Lockout optimism turns to doom and gloom

Those past six days were fun. After months of darkness and doom and  gloom rhetoric from both players and owners, there was finally a little  reason for optimism. And it wasn’t just in the form of Roger Mason’s  non-tweet. Pretty much everywhere you looked, there was reason to  believe an NBA season could be starting on time.

The turn of the  calendar to September ramped up the pressure to get a deal done. Backs  are to the wall in terms of getting training camps and preseason in.  Whether it was just unbridled optimism from the media or there was good  reason for it, the buildup to Tuesday’s labor meeting in New York had  people believing in something good. We all waited for reps to emerge and  proudly proclaim, “Looking like a season! HOW U!!!”

Alas, that  didn’t happen. In fact, quite the opposite. David Stern put it this way: “We did not have a great day.” Ken Berger of  CBSSports.com has been all over the labor negotiations and he passed along some pretty unsettling news. A sampling:

A bombshell indeed. One that just obliterated my upbeat outlook of the 2011-12 season. So much for hacked tweets and Derek Fisher texting players to get ready for a season. So much for no more doom and  gloom or pessimistic rhetoric. So much for November and December  basketball, potentially.

Now of course, this is one side of the  story. The league has a different view of it all, but the players  aren’t shy about being downtrodden about the chances of a deal. But I  wouldn’t expect a different story from the league, except they’re just  going to flip the script and put it on the players. They may have bigger  problems though. Consider this:

Division  of interest, eh? The story from the league has always been that the  owners are more unified than ever and while you have to consider the  source — Billy Hunter isn’t exactly on the owners side here — it makes  sense for some of the owners to dislike this incredibly stubborn,  hardline stance. For example, an owner like Clay Bennett is captaining a  successful small market team that has a fanbase absolutely nuts for its  team.

And if you start punching those fans in the face, you  don’t know what the consequences could be. I’m speculating, but I would  assume someone like Bennett is saying, “OK guys, I rode with you to  here, but we need to get something done.” Then the big hitters like  James Dolan and Mark Cuban come in and shoot it all down. At least  that’s how I’m picturing it.

Don’t give up completely. There’s  naturally going to be some tough negotiating to be done. The two sides  were miles apart when they started and the calendar saying September  isn’t going to just automatically close that gap. It’s called  bargaining. Negotiating. It’s all part of it. Here I go trying to talk  myself into it again, but there’s still time to get something done. But  future sessions will have to be much more productive than this.  Otherwise, this sums it up all too well:

I  remember a wise (fictional) person say one time, “The night is darkest  just before the dawn.” Boy I hope so. Because it’s pretty dark out right  now.