Players view on the NBA Lockout 2011 - Research Paper Example

Task Players View on the NBA Lockout The possibility that basketball will not take place this year has become more of a reality with the exceeding problems that have hit NBA. The lockout has brought to a standstill all the activities of NBA therefore; no games have taken place this year. The problem cannot be said to be a different scenario since it has occurred several times in NBA. The lockout took place during 1998-1999 seasons, and another was avoided in the year 2005 through an agreement that ended in June 2011 (Croslis).

The lockout comes due to a disagreement between the owners and the players since the partnership loses a lot of money and has given proposition to reduce the player’s salaries by 40% as well as set up a fixed payment for each team (Croslis). The proposition has generated many outcries from the players who have aired out different views on the matter.The players view the lockout as a result of failure of communication between them, and the league officials since most of them were not provided with the copy of the proposal that was regarded as final (Stein).

Most players have insisted to vote out the final plan if they had the opportunity to give their opinion on the matter. The players also insisted that the executive director would have prevented the lockout from happening if he had learnt something from the last lockout that occurred between 1998 and 1999 (Stein). The players view the leaders especially Stern as dictators since they have been enforcing certain rules and regulation without consulting the players. Therefore, the lockout comes because of the officials being ignorant of the role that players hold in the league.

The players take the lockout as a great obstacle to a new sporting year which most of the diehard fans have anticipated for long since the end of the last sporting year. The players view the lockout as a failure by the officials to come into terms, and most have moved out to join other teams outside the country in an effort to continue earning, but still in waiting for the deadlock to stop. The players feel that they have been exploited in the fact that their salaries will be reduced by about 40% while the league continues to thrive on their success (Croslis).

The players still think that the lockout should continue since they are not willing to accept any person to dictate their career, which happens to, be their life and source of livelihood. Their view is that their patterns have turned out to be their enemies, and they cannot surrender to their terms (Stein). They feel that they are not the cause of the lockout and that the owners should consider them as equal parties when instituting any agreement. The players see the lockout because of the conflict between the wealthy owners in the large cities and the less fortunate owners in smaller cities.

The conflict comes about since the owners in the smaller cities lose many revenues unlike the owners in large cities (Stein). The owners who make loses want to modify the rules to make them more productive than their partners do. This has found the players stuck in between the two conflicting parties who are not willing to change their opinions. The players have tried to break the deadlock, but the owners are reluctant to end it. The officials feel that the players are becoming more authoritative than they are, and they necessitated altering of the rules by removing some parts of the agreement (Stein).

Works CitedKelly, Croslis. 2011 NBA Lockout. July 4, 2011. Web. November 20, 2011. Available at Stein, Marc. NBA players reject owners offer. November 15, 2011. Web. November 20, 2011.Available at < http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7234180/nba-lockout-players-not-accept-deal-seek-disband-billy-hunter-says >