How the Lockout punctured NBA's brighest moment in India

There is no good time to have a lockout, but the timing of this particular shut-down of the NBA couldn't have been worse. The league was at its height of popularity and it featured an exciting group of popular veterans (Kobe, Garnett), incredible in-their-prime stars (LeBron, Wade, Nowitzki, Dwight Howard), talented youngsters breaking into the elite (Rose, Durant) and tantalising prospects for the future (Blake Griffin, John Wall). In addition, the NBA seemed to be becoming open and unpredictable again: Mavs, Heat, Bulls, Thunder, Lakers, Celtics, Knicks, etc all boasted formidable, exciting teams.

But for the NBA fan in India, the lockout couldn't have come at a worse time: the NBA was at the height of its popularity in India last season. For me, the feeling has been of taking a big bite of my favourite dish (Butter Chicken) to build an appetite, and then being robbed of eating it anymore, and instead staying hungry. Now multiply that feeling by a 100 and replace Butter Chicken with Test Cricket. That's the Lockout.

Rewind back to a year ago and you'll know what I'm talking about. The 2010-11 season couldn't have been better for NBA fans in India. Things started off on the highest note possible in the off-season itself, as India was visited by two of the best big players in the planet: Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol. If that wasn't enough, Gasol even brought the Larry O'Brien trophy with him to India. The NBA Trophy in INDIA!!! Even recalling that moment gives me the chills.

But hype for the upcoming season had already been built before Howard's and Gasol's visits, since a certain LeBron James decided to take his talents to South Beach, ie. join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami. The Heat became the most-talked-about team, for better or worse, even before playing a single game, and all eyes followed them through every move in the season. This influence wasn't lost in India, obviously, as more fans than ever joined in the excitement and anticipation of what the Heat will bring in the new season. A couple of other off-season moves - Amare to Knicks; Boozer to Bulls - added to the intrigue.

And then the season started, and to the delight of Indian fans, it was soon announced that the NBA will be showing four live games a week on Indian TV - on Sony PIX and Ten Sports - after signing deals with both the channels. And then, this number went up to five, and near the end of the season, it was up to six. Six live games in India every week! I was getting no sleep, waking up at wee hours of the morning every single day, and it was okay! By playoffs time, we were watching nearly every game live. It was certainly the golden age.

Of course, the NBA continued to increase its programming and web presence specifically for the Indian audience, showing a clear interest in catering to the growing legions of fans here. There were several NBA-themed shows on TV, and the NBA's India website featured regular blogs from fans in India - including a bi-weekly blog by me - in addition to promoting players/teams via social networking in India.

Wait, I'm not done: things got even better when the NBA announced that they would be releasing authentic NBA jerseys for fans across India! There were only a few available because of the first-time launch - Kobe, LeBron, Dwight, and Garnett - but it was a start.

By the end of the season, Chris Paul had chatted with Indian fans online and Brandon Jennings had also come to India. Things were real good.

We had already been spoiled as fans: So to see exciting individual and team performances live in our Indian living rooms in the playoffs was an incredible cherry on the top. Compared to the LeBron/Kobe bandwaggoners, their may have been fewer Mavericks, Thunder, or Bulls fans in the country, but rest assured, these teams and their superstar players gained several popularity points by the time the season ended.

It was all good... Until... Well, until look-at-where-we-stand-now...

And now, here we are: It's mid-November, a period that should be about two weeks into the 2011-12 NBA season, but instead of seeing Wade and LeBron and Kobe and Carmelo Anthony, we see David Stern, Adam Silver, and Billy Hunter. I've stopped thinking of Derek Fisher as the clutch Lakers starting point guard and started thinking of him as a lawyer in a suit.

The optimists say that the deal is near. That if the players agree to the NBA's latest offer, the league should start by December 15th. The pessimists say that the players are unhappy with the offer and could decertify from the union instead, sending progress way back again. Either way, the damage has been done, and there's no NBA on TV, no scores to follow on the internet, no real sporting news to discuss with fellow fans.

After a season of its highest point in connecting, engaging, and interesting Indian fans, the NBA is seemingly on an Anna Hazare inspired maun vrath - a vow of silence. I'm sure a lot of new fans were made last season, and a lot of casual fans became serious fans, and a lot of serious fans (like me) went downright neurotic (in a good way!). The thing about casual fans, though, is that they need constant reminders to be kept hooked before getting reeled in to join the hardcore fans. With a long locked out summer, with no rumours, no big free agent signing, no trades, no preaseson, no dunks, no game-winners, nothing, it becomes difficult to keep the casual fan hooked on.

Recently, in a poll done by PollPosition.com, 76 percent of American fans showed signs of switching off from the league, saying that they don't miss the NBA. 12% had no opinion about it, and only 12% said that they were missing the league.

