Bethlehem Says: You Don't Matter.
I’m not really concerned with who first started humoring the voice of the fan, or why. We all started as fans; presumably, most of us working somewhere in the business still are. However, it has absolutely no place in this lockout. The knee-jerk reaction to cancelations, of which there will be more today, is “I want my NBA!” or “Come on, let’s save the NBA!”
The problem is that this kind of selfishness plays right into the hands of owners, providing leverage and creating an imbalance in talks that really, have nothing to do with basketball, or how much we love it.
This is a familiarly good point, and speaks to one reason it makes sense to ‘call out’ various celebrity misdeeds or examine events that don’t really apply to anyone’s life directly: they create an occasion to look at a large situation magnified even more. Players failing in labor talks — for whatever reasons — does not speak well for anyone else making much progress.
