Over the past few years, Oklahomans have become some of the best NBA fans in the country, receiving accolades from the media for their college-like enthusiasm at home games since the Thunder were brought from Seattle. And the Thunder have done their part, moving from one of the worst teams in the league to the NBA Western Conference Semi-finals last season. One could argue that the Thunder are among the favorites to with the NBA Championship in the coming season.
But the current negotiations between the owners and the players have already led to the first several weeks of the season being cancelled, and the entire season is certainly at risk. Professional sports bloggers disagree on who is to blame – the players or the owners – and unscientific online polls show support for one side or the other to be relatively equally distributed.
The NBA owners and players should really care about how the public feels though, especially in places like Oklahoma. The fans have done a tremendous job in supporting the Thunder organization, and the owners, players, and the league most certainly risk alienating those fans if the season is put off for much longer.
While the owners and players look to improve their relative slices of the pie, they should conduct some research on how this lockout is likely to affect the size of the pie overall. It’s entirely possible that the pie will shrink far more than just the revenue from a few games at the beginning of the season – a prospect that would see both sides lose considerably more than the current gap at the negotiation table.