But it isn't just the American market where the NBA may be losing fan support: The NBA has a massive international following, bigger than all the other major American sporting leagues (NFL, MLB, NHL, MLS). It is this following that actually helps the NBA remain as rich as it is, and it might actually be the most important factor when determining it above the other leagues mentioned above. Since the lockout, international fans are also a devastated bunch, and it'll be depressing to see more casual fans from across the world lose interest in the product when it does return.

Of course, the serious fans are hurt too: It's impossible to look past the sham when your favourite league and your favourite players begin a very public and bitter dispute against each other. We feel disillusioned that our favourite game, our favourite league, could be stopped by men in Meeting Rooms.

Will everything go back to normal once (and if) the season does begin? Will we easily get distracted by the six live games on TV every week to remember how barren and crappy this lockout was? Will Kevin Durant or Paul Pierce visit India and be received with the same enthusiasm as the fans as Dwight and Pau were last year? Will jersey sales increase?

Perhaps, yes, because at the end of the day, the NBA provides an incredibly exciting and addictive product, which, if you are reading this blog, you are most likely in love with. You and I will both be happy when and if the NBA returns no matter what, and with the current crop of talent and excitement around the league, you and I will most likely forgive the months we spent in the NBA Dark Ages during the lockout. It will be like forgiving and accepting a loved one back again after they have done you wrong, because no matter what you did, you still love them.

But it's not all that simple, is it? Because forgiving something doesn't mean that the bitter taste of betrayal has been washed out of your mouth. We'll be happy to have your beloved NBA back, yes, we'll forgive what we missed out as fans, but we aren't going to forget this summer.

The NBA was on the cusp of a breakthrough internationally this year, especially in India, and its phenomenonal progress was brought to a screeching halt by the cursed lockout. Let's hope that it can soon get back on track, and get back to blowing our minds again.

A Hooponic Plague

It was a classic case of self-denial: we've all done it, and we've all suffered by it. It is a common human reaction to clear upcoming tragedy and depression to pretend that it's not really happening, to distract ourselves with other matters, to imagine that it couldn't really last that long.

By a matter of sheer coincidence, I happen to be re-reading 'The Plague', the English translation of the French novel by my favourite author, Albert Camus. In this haunting, existential novel, the residents of a small French town are forced to come to terms with the reality that something of a bubonic plague is killing off hundreds of their fellow men and women daily, and forcing the town into a complete shutdown, or a 'lock' down, if you like.

But what is more interesting than the tragedy is the delayed reaction to the tragedy: until it hits him where it personally hurts, most of the townspeople in the story refuse to buck down and change their normal mentality and way of life: they go on passing through their lives in complete denial of the fact that one by one they will be losing their lives or the lives of their loved ones, and that the rest of their loved ones outside the town have been locked out, away from them, perhaps never to see them again.

Let's leave fiction behind and awaken back to our much-kinder reality: With the new CBA deadline approaching, there were whispers of an NBA Lockout over a year ago, which I had scoffed at and suppressed, focused more with the exciting storylines of the new NBA season: the three-headed monster that became the Miami Heat, the dramatic rise of Derrick Rose, and the Knicks' return to relevance. The whispers got louder as the season progressed, but louder still were Blake Griffin's dunks, Carmelo Anthony's trade to New York, and every bit of useless information that was fed to us about the over-scrutinised Heat. As the season reached its conclusion, I was left in awe after an incredible, unpredictable two months of the playoffs, where the Thunder and the Grizzlies surprised, the Lakers, Celtics, and Spurs fell too early, LeBron James choked, and Dirk and the Mavs rose against all odds to the promised land. It was an amazing end to an amazing season. Bad News Lockout Bears be damned.

Until the lockout actually happened. With the CBA deadline passing on July 1, 2011, we were officially in a lockout. The whispers were really loud now, too hard to ignore because there was little else going on in the NBA calender in the off-season. I heard everyone from David Stern and Adam Silver to Billy Hunter and Derek Fisher tell me that this was going to be a long haul, a gap too far apart to bridge easily. It was going to take hours of meetings and money talk and men in suits and other stuff that sports fan don't want to understand.

But it still didn't feel real. I mean, all that we missed in July were player photographs/mentions on the NBA's official sites. The offseason wasn't supposed to have any games anyways, so how was a lockout going to change anything, right?

Still in denial.

There was a little more missing this off-season. Rumours. Ideas. Possibilities. What ifs. What if such-and-such team sign this-and-that free agent? What if Team A trade injury-ridden-star to Team B for selfish-star? Who will be the team to watch this season? Who will be the most improved player? Which rookie will make the biggest difference? Etc. Etc. Etc. These were all the type of questions I wondered and discussed every off-season, but this time, the conversations seemed awfully hollow. Every sentence was prefixed with 'If the lockout ends...': If the lockout ends, Kevin Durant will become the best player in the league. If the lockout ends, the Heat will have the best chance to win a championship. If the lockout ends, Tyreke Evans, DeMarcus Cousins, and Jimmer Fredette will back the Kings the league's new up-and-coming team to watch.

