AJ Gilpin Final NBA Lockout

AJ Gilpin

Bryan Lutz

English 151

November 16, 2011

Lockout or Payout?

            Lockouts seem to be a large portion of recent news, whether it be the NFL, NBA or NHL.  The 2004-2005 NHL season was completely cancelled due to a lockout. The NFL had a lockout for the 2012 season but the owners and players resolved the issue and are having a successful season. This does not seem to be the case for the Nation Basketball Association though. They are currently in a lockout that has already cancelled the first two weeks of this season. So what is a “lockout” exactly? It is basically a dispute between owners and players over aspects of the NBA. One of the main focuses of their disputes is money. The NBA is currently fighting over money. The already extremely rich NBA owners are attempting to take even more money from the players. As it looks the lockout will continue till the players are willing to give up more money to the owners.  While more and more of the season gets cancelled both the players and the owners will continually lose money.  The players gain no money at all while the lockout continues. The owners who are still being greedy and asking for more money are still getting paid from television providers like TBS, Fox and TNT. I find it strange that while the owners are asking for more money they are still receiving hefty paychecks. This NBA lockout is a standoff between millionaires and billionaires.

This video by a group in Taiwan gives a breif summary of the NBA lockout so far.

            With the possibility of the entire season being cancelled many NBA stars are doing other jobs or playing overseas just to earn a paycheck. “Nets All-Star Deron Williams has a deal with Turkish club Besiktas -  which is also courting Kobe Bryant - and most top players said they would consider playing overseas,”

            Many star players a being forced to play overseas so that they can make a paycheck. With no end in sight more and more players will be playing overseas or getting regular jobs like us to stay afloat. The lockout is hardest on rookie players that just got drafted. They have not received a paycheck yet so there is no nest egg in which they can live off of during the lockout. Many rookie players like Kyrie Irving have decided to go back to college. Irving will be a sophomore at Duke and is being respected for furthering his education while the lockout is taking place.  Like I said before the lockout is just billionaires versus millionaires. At the end of the day the owners are going to get want they want because they have more power. They have more money and can risk losing an entire season because they are still making money off of television contracts. The players that cannot play overseas will soon fold into the owners. The owners will get what they want and will soon be even richer while the players’ salaries are harshly cut. The owners are trying to make a 50-50 split in the money going to players and owners. There are 30 teams so about 30 owners and around 450 players. It is outrageous that the owners are asking for a split of the money when there are 15 times the number of players than there are owners. The owners are going to continue to do a standoff and not agree to a deal until it is exactly what they want. The players will slowly begin to break down and offer more and more money to the owners until they agree. Hopefully this point happens before the entire season is cancelled. A cancellation is a huge threat this year and hopefully they will reach an agreement before that has to happen.

           Players want nothing more than to play basketball. It is not just a job to them it is a way of life and something they all enjoy doing. The players are willing to give up some money but cannot give up enough to where it will not be worth playing. As shown in the Jordan commercial the players are going to play no matter what the owners decide no matter where. The players love the game and will continue to play.

Many people think that the players are out of line because the last couple years NBA teams have shown record losses and have been losing more and more money every year. The players have been called selfish which is illustratred by this picture. Last season the NBA players were making 57% of the NBA's money and are willing to take a drop in order to account for the loss of money by the teams. People call them selfish even though they are willing to give up some of their money to the owners. I think the players need to hold their ground and make as much money as they can. Honestly why should the players take a 7% paycut? The players are not to blame for the loss of money so why should they be the ones to take the punishment? Many fans just decide to blame the players because they do not know the true facts and just wanna see an NBA season this year.

 You can blame the players or you can blame the owners but at the end of the day everyone suffers including the fans. The amount of people that lose money over this lockout is rediculous. The players, owners, and every person that lives in the cities where NBA teams are losing money. The fans are not being able to spend their money on seats and other things at the game which will not help the cities or our countries already low economies.  "The NBA projects that 22 teams lost a combined $450 million this year while eight franchises reported profits totaling $150 million, thus creating an aggregate loss of 300 million for the league." Think about it they lost that much in a year where basketball was played. The amout of money spent during that season by fans would definitely help the economy. While this lockout continues the economy is losing tons of money that would be going into the economy. This lockout is not only bad for fans it is bad for everyone in the nation.

Wether you call the players selfish or the owners selfish or you dont really have an opinion about this I'm sure that everyone who cares about basketball will agree that while this lockout is happening that the fans and the cities are being screwed because millionaires and billionaires cannot come to an agreement about what to do with the money that the NBA generates in the coming years. This statement is shown very greatly by the peanuts in about every movie.

Lets just all hope that we will soon see NBA played again... preferably by the Christmas games.

Works Cited

Freeman, Eric. "Video: Taiwanese News Animation Explains the NBA Lockout - Ball Don't Lie - NBA Blog - Yahoo! Sports." Yahoo! Sports - Sports News, Scores, Rumors, Fantasy Games, and More. 13 Oct. 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/Video-Taiwanese-news-animation-explains-the-NBA?urn=nba-wp9357.

Paul, Ari. "Class Struggle On The Court." Nation 293.7/8 (2011): 23-25. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 Nov. 2011.

Thomsen, Ian. "Derek Fisher Wants The Ball." Sports Illustrated 115.3 (2011): 46-49. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 Nov. 2011.

"FIBA Will Clear NBA Players to Play Overseas during Lockout | NBA.com." NBA.com. 29 July 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. <http://www.nba.com/2011/news/07/29/FIBA-clearance/index.html>.

