I’ve never even been able to consider the thought of missing NBA games. The very notion gives me crackhead shivers, the kind that you get in the morning after a particularly long night of dehydration and/or dancing. As a man with his fair share of not-so-enviable bad habits, though, I know that simply satisfying every carnal urge does not make a man (or lady) happy, at least not for very long. In the end, a little bit of contentment cannot replace the lasting serenity afforded by some sense that all is right, for the most part; therefore, I watch this NBA lockout from afar with just enough sense to know that a quick, ridiculously unfair end to this misery Wednesday will not sate me. This thing has to end with a little damn justice.
Am I forgoing my own happiness for a ton of millionaires’ pocketbooks (theoretically, of course, since I have no actual say in when this thing ends)? Sort of, yes, but those millionaires are our millionaires, the only reasons people like me and everyone reading this stay up far past our bedtimes to ooh and ah at terribly though-out J.R. Smith jumpshots, the only justification for entire DVRs full of local sportcaster banality and meandering storytelling, the only rationalization for grown men waking up wives, roommates, children, neighbors and friends of all stripes with infinitely mockable sounds that seem the sole means of articulating the deep joy caused by seeing Blake Griffin dunk. How can we the viewers abide the unending concessions made by a union that appears to simply be clinging to its last bits of dignity, as that same organization continues to be pounded into submission by far richer, even more privileged bullies out for blood on some misguided, warped mission of vengeance and arrogance? There has been more than enough dirt flung around during this entire charade of a negotiation to point fingers at both sides of the table, waiting for a single target at which to aim the fans’ collective darts of frustration, both at these rich men’s petty bickering and our own impotence to bring back the thing we love so dearly, but the owners and the league have clearly been pretty unequivocally smug while playing the villain, daring the players to court public sympathy while inundating the press with deliberately misleading information.
And what villains they’ve been. Ultimatums, looming giants of their trades (Paul Allen, of business; Michael Jordan, of basketball; Dan Gilbert, of jackassery), ludicrous requests eventually transforming into still terrifically unfair policies, complete lack of anything resembling negotiation in good faith‒ the owners have displayed a Darth-Vader-like scroll of reasons to hate them, all with the confidence of a lot of men used to winning quite assured they will be doing more of the same once this deal goes through, whenever that might be. Yes, the players have been incompetent at times, self-effacing at others, showing the kind of indecision and infighting that made the league so certain that the union would cave like a souffle, full o hot air just waiting to be released at the first hint of a puncture in its protective shell. But the players just keep giving and giving and giving, all to keep seeing that finish line nudged just out of their reach every time a deal seems ready to be finalized. Wealthy men or not, labor has been run over and left for dead in the last half-century of this nation’s history, and this NBA brawl fought by men in droll, gray suits looks no different.
But, as Bethlehem Shoals so eloquently put it, “if millionaires don’t have labor rights, then really, who the **** does?” Could a decertification vote spell the end of NBA basketball as we know it? Should those men’s bank ledgers, already so much more replete than my own, weigh at all in a battle of my ethics versus my ability to watch the thing that’s kept me content, joyous and sane for the last twenty years? Does it seem even close to scrupulous to compare the struggles of these affluent young professional players of a game to the thousands upon millions of workers worldwide who have fought tooth and nail for the rights of every member of the proletariat? We know the answers to these questions, but I cannot help but think of what this fights represents in a climate in which “class warfare” is so liberally used as a buzzword to denigrate the very real problems of economic disparity in this country and those around the world. No, I don’t think protestors and politicians and working-class Americans look to professional sports when trying to make sense of the current political and sociological climate, but these games are covered with such passion, written about with such (admittedly, sometimes pointless) fervor, for a reason: the sports we watch symbolize something to us, whether consciously or not. That something differs from person to person, but to be able to see this microcosm of the very real, very important battles being argued over and fought every day gives us all a chance to better understand exactly what it is for which we’re all aware or unaware we’re fighting: some fairness, some damn sense to all of it. Is it so crazy to desire a little justice, even when faced with losing that which maters to us most?
