Tuesday, November 17, 1998

Dribbling away fortunes

Nobody cares. That is the conclusion of a wildly unscientific poll of office sports fans on whether the National Basketball Association season goes down the drain.

Even the owners, who stand to lose $400 million, and the players, who stand to lose $1 billion, don't seem to care much. No formal talks to end the lockout have been held in more than a week; the full negotiating teams haven't met in three; no meetings are scheduled.

Maybe some people do care: Marketing students at business schools who see a doctoral thesis in chronicling how a sport that depends so much on publicity, hype and public good will dribbled away its franchise.

Even with a quick settlement, the NBA season couldn't be relaunched much before Christmas, and by then pro basketball might find its fans already engrossed in college basketball or gone off to pro wrestling.

Even after a spectacular season, major league baseball is still short of the attendance levels it had before its 1994 strike. And, as compared with the NBA, during the baseball strike people at least cared enough to take sides. What a sad epitaph for a season: Nobody cared.