Oh, my. This is going to get a whole lot uglier now than it was two weeks ago.
↵The long and short of what happened Monday is that the players and owners just said, "The heck with the 2011-2012 season. Let's keep fighting." When players are openly calling out their leadership, you know there is trouble. We've already seen the ownership splintering, led by hard-liners like Michael Jordan.
↵This is not the NFL lockout. That one got done before the season could be touched because each side realized who was vitally important to their product: the fans. NBA owners and players haven't grasped that yet. Bill Simmons made that point last night on his Twitter feed, but it deserves to be brought up again. All the rhetoric around this lockout has been about players and owners money. No one has mentioned how this is affecting fans.
↵Honestly, I'm going to miss watching the Rockets this winter. But, I'm not going to miss all this infighting and decertification court battles we had to go through with the NFL. Pro sports are a business, but it's a messy one and right now, the NBA is caught in a doozy of a fight. It's not getting resolved quickly, unless both sides can change leadership and somehow reach a compromise.
↵I'll start holding my breath for that to happen now...