BKN Nets ~ David Stern Carves Up Last Season in N.J.

From the desk of:

THE HOOPS OF FLATBUSH

NEW JERSEY/BROOKLYN NETS

The 2011-2012 NBA season was supposed to begin on Tuesday, November 1st.  But apparently the NBA Owners and the Player's Union are no closer to figuring out how to split basketball related revenue than they were at the start of this process Lock-Out.  Therefore, still without a Labor deal in place, Commissioner Stern wielded his hammer and cycle a second time and lopped off another two weeks of the regular season. 

No Thanksgiving for you!  Do I hear Christmas?  Christmas anyone?  Going once....?

If there's a bright side to cancelling games through Thanksgiving and the end of November, I know who not to ask for a reaction.  Not only is Kris Humphries officially unemployed come Tuesday, now he ain't got no girl either.  His marriage to Kim Kardashian is over!  Hey, at least he won't have to spend the holidays at his "ex" in-laws house this year.  It's a good thing too because I pitied the fool!  That two month hitch came apart faster than Sinead O'Conner's career.  I feel bad for Bruce Jenner though.  He could have used a backbone around the house.  But for Kris at least, fret no more; crisis averted.  The name on the back of his jersey won't have to be changed to Kardashian after all.  Whew!

But on a much more serious note, I do not begrudge either side in their labor dispute.  When it comes to collective bargaining, this is the way it works.  I do however feel great empathy for the good people of New Jersey who are getting cheated out of a final season together with their NBA representatives.  To begin with, the season was no doubt going to played amongst mixed feelings of apathy and appreciation.  Now the New Jersey Net Fans can't even have that.  Certainly not on time anyway.

Realizing that I, (...Brooklyn), am the beneficiary of the Nets' relocation across New York Harbor, I hope that doesn't come off as a hypocritical piece of verbal peyote I'm pushing.  Faced with losing a team to begin with; albeit the Nets remain in the Metropolitan area; New Jersey's last hurrah gets sadly compromised by the League itself.

Business is a cold cruel world.  Whatever!  Both sides just better get a deal done before the doors to Barclays Center get set to open for the 2012-2013 NBA season.  That's when I'll ultimately have the biggest problem with this Lock-Out - if and when this should get that far.  I can't shake this feeling I have that the Lock-Out and the Nets' move to Brooklyn are akin to two locomotives on the same track headed towards each other at full steam.  That's just me.  But I feel this is a very distressing dynamic for the future Brooklyn sports scene.  

The overall hope though, is everyone will get to watch some Basketball on Christmas Day or maybe by New Year's.

Atlantic Avenue at Sixth Avenue

Mike.BTB