Friday Bolts – 10.7.11

Interesting point from Henry Abbott of TrueHoop: “Lost in the shuffle of 50/50 revenue talk: League offered players the right to get out of a deal after seven years. I’m told both sides would have the right to opt out at that point. If we assume that in seven years the league will have incredible national TV deals and a swelling global audience, that’s a big concession. The union has been adamantly against players missing out on what could be fat revenue years, just as the league has been looking forward to that exact thing.”

Via NewsOK, OKC moved up in Sporting News’ top sports cities: “But Oklahoma City’s stock as a sports city continues to rise. OKC has climbed to No. 26, up six spots from last year, in the latest Sporting News Best Sports Cities rankings. The rankings define Oklahoma City as the OKC metro area, which includes Norman. Stillwater ranks 64th, up five spots from last year. Tulsa ranks 84th, up from 108th last year.”

Sam Amick of SI.com: “Two sources who have been briefed on the situation said that while no meetings are scheduled, the two sides are likely to resume talks in some form on Sunday and Monday and make one last push to get a deal done before the deadline. It remains to be seen whether Stern’s 50-50 offer is still there for the taking, or whether the players who earned 57 percent of BRI in the old deal are prepared to ignore the advice of the aforementioned agents by going below the 52 percent mark.”

This Hank Williams debate featuring Bomani Jones was fairly insane.

If you missed it, here’s Blake Griffin naked.

Ethan Sherwood Strauss wonders if anyone REALLY cares about the arena workers: “When you rip squabbling players/owners for slightly lessening SMG profits, you hurtle down a slope more slippery than K2 + WD40. By this logic, I’m hurting families by not buying up various fried foods whenever I walk into Oracle. Extending this logic, any striking employee or locking employer should be castigated, based solely on the negative Butterfly Effect consequences of a work stoppage. As in, autoworkers should never strike because they might deprive order takers at fast food drive-thru windows.”

A pretty great point from agent Keith Glass: “We’re in tough economic times, isn’t that the owners’ argument?” Glass says. “Okay, so where is the rollback for the fans? Where is the rollback for ticket prices, hot dogs, beer and parking? Where is the union and where is the league on this? Shouldn’t they be worried about the people that actually pay the freight? But fans are in the middle of this, too. If you keep bitching about this I don’t want to see you in February paying $140 for a ticket. It is across-the-board insanity.”

Adam Morrison got ejected for getting in a shoving match in Russia, or wherever he’s playing. I only link to this because the video’s amazing.