AJ Gilpin Blog #15

Blog 1

            The first blog I found regarding the topic of the NBA Lockout is a blog by Sekou Smith called ‘Stale Contracts’ Offer Lockout Insight. The article talks about players who used to be superstars get older and are not as good as they used to be. This makes the team not want to pay as much as the contract said because the player is no longer worth that much money. I do not believe the author uses the rhetorical appeals very often. There may be some logos in the article from the multiple facts in it but that is about it. The article is different from others because Smith talked about a specific issue that could have caused the lockout.

Blog 2

            The author of this blog post is Ben Golliver. This article is about Carmelo Anthony and the things he’s done since the lockout. They talk about boxing tennis and he even jokes about soccer. Again I did not feel a lot of rhetorical appeals in this article. This article is different because it focuses on what the players are doing during the lockout.

Blog 3

            The author of this blog post is Ben Golliver. He posted an interview with Dwayne Wade a player from the Miami Heat. He spoke to David Stern, the NBA Commisioner, during labor talks and Wade raised his voice to someone because he felt he was not respected by Stern.  In this article there was some Pathos as Wade showed a lot of emotion when he felt he was not respected.

Blog 4

            The last blog post comes from Matt Moore and is called EOB Roundtable: Lockout Winners and Losers. The article talks about who the winners and the losers are in the lockout. Some of the names are Lebron James and Dwayne Wade who have been having exhibition games while others have done nothing. This gives the Miami Heat an edge once the season does start because there will be no “rust to get off”. The losers are players who will not be ready to play. Another winner is Kyrie Irving a rookie who is going back to Duke and playing basketball and furthering his education.  There was not very much rhetorical appeals in this. And it is different from other articles because it looks at what is really happening to the players during this lockout.

Rhetorical piece by AJ Gilpin

Martin Luther King Jr's "I Had a Dream" speech.

• What made this speech rhetoric was a lot of pathos.
• There was so much emotion in the way MLK gave the speech and the content would also appeal to the listeners emotions.
• He also used some logos while he talked about Abraham Lincoln by using dates and stating facts.
• Ethos was the hardest for me to find but I think he had some near the end talking about what the children will be doing.

AJ Gilpin Blog #10

October 2

DE VANY, ARTHUR. "STEROIDS AND HOME RUNS." Economic Inquiry 49.2 (2011): 489-511. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 3 Oct. 2011.

Online Article

Reading Notes	Strong response Notes
“What was homerun hitting like before there were steroids? What is it like now that there is some evidence of steroid use? In a nutshell, the answer is that there are no differences”	Strong quote
“Steroids do not come into the picture, nor is there any need to invoke explanations that go beyond the natural variation of home run hitting, at bats, chance, and the laws of extreme human accomplishment.”	Good quote
The maximum homeruns in a season has only gone up a few homeruns since the 1960s	Good information of why steroids have little change in baseball.

Strong Response Summary

I really liked this article. My original research question delt with the positive or negative effects steroids would have on professional sports. This article gave me a different perspective. With all the charts and data on homeruns per year, it is possible that steroids have shown little to no effect on performance in professional baseball. I need to research into this more and maybe find some articles that show some kind of effect on performance. Overall I can use this article and enjoyed it.

AJ Gilpin Blog #9

How would legalizing steroids change professional sports? For better or for worse?

AJ Gilpin Blog #8

Suheir Hammad does a great job of using ethos, pathos and logos in her poetry. Ethos is used throughout the whole poem. She states things that have been said to her that are very unethical. Like when someone asks her “what navy is your brother in?” (Hammad 2:16). It is very unethical to blame someone for the sole fact of the color of their skin. She says that she cried when the towers fall. She was born in America and so were her brothers so she does not want to hear that her brothers could be blamed. She was also asked if she knew the attackers. This is another very unethical thing to ask again because the asker was saying that based on the color of her skin and did not know who she really was. Hammad uses logical appeal when she asks the audience why we never have persecuted white people for their terrorist actions. She gives many examples. One being the KKK. This really resonated with me because I have never really thought about that either. Her logos even influenced me through this.  I believe that Hammad uses pathos the most. Almost everything she says in her poem has to do with some type of emotion. One element of pathos is when she is talking about the big white woman that gives her a hug when she sees Hammad crying. All she can say is that she is arab and her brother is in the navy. The woman can only say that she’s in double trouble. The emotion used in her poem is so overwhelming. As the camera shows the audience you see people of all colors either crying or cheering about what Hammad has to say.

AJ Gilpin Blog #7

In chapters 3 and 5 in the Pearson text book there were many hotspots that caught my eye. The first one was in the section entitled Thought Exercise on Angle of Vision.   This section talked about how one experience can turn into multiple different stories depending on who you tell the story to. The example they used was going to a party and the next day two people ask you about it. One is your best friend and the other is a parent. I found this very interesting because it is obvious I would tell a different story to my parents than my best friend. It was exciting for me to think about what kind of story would come out with other people asking me about it and I came to the conclusion that the story could have gone and infinite amount of ways depending on the situation as I am telling it.

Another are I found interesting was in the beginning of chapter 5 when the author attempts to define an exploratory essay. “An exploratory essay narrates a writer’s thinking process while doing research. The essay recounts your attempt to examine your question’s complexity, explore alternatives, and arrive at a solution or answer,” (Pearson 105).  I found this interesting because I have never had to write and exploratory essay and never really knew what one is. In high school we were forced to write research papers each year. I feel if the paper was structured like an exploratory essay it would have been a lot easier to do and also a lot more fun. It sounds like an exploratory essay is a lot less structured that a research paper.