The NBA lockout has been upon us for a few days, but already NBA players are getting ready to gear up.¤.¤. just in another country.
Nets star Deron Williams has agreed to play for the Turkish team Besiktas in the fall, assuming that the lockout is still occurring.
This can’t be a good sign of things to come if you were a fan hoping for a NBA season this year.
Whether or not Williams even ends up playing in Turkey is not the issue here. It’s more that players are already feeling strongly enough about the seriousness of the lockout that they are seriously considering alternate jobs.
During last season, Brandon Marshall joked (or at least I hope it was a joke) that he would like to play for the Miami Heat in case of a NFL lockout. However, the NFL has been locked out for months now, and we have not heard any noise from NFL players about an alternate job since it began. Players and fans alike realize that the NFL season WILL be played in 2011 and there is no need to scramble for a new job. Sure things are boring in football-land, but this season will occur.
The only action we are getting out of NFL players is there involvement in a "Field of Dreams" parody.
And then there’s the NBA, who had Ron Artest, or the MWP, say that he had considered playing in Finland in the fall. Deron Williams and Artest will not be the only players who will likely flock overseas in the event of a continued lockout, but it is awfully alarming that these players are planning this in July! The planned NBA season opener is still months away and there would be no reason to openly state an important decision this early, unless.¤.¤.
The NBA is not having a season in 2011
And it’s fairly obvious too. Besides the many reports from the media saying that the owners and the players are very far separated in their discussion, a star player has basically admitted he is very skeptical of the season occurring.
Deron Williams is a star in the league and is easily a Top 3 point guard. The Nets took a huge risk in trading for him last season, offering the Jazz high draft picks and established veterans in the hopes of building a team around Williams. This was all without knowing that D-Will would even want to play for the NJ-soon-to-be-Brooklyn Nets once his contract expires.
It can’t be too comforting for Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov to see his key investment (and a necessary piece if the Nets have any hopes of attracting other star players) playing for another club during this lockout. Anything can happen while playing, and an injury could be disastrous for the Nets.
The Turkish club says it doesn’t just plan on bringing in Deron Williams to play though, it has its eyes on an even bigger prize, Kobe Bryant. This seems crazy to me too and I can’t think of any reason Kobe, an aging superstar who’s won 5 championships and has more money then he will ever need, would possibly want to go to play in Turkey, where they can’t even offer him a money offer that he can’t refuse.
The whole lockout situation in the NBA is more then a mess and bizarre things will keep occurring as long as the season lays in serious jeopardy. Fix it boys.
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