Pounding The Rock, a San Antonio Spurs community

...you cannot hand the Lakers a nuclear missile and then cry about them having nuclear missiles. In reality, the Los Angeles market size did not create the current Lakers superpower. Michael Heisley and Chris Wallace of the Memphis Grizzlies did. Read more

A federal mediator has called both sides in the NBA lockout to meet separately with him in NYC on Monday, and together on Tuesday in his office in DC. Obama said last night he did not like the lockout, and today the feds got involved, because of the potential a long lockout has to do collateral economic damage

From The Point Forward. "The tax would start at $1.75 in penalty payments for every dollar a team is over the tax threshold." "The proposal would penalize teams that pay the tax in more than two seasons during any five-season stretch. That penalty is harsh, according to a source familiar with the matter. If a team has gotten into tax territory, say, twice over the preceding four seasons and finds itself over the tax line a third time, each penalty ratio triples. In other words, that $1.75-1 ratio that kicks off the tax in Year 1 would jump to $5.25-to-1 for a team paying the tax a third time. Do the math, and you could get to 10-to-1 or higher pretty quickly" Read the whole thing. Is not long.

Kurt Helin, from NBC´s Pro Basketball Talk writes an insightful article on the realities of the negotiation process. "The owners started these negotiations trying to move the middle — the spot of compromise where a deal can be struck — by making outrageous demands. They wanted to roll back salaries of signed contracts, they wanted an NFL-style hard cap, they wanted no guaranteed contracts, and they wanted the players to only take 46 percent of the BRI. Basically, they wanted everything, they talked about radical changes. There was Stern on Tuesday talking about all the things the owners have given back in these negotiations — they moved off the hard salary cap, the demand for non-guaranteed contracts and the salary roll backs. All things they didn’t have in the first place, all just give backs on paper. And they upped their offer to 47 percent of the BRI. A whopping one percent."

Malcolm Gladwell takes a look at the NBA lockout. Warning: I haven't read all of this, but it appears to be an interesting point of view. Also, this is a site that is set up by Bill Simmons. You've been warned.

"Union chief Billy Hunter says "it's obvious the lockout will happen tonight" after players and owners failed to reach a new collective bargaining agreement, potentially putting the 2011-12 season in jeopardy."

Yeah, those "losses" the owners have been claiming smelled fishy and Dwyer explains why. Obviously, the players aren't innocent in all this, but accounting tricks are always fun!

Snippet from the article: Here’s the truly bad news: Once the lockout begins, the standoff is going to get nastier. According to NBA executives familiar with the league’s strategies, once the lockout is in place, the owners will push for a hard salary cap of $45 million, the elimination of guaranteed contracts and ask that the players swallow a 33 percent salary cut. The concessions made in recent weeks, including the "flex cap" of $62 million and a guarantee of $2 billion in annual player payroll, will be off the table. Uh, this is bad. Very bad.