NBA needs to find new business to model after

The NBA lockout drags on. Neither side is giving in. No progress is being made as the season shot clock ticks down.

The owners and players are holding firm. Nobody wants to play ball, so to speak. The owners make an offer, and the players reject it like Dwight Howard swatting one into the cheap seats. The players make an offer, and the owners howl with laughter. And so forth.

What to do?

What they really need is a model. Something in a similar business that is wildly successful. Something that works like a money machine, churning out billions of dollars. Something that nurtures competitiveness among all teams and instills all fans in every market with hope. Something that doesn't allow teams to stack talent by throwing unlimited amounts of cash at players. Something that doesn't allow the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.

Something that isn't like Major League Baseball.

Something that is like, oh, say, the National Football League.

Ever wonder why the NBA — and, for that matter, Major League Baseball, and the National Hockey League and every other sports league on the planet – doesn't take lessons from the winners and copy the NFL formula? Why not imitate the league that generates $9 billion in revenues annually, compared to the NBA's $3.8 billion?

Instead, the NBA seems to go out of its way to do the opposite.

The NFL has a hard salary cap; the NBA has a soft cap. This allows the rich NBA teams to outspend the poorer teams by paying a meaningless luxury tax. Thus, Miami can pilfer the small-market rosters and sign the Big Three. A hard cap and even distribution of talent is even more important to the health of a basketball league than a football league because one or two players can make or break a team immediately.

NFL players receive 48 percent of all revenue; NBA players won't settle for less than 52 percent of basketball-related revenues (and that's down from 57 percent under the old collective bargaining agreement). And the smaller-market teams pay the most for it.

NFL teams share equally about 75 percent of all league revenue; the NBA is more complicated to pin down, but, simply put, the league doesn't share any of its local revenue among the 30 teams. This is a huge advantage for big-market teams. The Lakers can sign a $3 billion deal with Time-Warner while the Jazz sign a $250 million deal with Root Sports.