Stern decided to deal a cheap shot to the players by filing a lawsuit against the NBPA. The NBPA itself had been urged by many to decertify and take the league
to the court; however their President Derek Fisher and executive director Billy Hunter had rejected such suggestions in order to concentrate on negotiating a way out.
James however, said he wasn’t losing hope just yet,
"I'm optimistic that we will have a season this year," James said. "Very optimistic."
LeBron James is arguably the best basketball player around and although he has suffered many setbacks over the last year in terms of his PR, the player still remains a big draw and his views certainly count.
By the looks of things, LeBron might know something that the rest of the public don’t know because there just seems nothing to be optimistic about regarding the NBA lockout situation.
The league and David Stern seem h**l bent on completely altering the financial equation so that all the profits and the growth in revenue comes straight to them. In the meantime they want a set figure for the player for the next
ten years, which is lower than what the players are earning right now.
The NBPA has shown flexibility over the BRI issue, something that is very dear to the owners, in that they have agreed to cut their share from 57 to 54 percent. However, the owners want that brought down to a lowly 40 percent.
Still, LeBron believes that at the end of the day things will be resolved. The loss of an entire season, or even that of some games, will be unthinkable for the NBA right now after such a successful year last time out. Just when
the league’s popularity seems to be peaking the whole lockout fiasco has broken out.
There is still hope that as the new season comes nearer and the clock winds down the situation will change. The same thing happened in the NFL where the two sides showed no flexibility until the threat of losing the season became
very real. However the players did decertify to sue the NFL over there.
It might be that the love of the game can sort things out,
"We all love the game of basketball so much," James said. "And the love of the game is always going to be there. Guys love the game."
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