Wow, that's a headline I never thought I'd actually type. First things first, I think we can all agree that the NBA is going to lose some, if not all, of its regular season games in 2011-12. The players know this. The owners know this. That's why you're seeing guys sign contracts to play in Turkey, Russia, Germany, basically all over Europe. But the lack of a CBA is proving to be more problematic for the players than anybody thought.
Now, I don't care when NBA games are played once again. I didn't watch them before, and I won't watch them when they come back. But that's not the point of this post. The Olympics are next summer. That means this summer features Olympic qualifying for every nation except the host country (Great Britain) and the defending World Champion (the United States). Fortunately, Kevin Durant single-handedly won the World Championship last year in Turkey. Otherwise, the U.S. could have been staring at playing Olympic qualifiers without NBA players. While that's the way it always used to be, it hasn't been that way in more than 20 years, and it certainly would've created quite the predicament for USA Basketball.
However, every other country is in that exact situation. An element of the NBA's collective bargaining agreement that a lot of people don't realize involves insurance. As part of the owners' agreement with the players union, each player's health insurance is covered by his NBA team. Without an agreement between the owners and the players in place, the players' health insurance is also in limbo. Here's why that's a problem: if you don't have any insurance, you're liable for any potential injuries you suffer.
Normally, NBA players are free to play for their national teams during the offseason without having to worry about health insurance, which is taken care of under the CBA as long as they're on an NBA roster. That's obviously not the case this summer. That leaves national federations with two options: either go without the NBA players (who obviously are the best in the country) or pay for their insurance so that they can play. Neither one of these options is particularly favorable, but I think the one selected is pretty obvious. Spain would prefer to attempt to qualify with Pau Gasol on the roster. Ditto for Germany and Dirk Nowitzki. And Argentina with Manu Ginobili. That was the right decision. Who knows if they'd qualify anyway, making this a moot point? But it's not worth the risk. And, frankly, can you picture the Olympic tournament NOT including teams like Spain, Germany and Argentina.
In its collective obsession with all things NBA, ESPN is going to show the finals of the European and American qualifying tournaments. (By the way, there's no word whether or not anybody involved with ESPN is on suicide watch about the potential of no NBA season, but I'd stay away from Bristol on those first couple Friday nights in November just to be safe.) While I don't have a problem with this (I think the basketball is going to be very good, and it'll certainly be very competitive), I'm left to wonder if ESPN would still be showing it if the NBA guys hadn't been cleared to play. My guess is no.
And that brings me back to my original point. The Olympics gives the NBA owners and players a deadline (albeit an unofficial one) to get a new CBA finalized, signed and ratified. Otherwise we're left with this same nightmare going into the London Olympics. Only it'll be made worse by the sheer fact that now the U.S. would face the same prospect. The challenge would be much greater for Mike Krzyzewski and Jerry Colangelo than it might be for a country like Lithuania, which only has a handful of NBA players on its national team and goes without them a lot. And, let's face it, this is the only international tournament that American NBA guys actually want to play in.
For the sake of the Olympic competition, the NBA lockout needs to be settled sometime before next summer. The Olympics are the height of athletic competition. It deserves the best teams that those nations that qualified are capable of putting out there. And as much as I love college basketball, a team full of college guys representing the U.S. against professionals from other nations would probably be in over their heads. The NBA was locked out during the 1998 World Championships, so no NBA players were eligible to play for the United States. USA Basketball held tryouts a few weeks before those World Championships began and a team consisting of CBA players did an admirable job, winning the bronze.
The world of international basketball has only gotten better since then, as evidence by Argentina winning the Olympic gold in 2004 and Spain winning the World Championship in 2006. This proves that even an American team consisting of solely NBA players isn't guaranteed anything. But we, as fans, deserve the best team possible going for Olympic gold, the most prestigious prize in sports. And that's a team comprised of NBA players.
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