NBA: Bite the Bullet

Nobody thinks they can afford a pay cut, not even rich people.

That’s why a work stoppage is looming in the NBA. Right now the league is proposing a 38 percent reduction in player salaries. With the current salary cap at $58 million per team, that would reduce salaries to about $36 million.

In more real numbers — is anything actually real about NBA salaries? — on a 14-player roster (15 is the maximum allowable), that would mean reducing the average salary from $4 million per year to about $2.57 million.

There goes the new HDTV or washer/dryer combo.

SOON DRIVING AN AVEO?

I understand why the NBA Players’ Association isn’t keen on this pay cut idea. As the great Patrick Ewing once noted, they make a lot, but they spend a lot, too. Everyone spends what they make, whether it’s $12,000 a year or $12 million.

At the same time, every business is feeling the crunch of the recession. I know a lot of people in other businesses that either lost jobs or took pay cuts, thanks to the economy. The NBAPA needs to get real. A lot of people aren’t getting annual pay raises anymore. A lot of people aren’t getting paychecks anymore. The NBAPA says its willing to concede some cuts, such as taking less than 57 percent of the league’s revenue, but that’s about it.

Everyone wants things to stay the way they were, with income increases happening every year. But people who went through the Great Depression and ensuing recessions didn’t always have the same income. That was part of life.

The NBA is a business, like any other business. Well, not EXACTLY like any business, but you know what I mean. It, too, is subject to the whims of the economy. Reports have surfaced of some NBA teams being in dire financial straits. If the NBAPA doesn’t figure that out, a work stoppage will ensue — which is something neither side should find agreeable.

Maybe they should all start by turning down the room temperature and car pooling to save gas.