The NBA has successfully brainwashed a lot of its viewers into treating “player empowerment” like some big social justice/civil rights issue. To the detriment of the fans and the product.

The real issue is “rich people vs working class fans”. Notice when I frame it like that all of a sudden you’re not automatically compelled to defend spoiled, entitled multi-millionaire players? Notice how it lumps the owners, the players, the commissioner, and every single caretaker of the product under one umbrella that can be cumulatively held accountable by the fans for ruining the product? It’s the league vs the fans.

We need to stop hammering “pro-player vs pro-owner” bullshit into the viewers brains. Somebody needs to be pro-fan. Everyone should be pro-fans. These are billionaires going up against multimillionaire players. The only stakeholder we as fans should care about is the fans. In some cases, siding with the best interests of fans just happens to align with the best interests of the owners and when that happens, we need start pushing back against fake moral outrage for daring to suggest that this player empowerment nonsense has gone too far.

This isn’t slavery or Jim Crow. This isn’t some “plight of the working class” issue. These athletes are compensated more than fairly for any perceived slights from the owners. These players have more in common with the billionaire owners than your average Joe at the factory. It’s an entertainment product after all and using this league to champion pro-union sentiments at the expense of the quality of the league isn’t being pro-player or pro-owner, it’s being anti-fan. Maybe let’s approach it with that nuance in mind instead of backing the players regardless of how they choose to run this league into the ground.

NBA fans should be pro-fan. Nothing else.