But the Lockout was showing no signs of end, or even any signs of subsiding. The blows from both sides: the NBA and the NBA Players Association (NBPA) came harder and harder, and the effects were felt more and more with each passing day, with each day that the sides came closer to not sorting this shit out. Fans were anticipating men in suits at meetings like they anticipated their favourite players showing up on the court, except that the new anticipation was annoying, boring, and downright depressing.

I still didn't let it get to me though: I followed everything that happened, all the agreements that weren't made, and I still chose to remain emotionally unaffected. It still wasn't hitting close enough to home yet.

And just like that, we were in October. And instead of training camps and Media Days around the league, I heard crickets.

The pre-season which was supposed to start on October 9th, got cancelled: first by two weeks, and then completely. For something I had been expecting for months, I was still shocked. But hell, it's only the pre-season right? The games don't count, anyways.

But on October 10th, a day into the non-happening pre-season, I, and every other NBA fan on the planet, felt the first real torturous blows of this entire messy affair. After another long NBA/NBPA meeting yesterday, the NBA cancelled the first two weeks of the regular season, which was slated to begin on November 1st. That's a 100 games across the league cancelled, vanished, poof into thin air.

Until recently, the percentages being fought over, the zeroes at the end of the contracts, the number of millions being lost and gained here and there, were just that: numbers. Just like the casualty numbers collected and announced by the doctor in 'The Plague', unfeeling and unrelatable. But with actual games being missed, it's all too real: it's not about which side gets what percentage, it's about no Bulls vs Mavericks on November 1st, no showdown of Kevin Durant and Kobe Bryant on the first day of the season, no sign of seeing the full-strength Heat take on the resurgent Knicks the next day, no one for Blake Griffin to dunk on, no one for Kevin Garnett to intimidate, and no sign of a Laker running up and down the court with the words 'World Peace' on his back.

Two weeks isn't much you say. Well, it is enough to end my delayed reaction, my denial to his Hooponic Plague. What makes it worse is that the two sides are no closer to an agreement. In his story for Yahoo! Sports today, Adrian Wojnarowski quoted players and GMs saying things such as “We remain very, very apart on all issues,” “We have a gulf that separates us," and “I think the best-case scenario now is 50 games, but I can see the whole season gone."

It's happened. We are not just missing rumours, or photographs on a website, or practice, or exhibition matches: we are missing NBA games. And by the looks of it, we will be missing many more. It's like 1998 all over again, and I really hope it's not worse than that last lockout.

Perhaps its time for me to take the stance that the NBPA's president Derek Fisher took after yesterday's meetings, and be realistic about what has been coming this way for over a year. “We anticipated being in this situation,” Fisher said, “and here we are.”

Games are lost, and we could continue losing them. No amount of charity defense-less dunk-fests, street-ball 50-point outbursts, exhibition all-star games, WNBA, foreign hoops, college hoops or anything else can replace the sadness of losing NBA games.

We need this resolved fast, so start praying to your Gods now: I'm turning to Camus and Michael Jordan.

Locked Out

A year ago today was one of my most optimistic days as an NBA fan. July 1, 2010, when LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Amar'e Stoudemire, Joe Johnson, Carlos Boozer, and a whole host of others became free agents. My favourite team, the New York Knicks, had the money to afford two of these guys, and although we were able to snag 'only' Amar'e to New York in the end, there was that exciting potential of this many talented guys shuffling things around a little.

That summer, which I previewed in my article on July 1, 2010: the 'Summer of 2010', turned out to be more explosive than expected, and taking the cue from July, every month of the NBA Calender there onwards, July 2010 - June 2011, became more and more exciting. LeBron James, Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade teamed up to make the most hyped/hated/talked-about 'SuperTeam' in Miami. The Knicks got Amar'e, and in a mid-season trade, got Carmelo Anthony, instantly bringing back excitement to New York. Boozer joined the Bulls, and became an important piece in their significant improvement last season to end up with the best regular season record in the NBA.

From then onwards, it was as if the NBA's wildest marketing fantasies came true, one after the other. All of the league's biggest markets - Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Chicago, and Boston became relevant. The NBA featured the perfect mix of old school stars (Garnett, Ray Allen, Kobe, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash), in-their-prime stars carrying the hype of the league (LeBron, Wade, Nowitzki, Kobe, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard), and great young stars looking primed to make sure that the NBA remains in good hands in the future (Durant, Rose, Griffin). Yes, I know I put Kobe in two lists up there, simply because he's old school and still a marquee name.

