Positive Space

dfajardo@theguidon.com

Year after year, I personally root for Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers to come out on top of the NBA and be crowned champions. This year was supposed to be a very important one, given that the Lakers had a bad campaign last year, ending in an early second-round exit at the expense of eventual champions Dallas Mavericks. This was supposed to be the year of redemption, meant to erase any doubts about Kobe’s ability to lead a team. This was supposed to be the year they get a fresh start.

However, due to certain disputes between the NBA’s head honchos and the Players’ Union, the 2011-12 NBA season is in jeopardy of being cancelled altogether.

Basically, the ongoing lockout—which means that all NBA teams are prohibited from doing any team-related business, including practices, trades, player meetings, and the like—was caused by constant disagreement between the two parties on the terms of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. The previous lockout occurred during the 1998-99 season, resulting in a 50 game schedule. A traditional NBA season, in contrast, usually has 82 games.

Now, I will not be going into the details of the current year’s labor disputes. I am not one to speak about money, percentages, gains and losses. That’s not the point of this article, anyway. I am here to write about those who are more affected by this lockout than anyone else: the workers.

An average NBA team employs around 120 people, excluding the players and coaches. They are the drivers, the inventory managers, the logistics coordinators, the janitors and all those who are not seen on television. They do not partake in the drama that we see unfold every day, but without them, the team would not be able to function at all.

The players and the coaches are fine; they still earn money from other avenues besides their respective contracts. Some of them have multimillion-dollar endorsements; some of them have their own businesses and properties.

Which is why it’s very disheartening to see two camps of billionaires not settling for a slightly lower percentage. I might be becoming a little bit insensitive, because I don’t know the stories of these people, but I do believe that these people squabbling over a few percentage points are being insensitive themselves.

Have they considered that their actions are prolonging a risk-filled and challenging state of unemployment for most of the people they work with every day? Who’s speaking for the workers?

At the end of the day, the players and the people managing the league should just take a step back and look at all the lives those few percentage points are affecting. Sure, they might lose a few hundred thousand dollars here and there by settling for a new deal, but that’ll be just a dent in their own personal net worth. What’s important is that people are given their jobs back, so they can once again have a secure and reliable lifeline. We owe it to the workers anyway. Without them, there wouldn’t even be a league to begin with.