Weak draft indicates bleak future for NBA

If you managed to stay awake, let alone alert, for the NBA Draft Thursday night, you deserve a pat on the back. How two rounds of drafting gets stretched to four hours is probably some form of television black magic but this year’s draft in particular was more of a snooze than usual.

More than anything, it was an early indication that the NBA’s immediate future is pretty bleak.

All the experts were calling it way in advance that this promised to be one of the weaker draft classes in years. There were a few notable college players who chose to return to school – mainly freshmen Jared Sullinger from Ohio State and Harrison Barnes from North Carolina – when in most years, the best NCAA players can’t wait to declare for the draft.

But if the NBA’s looming labor situation had any part in any college player’s decision to return to school, you could hardly blame them. Who would want to leave the college game to go sit around while the owners and players battle it out?

The two sides are reportedly so far apart (does this sound familiar NFL fans?) that it’s not looking like there’s going to be a full NBA season. Charles Barkley went so far as to tell Dan Patrick on his radio show that, “Honestly, I don’t think were going to play at all next year. Everything is out of whack. These owners are in it for Armageddon.”

NBA Commissioner David Stern indicated that the league’s owners were poised to lose $350 million this season. One big thing the owners want is a hard salary cap, which would mean the one big markets wouldn’t have to spend as much on player salaries, meaning more profits for them. It would theoretically allow smaller market teams to compete. But for obvious reasons, the players are totally against this. There’s also discussion of revenue sharing (because that’s working out so well in Major League Baseball. The owners are taking the shared money for themselves, not putting it into their team payrolls).

So while you wanted to feel excited for all the players that were drafted, there was an overlying sense that you wouldn’t see any of them for a while. There were also more “Who’s that?” moments during this draft.

Unfortunately, as much as the network execs wanted NBA fans to get excited about all the great stories in this year’s draft, the sad truth is the much bigger issue at hand stole the show.