For the final 10 days of 2011, WEEI.com will count down the top 10 stories of the year in Boston sports. Our first entry in the countdown is No. 10: The NBA lockout.
After a summer of doubt, NBA commissioner David Stern went from Grinch to Santa when he delivered the gift of a 2011-12 NBA season. Basketball fans worldwide can rejoice on Christmas Day when they get to see their beloved league back in action, even if the season is shortened.
The lockout started July 1, as owners and players disagreed on terms of a new collective bargaining agreement. Primarily, the disagreement centered on who would get the majority of the league’s income. There was more to the CBA than that, of course, but the fact that the owners wanted to recapture more of the income pie left the players up in arms.
Over the course of the summer, negotiations were held between the leagues executives and the NBA players union, led by Billy Hunter, who oversaw the union’s litigation against the league during the 1998 NBA lockout.
With the experienced Hunter at the helm and Lakers guard Derek Fisher in charge of the players, the NBA went into a stalemate all summer. With neither the owners nor players budging on their terms and the season right around the corner, Stern made the move on October to cancel the first two weeks of the season, a blow to revenue for players and owners alike.
Stern went on to cancel the first quarter of the season when the players union made its first major move of the lockout by filing two anti-trust lawsuits against the owners.
On Thanksgiving, the two sides finally broke down and agreed to a new deal. According to Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck, common sense prevailed.
“The general concept was this is regrettable to have this lockout,” he said during Wednesday’s appearance on the Dennis & Callahan show. “If there is a deal, we might as well just go ahead and get to it. If there isn’t, that would be very disappointing.”
With teams able to make moves under new rules, deals started flying around the league. The Celtics tried to throw their hat into the mix, with reports that team president Danny Ainge offered Rajon Rondo for Hornets star Chris Paul, and then later a reported deal that would bring Hornets forward David West to Boston. However, neither deal came to fruition.
Rondo, previously mentioned in other trade rumors, brushed off the reports during a recent practice.
‘Somebody wants me if I’m not wanted here, but obviously these guys want me,” Rondo said. ‘Danny‘s believed in me since Day 1. He drafted me. I’ve been through a lot of different trade talks and I’m still here. I may be sensitive. I’m human. But I don’t think [the rumors] have hurt my game.”
Shortly after Rondo’s comments, Paul was traded — first to the Lakers, and then to the Clippers after the Lakers trade was denied by the league — and everything seemed right in Boston.
That is, until you look at the roster.
Despite the Celtics having perhaps their best draft in five years with the selection former Purdue standouts JaJuan Johnson and E’Twaun Moore, it’s been quite an unremarkable offseason for a Celtics team that has been all too quiet since falling to the Heat in the Eastern Conference semifinals in the spring.
The C’s biggest move was the acquisition of Brandon Bass, a big man who can work the paint and grab boards better than anyone else on the Celtics. They got Bass for Glen Davis, an inconsistent and undersized forward who had worn out his welcome with his immature behavior.
Now, the Celtics veterans are going to be have to play the most cramped season of their professional career — not a good thing for the aging legs of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen.
‘It’s going to be a frenetic season, obviously packed in, a lot of games,’ co-owner Steve Pagliuca said Wednesday on D&C. ‘The good news for us is that we have a veteran core, but we’ve got a lot of young legs on the team. Danny’s done another great job of building this squad. It’s a very deep team, and that deep team will pay service. Also, with a short training camp, we have four veterans coming back. They know the offense; we have veterans coming in. Doc [Rivers] will have them in very good shape to play.’
The team’s depth took a blow last week when it was announced that forward Jeff Green was diagnosed with a heart ailment that would require season-ending surgery. Green is expected to return next year, when the C’s likely will put a new plan in place to rebuild the roster with an eye toward the future.
Until then, the Celtics are focused on making one more run at a title with the Big Three.
‘We do think about the future every day. We really, really do,’ Grousbeck said Wednesday. ‘But this does look like another year when this core has a chance. And if we supplement them to the max, everything we can possibly do under the new rules, it looks like to us, and more importantly to the basketball staff, that these guys have one more chance at least. So, you make that decision and you put the throttle fully that way. We’re not halfway. ‘¦ It wasn’t a bad team last year. This year it looks like we can have a chance. Shortened season, almost anything can happen. So, we’re going for it.’
