The average NBA player is going to have to get by for a while on the $2.3 million he earned last year (that is the median NBA salary). The owners are going to have to get by on their billions. Both sides can afford for this lockout to drag out a while.
They’re not the ones that are screwed (well, not until they see post-lockout television ratings and realize what they did to the game). The people really getting screwed are the many out there who make their living tied to the NBA in some fashion. People who just want basketball and don’t have a dog in the labor fight.
People like Timothy Davey, general manager of the Spirit of ’77 sports bar in Portland near the Rose Garden in Portland. Davey talked with the Portland Tribune.
People will spend their discretionary money, they just won’t spend it on the NBA (or at the Spirit of ’77). Some of those people will like what they start spending on and when the NBA does return it will get less of that money.
But in the process some innocent people will get hurt. Badly. Ticket takers and security guards and scouts and many others.
And the guys that own and run cool bars near the arenas.