NBA Is Getting Pushed Aside

If those supposed negotiators handling the NBA labor dispute don’t think their sport is losing status while they bumble around, they ought to head to UCLA’s Men’s Gym on a weekday morning.

For 90 minutes or so, there are such NBA players as Shaquille O’Neal, Eddie Jones, Kenny Anderson and Tracy Murray flying around the court. It’s almost even a little fan-tastic. Kind of.

That is, until it’s time for badminton.

At 11 o’clock, the hoopers are kicked out, the nets go up and the shuttlecocks start flying.

The players who represent what once was America’s hottest game don’t even get priority over badminton at a local gym.

Before long they’ll be forced to play outside, where they’ll have to battle shuffleboarding senior citizens for asphalt space.

It’s just something else for the two sides to think about when they finally sit down at the table again today.

The only thing the lockout can generate right now is comedy, be it the sketches on “The Chris Rock Show” or the actual negotiations themselves. The funniest thing yet came at the most recent negotiating session (recent is a relative term) on Nov. 20.

The players lowered their demands to 57% of the revenue, while the owners were willing to give them 52%. With a straight face, they announced they had made progress. In reality, all they did was get exactly where they were when the lockout began July 1.

It gets serious when you start talking about missed opportunities. Sports moments are so fleeting, canceling a season can sometimes wipe them out.

This could be the season of the Lakers--if there is a season.

Shaq is still Shaq, and there isn’t anyone in the league who can stop him one on one.

You can tell Kobe Bryant is maturing because in his latest commercial he actually passes the ball.

Whatever stage fright that gripped Eddie Jones in his first conference finals appearance, when he reverted to the invisible days of old, should be gone.

The road to the finals still goes through Utah, but these days that path doesn’t look as daunting. Karl Malone seems to be less and less about winning and more and more about self-promotion. The incredible John Stockton has to show his age sometime, and maybe it would be now.

Who knows what the Chicago Bulls will look like?

It used to be it would only be a matter of time before a talented young team like the Lakers won a championship. There’s no waiting for the appointed moment to come in the NBA anymore. Remember when it seemed the Orlando Magic would be hosting finals games in June for the rest of the century? That dynasty ended before it even began, in the time it took Shaq to sign his contract with the Lakers.

In 1997, Michael Jordan proclaimed the then-Washington Bullets a “team of the future,” but since then they’ve traded their best player, Chris Webber, and could lose point guard Rod Strickland to free agency.

It goes quickly.

This could be the last year of the Lakers as we know them, and we might not ever get to see this familiar group assembled again.

Only a thought here, but if the season is canceled, there has yet to be a definitive ruling on how that would affect contract status.

Can it be considered a year of service if there were no games played?

The standard contracts refer to dates, not seasons. Players are signed for a period of (fill-in-the-blank) years, from the first day of September in the year in which the contract was signed.

If that is taken literally, then about 80 more players would be free agents before next season (assuming there is a next season). For the Lakers, Bryant and Derek Fisher would be free agents, and O’Neal would be able to opt out of his contract.

Could it happen? Well, did you really think the NBA would be willing to throw away two months of the season while quibbling over 5% of the $2 billion revenue? Don’t bother to approach this thing rationally.

The two sides have about two weeks to resolve their differences and salvage the season. If they reach an agreement by Dec. 15, they should be able to start the season by Jan. 15. That would give them 14 weeks to play four games a week for the magic number of 56--each of the 29 teams plays every other team twice--and the playoffs could begin on time in their regular format.

More important to the owners, they would be up and running in time for the beginning of the full NBC schedule on Jan. 16, which would allow them to receive almost the entire amount of their network payouts.

In the meantime, the players are finding other things to do. O’Neal got on stage and rapped with A Tribe Called Quest at the House of Blues on Tuesday night. Wednesday night, when he was originally scheduled to play the Sacramento Kings at the Great Western Forum, O’Neal headlined his own gig at Peppers in the City of Industry.

But for the sake of the UCLA Men’s Gym, they have to end this lockout. O’Neal is killing the rims with his thunderous dunks, and all of the players’ sweat dripping on the floor makes it slippery for those badminton players.