You know what else went right? Pretty much everything short of a dream Lakers-Heat Final. The All Star Game got great ratings, a home-team superstar performance by Kobe Bryant, and a grand show by Blake Griffin which included an over-the-car dunk. The playoffs were one of the most exciting ever, getting the fans to believe that the NBA is not as predictable as cynics say it is. And the Mavs winning out in the end was a karmic finish (for those who like things coming full circle and all that) for Nowitzki, a feel good win for team-oriented, "nice guy" play against the three-headed Rakshas over at Miami. Teamplay beat individual brilliance, and it seemed nearly the entire world (except for Heat fans) were happy about this.

Oh, and did I mention that the Finals ratings were amongst the highest in the decade? Did I mention that, despite a poor draft class, this year's draft got the highest TV rating ever? Despite a bad economy in the US, crowds still rushed to watch the NBA games.

I can keep going on: internationally, the league kept the fans on its toes and connected better than ever before. The NBA became the biggest sports league since the English Premier League. The NBA marketed itself brilliantly worldwide, and got all the positive responses.

Simply put: until yesterday, the league was officially in one of the best positions it has ever been, primed to have another legendary, hugely anticipated season.

That is just one way to look at it.

Because the undercurrents to this all was a serious, rising threat of an NBA lockout. No matter how much hype you saw around you, there was always a sobering article somewhere, reminding us that the CBA negotiations were not going well, that the two sides were far apart, that a lockout was near inevitable. I didn't believe it of course - I'm a damned optimist, and when I read anything that depresses me even a little bit, I can't pay attention to it. The words skim over my head and I quickly distract myself with something else.

Unfortunately, I can't distract myself any longer, nor can I ignore this reality. July 1, 2011, exactly a year after that summer of optimism, begins the summer of depression. The NBA announced that it will commence a lockout of its players, effective at 12:01 AM ET on July 1, 2011 until a new collective bargaining agreement is reached with the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA).

What does this mean for us?

It means, possibly, maybe, no Summer League in July. Possibly No Pre-Season in October. Possibly no NBA Regular Season in November. And if things look really bad (they do), then say goodbye to any basketball until later next year.

HOLYZARKCHOOCOSUCRSLARTIBARTFASTMOHTHEFACKHIT!@!$#@#($#(Q$*Q#(

The word 'Lockout' brings out 2 memories to my mind. The first is from my favourite basketball related movie of all time, Space Jam, where the NBA had to lock-out the 1995 season because the aliens from Moron Mountain stole the talents of Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Larry Johnson, Muggsy Bogues and Shawn Bradley to beat Michael Jordan and the Loony Toons, aka the 'Toon Squad'.

The second memory is slightly more real, when the NBA locked-out FOR REAL after Michael Jordan retired (if you didn't know, MJ runs everything basketball. Now you know) in 1998. The 1998-99 season started a little late, and only two-thirds of the regular season was played. The playoffs included a dream run by the Knicks to become the first eighth-seeded team to make the Finals, which were eventually won by the Duncan/Robinson Spurs, and sparked the beginning of one of the most consistent teams in NBA basketball.

That 1998-99 season was the first real season that I closely followed NBA basketball. That was the season where I could call myself a real fan, not just a casual over-hearer of news. And of course, because of the Knicks' amazing run that year, that the the season that made me a fan of NYK.

For Knicks fans like me, it's been downhill ever since, all until, ironically, today, when the Knicks are relevant again, and we face yet another lockout. CRAP.

So as a fan, NBA basketball has come full circle, starting with the last lockout and peaking with this one, before it all comes crumbling down again. I blame everyone involved. I blame David Stern (NBA Commissioner) for not softening his approach to the players. I blame Billy Hunter (NBPA Executive Director) for not softening his approach to the owners. I blame the players for not accepting lesser money. I blame the owners (who say that 22 out of 30 NBA teams are losing money) for being greedy.

The reality is of course several times more complicated than my super-simplified version in the paragraph above. I actually feel that I'm disrespecting the complexity of the negotiations by that simplified above paragraph. But no matter how deep you go into the issues, it all comes back to the basic, painful truth: there might not be any NBA games in the recent future. Not David Stern, or Billy Hunter, or the Lakers' Derek Fisher (President, NBPA), or the owners, all the other millionaire men in shiny black suits, or and millionaire athletes in fresh NBA jerseys... The lockout will hurt someone else much, much more.

The fans.

For the fans, the formula is simple. You can't see your favourite teams and your favourite players perform at the highest level. Until things get figured out, there will be no more excitement of trades this offseason, no one checking to see if rookies are developing, no teams getting upgraded, no faces of NBA players on any NBA websites (this one hit me HARD - check out NBA.com).

And worst of all, there will be no NBA basketball.

Sniff.