NBA Lockout Starts Today: Fans Might Miss some Games Next Season

Because of the current labor dispute, the NBA was prompted to start the NBA Lockout today, June 30, 2011 in USA. A lockout is a way of an industry to neutralize labor problems of the employers with their employees, in the NBA's case, the team owners with their players. When you scan the dictionary, Lockout means:

"The temporary closing of a business or the refusal by an employer to allow employees to come to work until they accept the employer's terms."

The NBA has experienced a lockout before during the 1998 and 1999 NBA season. Teams missed some of their games because of the Lockout problems but fortunately, the fans' prayers were answered as the Lockout miraculously stopped and the NBA went back to normal. 12 years have passed and again we now have an NBA Lockout. History is repeating itself. The good thing is that, this Lockout will surely have a conclusion at some point just like the previous one.

The story behind this current NBA Lockout can be found in one of ESPN's sports man, Mr. Simmons when he said that:

"That doesn't make the NBA different from any other business in the world, but such sentiments have been an increasingly loud story line in this league all season, with the volume raised considerably after Stern's All-Star Weekend news conference in which he acknowledged that the salary cap is heading downward … followed by a Feb. 19 trade deadline ruled by economic considerations like no other trade deadline before it … followed by longtime agent David Falk's provocative prediction to the New York Times that some NBA owners are losing "enormous amounts of money" and thus would urge Stern to shut down league operations for a year or two if significant changes to the existing collective bargaining agreement aren't enacted soon."

Low salary cap, new trade deadline regulations and loss of profit on the part of team owners, these are just few of the many reasons why there's an NBA Lockout right now. NBA players who feel bad about this Lockout might force themselves to miss some games because of their respective labor disputes with their team owners. We NBA fans should expect lesser games and less NBA hype next season because of this drastic change that the NBA is experiencing right now. I just hope that this too shall pass. God bless the NBA.