Word is that the players and owners are not even remotely in the same ballpark on this one. Right now the players' salaries absorb 57% of the league's revenue and yesterday they offered to drop that to 54.3%. Apparently, David Stern laughed that off, thus the probability of a long-protracted lockout, as the owners offered the players 40%. Derek Fisher, one of the top player reps probably flopped out of his chair trying to draw a foul.
This puts the Celtics in a strange position because in terms of winning a championship with the Big 3 / Big 4, next season is it. They have that one last run. On paper, losing part of the season could be good for teams like the C's and the Spurs (warning: KC Jones Sports Bigamy Alert) because there would be less wear and tear on their old legs. However, when you look at the last strike/lockout shortened year, there were about 50 games, but there were tons of back-to-backs, and three consecutive nights with games. Not good for the C's. However, if the entire season is lost, the C's will have a ton of contracts coming off the books and will probably be in pretty good shape to sign a big time free agent (if one wanted to come to Boston; it hasn't happened yet, all due respect to Xavier McDaniel).
The strange thing is, that Wyc Grousbeck, the Celtics owner, is believed to be one of the owners really pushing to skip the season and install a hard cap. That should make him not only amazingly popular in Boston, but in their locker room.
On the positive side, we will have many crazy-ass stories about Ron Artest canging his name to Metta World Peace and wanting to play in Finland, or, my favorite, when the NBA players run out of money, like Latrell Spreewell, Kenny Anderson, or Toine, now exiled to Idaho.
-Big Ran
PS: Scotty Pippen is broke. Who knew? Dude bought a Gulf Stream Jet and made some terrible "investments" after making $120 million in his career. He ended up playing like four games in Finland and Sweden a few years back for $66,000.
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