Advertising Doesn’t Sell Fans on the NBA Players’ Position

To Patrick Ewing, Billy Hunter and the NBPA Negotiating Committee:

Are you kidding me? Your ad must be some kind of joke. The NBPA is the highest paid union on Earth. Please wake up before the season is lost. The players are making huge salaries. The greed you and your constituency are displaying is appalling to basketball fans everywhere. Frankly, me and my friends who are NBA fanatics are sickened by your behavior. The owners have a right to try to run a profitable business. They have to get some kind of control on salaries in order to ensure a healthy league now and in the future.

Please understand that the players have lost the public relations battle. I am a lifelong fan of the NBA. I would like to see the season canceled. Maybe that way, Mr. Hunter, you and the players might realize what incredible fools you’ve been to let it get this far. The owners’ latest proposal is more than fair. It’s clear that a small number of superstar players and their agents are keeping it from being ratified.

Thousands of people have worked very hard for many years to build the NBA into what it is today. You’re on the verge of destroying it. Nice work.

JOEL AMSTERDAM

Los Angeles

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The mere fact that your ad is signed by Patrick Ewing is enough to make me want to puke. Let’s see now Patrick, you made a paltry $19 million last year and you are still clueless as to why the owners staged a lockout.

Secondly, you are running your ad out of fear that the owners have had enough of your garbage and might actually cancel the season, forcing some of you malcontents to actually get a real job!

Thirdly, your ad asserts repeatedly that “they [the owners] want more.”

Well “We” the fans who make less in one year than most players make in one game assert this: Take your greedy, self-serving attitudes and your ridiculous excuse for an advertisement and disappear.

J. SCOTT SCHEFFER

Adelanto

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Since I can’t afford to have Showtime, I was wondering if you could tell me who won last weekend’s charity game. Was it the greedy, self-centered, overpaid, bar-fighting veterans. Or the marijuana-smoking, spouse-beating, gun-toting, never-been-to-the-playoffs younger generation team.

PHILLIP CIARRIOCCO

Hacienda Heights

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What part of the word “lockout” doesn’t Mark Heisler understand? He writes a column headed “Who’s to Blame?”, lists seven culprits, but can’t find it in his heart to include even one of the 29 NBA club owners who have refused to have a schedule of games get underway. He only manages to list their puppet commissioner, two player agents and four union functionaries. When the owners have to pay back the TV millions for not delivering the product, then perhaps they will quit trying to force the players’ union to save them from their own spendthrift ways. Heisler ought to stop being a flackman for NBA management.

DONALD R. OWEN

Bishop

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I appreciate the National Basketball Players Assn. “Setting the Record Straight.” So, when do pitchers and catchers report for spring training?

STUART WEISS

Los Angeles

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Two reasons for the players to settle.

1. None of the players are getting any younger, and none of the owners are getting any poorer.

2. For the first time in a decade, our basketball signups have decreased. L.A.’s kids need to want to play ball after school. They need the NBA on their radar screens.

STEVEN L. SOBOROFF

President, L.A. Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners

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Now that the ABL has folded without much notice, one must wonder why the greedy owners and greedy players squabbling over billions in the NBA couldn’t have come to the league’s rescue. The NBA players announced an all-star exhibition to help their “needy” fellow players--why not one to benefit the ABL? A “needy” NBA player might be defined as one who has to drive his own limo and has less than four houses, while the women were playing primarily for the love of the game.

If the parties involved in the NBA negotiations put aside their selfish interests for a day or two, they might be able to give the women’s league a second chance.

ALLEN E. KAHN

Playa del Rey