Whooo, boy. Things are not going well in these early days of the NBA lockout. First, Nate Silver breaks news that the NBA owners may be exaggerating their real losses and then the players flatly reject the owners' books.
This can't be said enough...this lockout is not the same as the NFL lockout. That one stemmed from an unpopular spit of revenue that made teams less profitable, not unprofitable. No one in the NFL was disputing that owners were raking in money hand over fist. All that was left was dividing up the big pile of money.
The NBA is not in the same situation. They may not be losing $300 million, but it's clear the NBA owners are not as well-to-do as their football counterparts. The NBA isn't in as big a markets and cannot just build new stadiums for the smaller teams.
Plus, there's the little matter of team devaluation. The past few owners who sold teams in the NBA have lost quite a bit of money. All the franchises are being devalued every time that happens. As Bill Simmons said on his latest B.S. Report with Mike Lombardi, Comcast, who owns the Philadelphia franchise, looked at the team, the situation (where they own the building and the parking to go with it), and still found it untenable to own the NBA team. That's bad news in the long run for this league.
But, that doesn't mean the players need to get screwed. The solution lies somewhere in between, but with neither side trusting the one set of data they need to agree upon to even begin discussing compromises...this is going to be a long, arduous lockout.