Fans Have Gone From Disinterest To Hatred

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@ix.netcom.com>]

NBA fans very interested in disinterest
RAY RATTO EXAMINER COLUMNIST
November 29, 1998



A FEW WEEKS ago, people began noticing that nobody much
cares about the NBA strike. No heroes, no villains, no big
deal. Divide the dough any way you want, lads. Just let us
know when you feel like getting back to work. 

That is no longer true. And with the news that the January
schedule is in jeopardy because things are going badly
around the negotiating table again (either a problem
about a luxury tax or the consistency of the rumaki), a
growing number of people care deeply now. 

They want the players and owners not to settle, not this
week, not next, not until the entire season is canceled.
They want there to be no NBA basketball at all this year,
even if it means no Michael Jordan come next June.
Stupidity this profound in the face of repeated warnings
about America's disinterest should not be rewarded. Let
'em all pound salt. 

The turning point might have been the other day when,
fused with the optimism of a rumored settlement, people
picked up the newspaper to learn that the owners had
gotten their knickers in a bunch over some perceived
negotiating slight, the details of which nobody in the
world wants to learn, and declared the talks at another
impasse. 

AT THAT POINT, the two sides managed to exceed their
already remarkable labor-management negotiating record
by taking the public from their unprecedented level
extreme apathy to active hatred. The people who once
wanted them to settle and then graduated to inspired
disinterest have now reached the point where not only do
they not want the season to start, they don't even want the
two sides speaking to each other. 
</P><P>If they have any rooting interest at all now, it is in
seeing David Falk, David Stern, Billy Hunter and Russ
Granik duct-taped together with a pipe organ for ballast
and thrown down an elevator shaft, with union president
Patrick Ewing and league lawyer Jeffrey Kessler
blindfolded and waiting to catch them at the bottom. 

This remarkable achievement puts the NBA in an even more
rarefied air. It had already broken new ground when its
initial lockout angered nobody. People seemed to be
perfectly content in their lives without the NBA, and
would allow them to do their dance of phony intransigence
as long as nobody's lives were materially impacted. 

But with their usual gift for brainless excess, the
players, the agents, the league hierarchy and the owners
have taken this little work stoppage scam over the top,
beyond the silly parody it began as and now to a place no
sport ever thought it could reach - open revulsion at the
idea of resuming the thing people once said they missed. 

THERE IS NO empirical evidence that proves this
hypothesis - just a lot of very hostile word-of-mouth. But
it was this very word-of-mouth that first convinced
people that the strike was touching almost no lives
whatsoever, and we've had a month of reaction time
available to disprove the first notion. The fact is, NBA
strike news sits consistently on page six of most sports
sections, ESPN almost never leads with the NBA strike on
its hamster wheel of SportsCenters, and NBC is likely to
do better numbers with a 50-year-old movie than anything
the NBA has to offer at this point. 

There are any number of reasons for this, but the most
obvious is also the simplest: The NBA, which had always
been first with the adventurous and fashionable idea,
waited too long to have its game-eating strike. Hockey had
its four years ago. Football had two in the '80s. Baseball
has one every six or seven years whether it needs one or
not. By now, we have all learned the issues, the power
brokers, the opinion makers and the spin doctors. Plus, we
also know how this ends - with some strangely cobbled
agreement that both sides bitch about until the next
strike in five years or so. 

That doesn't change the fact that a growing number of
people are coming to the conclusion that no NBA at all is a
small enough price to pay to make sure that these
blunderers don't get the agreement they all need to resume
the extraction of rich people's disposable incomes. They
don't even mind listening to Ewing and Granik and Stern
and Hunter and any NBA figure not named Jayson Williams,
the New Jersey Net and offseason voice of reason, yammer
on about the strike and the essential evil of the other
side. Those intrusive sound-but-no-smarts bites allow
them to scream, swear and throw things at the television,
a reaction they had heretofore reserved for only Bill
Clinton, Ken Starr and wrestling promoter Vince McMahon. 

EVEN MORE noteworthy, this anger has not translated into
better crowds for hockey or other brands of basketball, or
ratings for the NFL. The lack of NBA is not redistributing
the mighty leisure dollar to other sports, but keeps it
a'mouldering in people's pockets, or worse, to meet such
frivolous obligations as food, shelter, cloting and
Crash Bandicoot in the mantle stocking. People want there
to be no NBA not because it represents a chance to sample
other pastimes, but because no other lesson would hit the
principals where they live like a nation's open scorn. 

Of course, knowing the players and owners, they'll annoy
America one last time and announce a settlement that came
out of nowhere and represents nothing. And they say
Republicans have a tin ear.