When basketball returns, we just might not care

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Updated: December 18, 2011 5:17PM

Hey, NBA, what if fans lock out?

Let’s say you eventually settle this billions-of-dollars beef between players and owners and spiff up your stadiums in preparation for the resumption of play, welcoming at long last the faithful fans back to their NBA dens. Except, none of us shows up.

Let’s say, we stop watching, no matter the Christmas Day lineup or series hype. Let’s say we take “our ball” and go home.

What if we fans decide to black out the All-Star game? Or burn our NBA paraphernalia, like some Cleveland fans after feeling snubbed, slapped and kicked to the curb by King James?

What if we all suddenly stopped buying the sneakers, sports drinks, cell phones, automobiles, athletic apparel and every other product hyped by NBA players to coaches to commentators because despite the marketed assertion that the “NBA Cares,” we have trouble believing that slogan these days.

Walking up for my tall coffee Wednesday, I couldn’t help but notice the headline on the Wall Street Journal: “NBA Lockout Gives Players a Chance to Act Out Their Fantasies.”

The article goes on to mention one player who since the lockout began has taken up ballet, another who played in a beach volleyball tournament, another who has “gone into wings,” as in a chicken wings franchise, and another who is developing a documentary on “the decline of style in the U.S.”

I got to thinking, “Isn’t playing in the NBA itself — making millions of dollars, and being on television with a chance to rake in the dough by attaching their smiles and signatures to commercial products — already fantasy enough?”

I don’t blame players alone. Nor am I a hater of young men, many of whom hail from impoverished inner-city backgrounds and now enjoy the fruit of their success. Make that money, young man.

Neither am I under any delusion that every NBA player is getting paid like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade or other top players.

But gimme a break. The NBA cash cow yields enough to satisfy both owners and players and keep them in the lifestyles to which they have grown accustomed — for the rest of their lives. The question is: How much is enough?

Like many of my friends, I am less concerned with the fine details of the squabble between players and owners. But from the nosebleed seats where I sit — which, by the way, are still barely affordable to working-class families — the NBA stalemate looks like a feud between a bunch of self-centered rich guys who have little concern for us peasants.

Clear to me is that their so-called financial issues are small potatoes at a time when 46.2 million Americans last year lived in poverty and 49.9 million Americans had no health insurance, according to the U.S. Census. Just last month, 25.3 million Americans were unemployed, marginally employed or working part time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And in these times, as the holiday season approaches — and the NBA remains in a lockout — some ordinary folk who have long supported the game, the players and the owners with our hard-earned dollars have more important business, like paying the bills and taking care of our families.

Dear NBA, don’t you know basketball is only a game and that life can — and will — go on, with, or without you?

I think I speak for many in saying, “I ain’t mad at cha. But I have no sympathy for you either — whether wealthy owners or players, even if I can respect both sides.”

And like the millions who love this game, I’m going to miss it. But professional basketball isn’t the only game in town. And it might serve the NBA to realize it could take them a long time to rebound.