In Italy and in Europe we look with interest and curiosity at what could be the side effects of the lockout in the NBA, but in the meantime what are the consequences in the United States? How is the most famous basketball league in the world, where dizzying sums are spent and earned every year, how is it reacting to this increasingly probable lockout?
Next year without the NBA championship means, first of all, great economic losses for the entire sector, from companies to sponsors. The consequences will not only be player migrations to other leagues around the world, in fact the resulting financial effects will have to be covered and supported in some way. And here the League is starting to take the first steps in this direction.
The news of the dismissal of 114 employees of the National Basketball Association due to the economic difficulties that the entire organization is experiencing, i.e. about 10% of the personnel who work in the league's offices, is recent. The decision, from what can be read in the American press, was taken within two days. This choice highlights a state of crisis that seems to have no end, if an agreement is not reached between players and owners, this could only be the first of the sad consequences of the lockout. But this is not isolated news, the Charlotte Bobcats in fact, two weeks ago announced that they had fired 35 people for the same reasons.
The American basketball league said it has already suffered losses totaling 300 million dollars and there are numerous teams with accounts in the red. If the strike, which begins on July XNUMX, is not lifted, the NBA announces many more losses.
Meanwhile, the offensives of the owners of the teams have begun. The photos of the players have disappeared from all the official sites of the NBA clubs. From one day to the next, for example, the photos of Nowitzki and his teammates, winners of the last NBA championship, disappeared from the Dallas Mavericks website, replaced by the images of caps and T-shirts that the company sells on its website. Similar situations in all the other web pages of the clubs, where at most the only players whose photos you can admire are old stars who have already finished their careers years ago.
If this is the trick thrown by the companies at the players, the NBA stars are certainly not watching who, with a video that has already been around the world, make fun of the imminent lockout. In the short film, players like Blake Griffin, Kevin Love, Tyson Chandler but also Ron Artest and Adrian Peterson, joke about their "unemployed" situation and offer to do various chores during the lockout, such as picking things up too high or squashing bugs on the ceiling, taking advantage of their height.
Here is the funny clip of the stars: VIDEO
