Friday Bolts – 10.14.11

Henry Abbott of TrueHoop on the federal mediator’s role: “Barely 48 hours after talks fell completely apart, the two sides agreed to meet early next week with a federal mediator. My best guess is that the key value of a mediator in this case will not be in getting the two sides to see eye to eye — both sides have dropped hints that they have a pretty good idea what the final deal will look like. What is could do, though, is help the two sides go back their respective camps and say ‘the federal mediator said this is fair.’ In other words, there’s a shot this will help David Stern and Billy Hunter in convincing their hardliners to swallow bitter pills.”

Two Sonic fans try and prepare us for a lost NBA season: “All of that energy you spent complaining about your team’s defensive sets and substitution patterns can be expressed in different ways. For example: Did you know that taxes are too high, traffic is only getting worse, corporations run this country, and people are always on their phones?”

Padma Laksmhi likes Nate Robinson: “SLAM: Do you still talk to Nate? Padma Lakshmi: I never really talked to him; I would yell at him from my seat [laughs]. SLAM: What would you yell? PL: I just love watching him on the court because he’s so low to the ground. He’s very fast. He doesn’t share the ball a lot. [Laughs] He’s not a sharer.”

David Aldridge with David Stern.

Mick Cornett is not happy with the lockout: “I think the players have been misled by their agents, and if you think that the commissioner and the owners wanted to start cancelling games I just can’t imagine where that line of thinking would come from.” Cornett is livid. He says his city will lose anywhere from $1.3 million to 1.5 million in revenue from each cancelled game. While a million bucks may parse out to a pittance for the Kobes and LeBrons of the world, to Cornett it’s a slap in the collective face of his city’s taxpayers. The arena is in the middle of a $92 million makeover funded by a one-cent sales tax that includes a new scoreboard and remodeled suites. “The arena is under construction, because we’re expanding it as part of our NBA relocation deal with the league. But still, a million dollars is a million dollars into the economy and we could withstand a couple of games because that’s what we’re losing from the first two weeks’ cancellation. But if this goes on and if this were to somehow become the whole season, it would become a significant economic impact and as I mentioned it would also impact our ability to sell Oklahoma City to a worldwide audience.”

The lockout gets the Taiwanese animation.

Berry Tramel says two weeks without the NBA isn’t a big deal: “And two weeks of NBA games have been canceled? Oh the humanity. No Pacers or Raptors appearing downtown? Stop the world, I want to get off. Heck, even baseball is scratching its way into our psyche. We sit on the verge of the ultimate Oklahoma World Series. Cardinals vs. Rangers. Favorite team of most Okie baseball fans over 40 vs. favorite team of most Okie baseball fans under 40. Hey, I’m a huge NBA fan. Love at first bite. I want the lockout over. But if the owners are determined to push the players to the brink of a canceled season, we’ll adjust. We’ll move on. We’ll find something else to occupy our time.”