NBA players need to get a new dose of reality

SALT LAKE CITY — Congratulations, NBA players, you've killed the golden goose, at least for the near future and perhaps the entire season.

You've entered what commissioner David Stern calls, to reach for hyperbole, "nuclear winter."

It's a season on the brink — of having to get a real job, and good luck with that in today's economy.

This day has been a long time coming. We all saw it, even if you didn't.

Call it a market correction. Or a reality check.

Remember, for the rest of us, it's not as though this is something truly important, something upon which the nation depends — like the NFL.

You've got to hand it to the players, don't you. They pulled off quite a feat. In this day of Wall Street protestors and attacks on the rich, they've managed to turn the owners — rich tycoons all — into the good guys.

The players can take their mid-level exceptions and luxury taxes and soft caps and shower caps and escrows and CBAs and BRIs and RBIs and whatever and kick them into the empty upper bowl. This whole affair, which has been building for years, has grown as tedious as a Clippers-Kings game in December.

There is definitely a disconnect between the fans — remember them? — and players.

This is what players think the NBA labor dispute is about: Putting food on the table, to quote a former player.

This is what the rest of us think this is about: How many Escalades they can put in their 16-car garage.

The other day, Billy Hunter, the players' union director, actually described the current state of affairs by using the words "extremely unfair." The word "unfair" should never exit his mouth. Talk about losing perspective.

The perception is that players are greedy. Here they've got the best deal in professional sports: 50 percent or more of basketball-related revenues (highest in sports) — everything from parking to gate receipts to Coke sales — an average salary of between $5 million and $6 million per year (highest in sports) and — this is the clincher — guaranteed contracts, plus a soft cap that allows teams to make the richest players richer and the best teams better.

And yet when 22 of 30 owners claim they are losing money, the players complain that they might have to give back a little money; they might have to take what the rest of us call a pay cut.