It appears that the plutocrats who own NBA teams have decided that the path trod by the plutocrats who run NFL teams is the one that they want to be on. Terrific. Some day in the dim future, historians are going to remember this time in history as the time when the people controlling the money and power in this country decided en masse that they were the only living people who counted.

Make no mistake. These guys -- and their footballing counterparts -- are members of a corporate class that, in their regular day jobs, have been revelling over the past three-plus decades in the collapse of the labor movement and the yawning gap between profits and real wages. They are the out-sourcers. They are the union-busters. They are the benefit-snatchers. To expect them to behave any differently towards their other employees just because those employees make a lot of money and have semi-functioning union representation is to expect a goat to ice-skate. You will not see any of these people selling apples on the sidewalk any time soon, no matter how loudly they poor-mouth the expensive hobby toys they bought for themselves.

The NBA is in lockout because David Stern decided to have a lockout.  David Stern knows who pays his salary. Ask the fans in Seattle how much he cares about anyone else.