The NBA: Where Lockouts Happen

Welcome back to another edition of Thoughts of Sports Addict, today I'm going to talk about the lockout in the NFL, the lockout in the NBA, and some other odds and ends in the sports world. As always, leave a comment to let me know what you think.

The NFL lockout started over a hundred days ago and is still going strong, albeit with a light now almost visible at the end of the tunnel. Since it has begun, the NFL lockout has provided fans with very little entertainment. NFL Live has turned into a show that is 90% lockout talk and 10% fantasy football, you either need to have passed the bar exam or be Matthew Berry to actually enjoy the show. In other NFL related news, 3 time Superbowl champion Tom Brady can be seen hanging out in Brazil rocking a pony tail and riding down water slides in the most effeminate way imaginable. Can we all now finally agree that Giselle Bundchen is the Yoko Ono of the New England Patriots? Before she came into Tom Brady's life he had a beard, short hair, and a game face that was matched by no one else in the NFL. Now he looks like this....

I can't be the only Patriot fan that has watched his entire career and can honestly say that they didn't see this coming. Somehow I can't see Joe Montana, John Elway, or dare I say it, Peyton Manning allowing themselves to get distracted like this and stop coming through in clutch situations. With all that said, lets hope Tom Brady was watching when Tim Thomas and the Bruins won the Stanley cup, because if he was I don't think there's any way that he didn't immediately go to the bathroom, grab a straight razor and shave his own head. Just in case he forgot, the Patriots are now the Boston team with the longest championship drought, so lets go Tom Terrific, it's time to lead us to another Superbowl.

The NBA has just entered into the infancy stage of its own lockout, and this one has no end in sight. Most experts agree that this lockout, unlike the NFL lockout, may take out the entire season. For NBA nuts like myself, they may just as well have said that Christmas had been cancelled. I love basketball, I love the NBA, and most of all I love the Celtics. Don't get me wrong, I like all sports and all the Boston teams, but the Celtics are by far my favorite. I watch all their preseason games, I watch all their regular season games, I get nervous for playoff games, and to be completely honest, I cried when they won the Eastern Conference championship in 2008. Sure it was great to watch the Red Sox win the World Series in 2004 and 2007, the Patriots win the Superbowl in 2001, 2003, and 2004, and the Bruins win the Stanley Cup this year, but none of those put me even close to tears. This NBA lockout has me very concerned that I may have seen the last game of the Big 3 era for the Celtics and that they're going to go out with a loss to Lebron James. If they do indeed miss the entire season, then Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen will both be free agents, unlikely to be resigned.

Taking the emotion out of it, the NBA lockout is happening because 22 of the 30 teams lost money this year and with a soft cap, the rich teams gain a competitive advantage and the equity of the league gets thrown off. Superstars have started joining forces and going to big market teams in order to win championships, which is killing the smaller markets. Teams like Sacramento, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, can never compete with the larger markets because superstars will never sign with them. The solution to this is a hard cap. A hard cap would be much like the NFL system where teams aren't allowed to go over a certain salary threshold. This would help the smaller markets because the superstars are money motivated and will go to where the money is, which means smaller markets can pull in superstars with more regularity. It will also prevent superstars from teaming up, unless they take very large pay cuts.

So right now, lockouts are the popular thing to do in sports. This fall, let's hope that both the NFL and the NBA are starting on time, because it will be a long winter without football or basketball. Thank God the Bruins are good, because hockey may be all we have.

ODDS AND ENDS

-Charlie Furbush, the pride of South Portland, makes his first start for the Tigers on July 4th. He has been sensational in relief for Detroit and hopefully can roll that momentum into his first major league start.

-The NBA draft happened amid the lockout talk last week. The big news was Kyrie Irving going first and Kawhi Leonard dropping all the way to 15. I think the guy to watch out for is Kemba Walker, he showed his true colors this year leading UCONN to a national championship. Another thing to remember is that if the NBA does lockout all year, we'll have 120+ rookies next year vying for the Rookie of the Year honors.

-The Red Sox have been surprisingly terrible at interleague play, dropping series to the Pirates and Phillies.

-The All Star rosters were announced today, and for the first time I have no complaints about either roster. I don't know if that's because I haven't been paying real close attention to baseball this year, or because the coaches, fans, and players did a good job. Either way I like it.

Well that's all for this week, be sure to leave a comment, and even follow me on twitter: @Joshviola19