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		NBA players and owners shoot off fireworks during negotiations By David Zizmor July 4, 2011

	OAKLAND--It's really unfortunate that the NBA has come down to such a bad situation in these negotiations. Obviously the lock out was not expected this was something that everyone saw coming from a mile away by saving some of their cash and the players should be a little more thrifty with their money. In the NFL their not losing money but the NBA is losing money and they are structural problems as far as how the teams deal with each other and how teams sign players. As far as how teams deal with each other there's really not a good revenue sharing agreement in place in the NBA. The NFL obviously is the gold standard as far as revenue sharing that's because the NFL has this ridiculous television contract. The NFL is the only league that can pull that off that's because they don't have that many games 20 total including pre season. When each team has only 16 regular season games you can televise every single game on a national basis every single week. Every single dollar that the NFL makes off of television it is off a national contract. You don't have that in the NBA, you don't have that in baseball, and you don't have that in hockey. The NFL is the only sport that's kind of hard to compare. The NFL gets tons of TV dollars and it has to be shared equally amongst all the teams mostly because it's signed collectively simply by every single team involving every other team. In of all the other sports, the NBA, baseball, and the NHL, there are some that has a national television contract and those are certainly shared amongst all the teams. By and large games from all those sports to televise on local stations and they get their own television revenues. So every market is going to bear a different amount of money in terms of TV revenue. In a small market their not going to be as much money, it's just that simple. The NBA is obviously one of those leagues that has to deal with it like that, Indiana is not going to get as much money as Chicago. They're spending way more money than say Atlanta, it's very simple. The Major League Baseball teams have figured out some form of revenue sharing over the years. They recognize there is some disparity between the high market and low market teams. They tried to fix it, they haven't fixed it perfectly but they do have a revenue sharing system in place to equalize things. You see some parity in MLB because of it, in the NBA there's really no revenue sharing again they have national television contracts but there nowhere close to the level of he NFL. It certainly not equal enough to equalize the team. So teams get their share of the national contract but it's that local TV revenue that really drives the market. Once you consider the above, the NBA really doesn't have any revenue sharing, so it really makes a disparity between the big market and the small market. That's a big problem and that's something the owners and players are going to have to work out amongst themselves. My understanding it's the players that want write some of that revenue sharing ideas into the next CBA. They feel like having it right there in ink, to be bargained over. which gives them some kind of leverage. It doesn't seem like it's something that immediately impacts the players. David Zizmor is covering the NBA negotiations in week one of the NBA lock out for Sportstalk radio