"NBA Lockout Ends and Players Get Played"

I know I wrote a piece talking about how I didn't care about the NBA lockout, but, well, that doesn't mean I'm happy with the outcome.  This piece by David Zirin in the Nation pretty much sums up my feelings on this whole mess (short: "the rich got richer, the players got played and the fans didn’t get a damn thing"):

There are no promises that the owners will plow this newfound lucre into their teams. In fact, there are now greater restraints on spending than before. There are no assurances that any funds will be earmarked for coaches or scouts. There are no announcements that any of these savings will translate into lower ticket prices or NBA package discounts for fans. All it means is that the owners have received a financial windfall because they own and we don’t. Now Donald Sterling, owner of the LA Clippers, can buy some more slums. Now Phil Anschutz, minority-boss of the Lakers, can keep fighting the teaching of evolution in schools. Now Dick Devos of the Orlando Magic can give even more generously to Focus on the Family. Now every shadowy Koch brothers/Karl Rove political outfit that takes unlimited contributions will get a serious windfall just in time for the 2012 elections. Break out the bubbly.

This should sting every player, because coming off a year with record revenues, they should have been getting more, and instead they took historic cuts. Instead, their contracts are now not fully guaranteed. Instead, they are weakened. They are weakened even though they are the game. For the millions who paid good money to watch the Chicago Bulls player Michael Jordan soar, no one ever paid a cent to see the Charlotte Hornets owner Michael Jordan molt. Athletes are different than typical workers, and not just because their paychecks tower over our own. They are different because they fulfill the roles in production as both workers and product. They are the shoemaker and the shoe. Or as former Washington football great Brian Mitchell said to me, “In a restaurant, a chef cooks a steak. In sports, we are the chef and we are the steaks.”