Ken Berger of CBS Sports doesn’t think it’s likely, but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
What if the top 25 or 30 players in the NBA — All-Stars and others deserving of that status — announced their intention to form a rival league? On many levels, it’s even more of a pie-in-the-sky dream for the players than getting a few million dollars from overseas teams. But short of a legal shock to the labor negotiations — for example, the issuing of a complaint against the NBA by the National Labor Relations Board in the next 60 days — it’s difficult to imagine a more effective leverage play than a breakaway league featuring the biggest stars in successful markets.
If someone could pull it off, it would beat the hell out of Sonny Weems signing in Lithuania as far as leverage goes.
How would Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan react if, say, Amar’e Stoudemire, Anthony and Paul joined forces on a team based in the New York metropolitan area and went on a mini barnstorming tour against such teams as an L.A.-based squad featuring Kobe Bryant, Blake Griffin and UCLA’s Russell Westbrook? How about instead of tearing up Rucker Park in his free time, Kevin Durant went back to Texas to play with Dirk Nowitzki, facing a Midwestern-based team starring Chicago natives Derrick Rose and Wade?
It’s an interesting thought, but who is going to put up the money for the league knowing full well that the owners would be back at the table in a New York minute?
Berger says that the potential for a spin-off league increases as the lockout goes deeper into the season
…if the two sides got deep into the fall — maybe all the way to Christmas — without a new CBA, the canceling of the season would open a window from, say, February to June for such an idea to work without the threat of the NBA resuming. The focus would then shift away from the failed efforts to save the season and toward the filling of a void in the marketplace for pro basketball. And there is a small pile of money to start with — the $188 million the league owes the players from last season’s escrow.
It’s an interesting idea that could work if the league’s biggest stars got together and could agree on format and financing.
