by Keith Telfeyan
As a fan of basketball, it is painful to see the threat of cancellation loom over the upcoming NBA season. As a critic of capitalism, it is downright depressing.
That a simple game like basketball can suddenly vanish from the cultural pantheon merits serious critical attention. If players don’t play the games, fans can’t go to see them. If fans don’t go to see them, the arenas that house them are shut down, wasting millions in taxpayer dollars that saw them erected.
If arenas are shut down, local businesses surrounding those arenas lose business, and must then lay off workers, who in turn struggle evermore to support of their families. Suddenly, there is deeper unemployment, more children of out-of-work single parents lacking a decent upbringing, more crime in emptied-out downtowns, and more and more, our country resembles a post-industrialized, dying nation.
Of course, a lost NBA season doesn’t immediately turn Cleveland or Sacramento or Memphis into a broken city, but the implications are there, and it’s what we must address, ideally in the form of national policy.
Ultimately, we must decide how to run our sports, how to run our economy as a whole, and how to run our country. It starts by seeing clearly how things operate currently. As it stands, those with the money have the power. They decide everything. Thirty men own the NBA. The owners own everything – the team, the players, the arenas, the concession stands, the tickets, the TV rights, the uniforms – everything. They charge $1000 for good seats, $10 for cheap beer, and pay their star players as little as possible.
No one cares about the owners. It is rare to see an owner on the front page. It is difficult to name more than a handful of them. Like those on Wall Street, they are effectively invisible monarchs, profiting off all of us. It is true – some teams aren’t turning profits. Like works of art to collectors, not every franchise provides consistently growing value.
Sometimes franchises are purchased at too high a value and then held as that value falls. Such is the case currently, with many franchise owners holding onto depreciated capital. The owners—profit-minded as they are—want to make money, even when their business isn’t profitable, so their goal is to take money from their players.
It’s easy to scapegoat the players. We know that they make a lot of money, that they live luxuriously, that they are better off than we are. But we tend to look past these facts because of their heroic athleticism and passion, which become ours vicariously. And for that we lavish them with attention and riches. But we need not lavish the owners, and yet we do. We pay their insane ticket and concession prices, thinking it goes to the players. (Less than half of it does.) We tolerate their cold-hearted, backstabbing ways as they trade away players, relocate teams, demand more money from cities. I guess it’s because we love the game.
But basketball is just a game. Some rich, opportunistic men have constructed something called the National Basketball Association around this game, but the game can exist without it. Like FedEx or McDonalds or Six Flags, the NBA is a business, except that mail and burgers and roller coasters still exist without those businesses, while the NBA happens to have a monopoly over high-end basketball.
The owners are currently holding our sport hostage. And it is our sport. We cheer for it, read about it, pay to see it, wear it and feed it with our money and attention. It makes sense that all the best players in the world flock to one league, so as to maximize our shared enjoyment of the spectacle. But if these 30 random billionaires can’t quietly and efficiently operate a league, why don’t we run it instead? Why don’t we elect a commissioner? Why doesn’t each city elect its own head office? Why don’t each city’s fans have a say in how a team is constructed and operated? The teams and the game would truly be ours, if we were to socialize professional basketball.
The massive Neo-conservative agenda has made socialism a bad word, but tell that to Green Bay, Wisconsin, which publicly owns its sports franchise (and runs it quite effectively). Must every human endeavor be turned into profit? Is that what truly defines the spirit of the United States?
Already, the building of arenas is socialized – the costs are shared with government municipalities (and its taxpaying citizens), but the profits aren’t shared. If the National Basketball Association was actually just that – national – the people would have likely prevented this current lockout, or at least be actively engaged in resolving it.
As it stands, it is difficult to even learn what is happening. The journalism that reports on our sports is itself owned by profit-minded corporations (ESPN, Fox, Yahoo, etc.). Thus, we are continually left with stories about player greed, or irreconcilable differences, when the fact the headlines should make most clear is ownership greed. Once again, it’s the 1% versus the 99% (actually, much less than 1% in this case).
The NBA lockout mirrors the contemporary financial trials of the United States. A few very wealthy people are holding the rest of us hostage, feeding us the rhetoric of sacrifice and The American Way, while they sacrifice nothing and live like kings within our so-called democracy. We struggle to afford the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed while the opportunities and perks of a thriving nation are stripped away from us.
What might things look like if those in control deeply cared about people and community, instead of being driven solely by their own selfish business interests? What if all NBA owners weren’t just profit-minded capitalists, but were, rather, fans who wanted to see great basketball?
If that were the case, I’m sure we’d be watching the games instead of reading about the owners’ lockout.