NBA players union executive director Billy Hunter (GETTY IMAGES)

Back in 1998, the NBA suffered a huge financial setback and public relations black eye when the league wiped 32 regular-season games and the best it could do was put together a 50-game schedule that started in January. Union executive director Billy Hunter was asked who won or lost in the collective bargaining war and explained that neither side came out unscatched.

“Did we blink? I guess we both blinked,” Hunter said hours after a new deal was reached in January of 1999 to save the season and the playoffs.

Fast forward to 2011 and we are in the same place again. Deja vu!

It’s like a bad Hollywood sequel. “The Lockout II” stars David Stern, reprising his role as the commissioner, and Hunter returns as the union’s embattled executive director. “The Lockout II” introduces a couple of new characters, Derek Fisher replaces Patrick Ewing as the union president and Adam Silver takes over for Russ Granik as the league’s deputy commissioner. However, the storyline and plot remains the same. Ultimately, the big dramatic final scene the players are expecting won’t reach the cutting room floor because the ending has already been written.

Even the script from the league hasn’t changed, just needing some very minor editing. Granik took the podium and addressed the media in 1998 and said the current system is broken. Silver didn’t have the benefit of a podium in 2011 but his message was basically the same. He said on Monday that the current system is broken.

Contrary to what Hunter said 13 years ago, the big winner from the 1998 lockout were the players. Let’s face it, from 2000 to 2010, the players – especially the superstars – enjoyed the fruits of the very long and hard labor debate of ’98. If the players didn’t think they won the last fight, then check out these numbers:

– $19.2 million for Gilbert Arenas.

– $21.2 million for Kevin Garnett.

– $21.3 million for Tim Duncan.

– $22.1 million for Rashard Lewis.

– $25.2 million for Kobe Bryant.

Those were the estimated salaries earned by each player last season. Kobe certainly earned his paycheck but you can argue that the other four were severely overpaid. Arenas was a bit player for the Orlando Magic and has never been the same since multiple knee surgeries. Duncan and Garnett are well past their primes and Lewis’ contract was like stealing money and is the very reason why the system has severe flaws.

The players will argue that nobody put a gun to the owners’ heads when they wrote these massive checks, so the players have a very good argument there. However, the owners will argue that under the current system overpaying for talent is the only way to stay competitive.

Two former NBA players who lived through the 1998 lockout were Charles Barkley and Reggie Miller. Barkley, who now works as a studio analyst for TNT, recently said on NBA TVs “Game Time” that besides revenue distribution the one gigantic issue hovering over this year’s lockout is competitive balance.

“We can’t have all our stars playing in just the major markets. It’s not fair to the game, it’s not fair to the system,” Barkley explained, an obvious strike at LeBron James’ highly debated decision to leave Cleveland for Miami last summer.

“This thing is about competitive balance,” Barkley continued. “Commissioner Stern, who I tell people is the best commissioner in sports and it has been that way for a long time, he’s not gonna let the NBA [become] like pro baseball where it is top heavy. All the teams with the most money get all the stars and then we have 10, 15 franchises dormant. He’s not going to let that happen.”

According to NBA insider David Aldridge, the Los Angeles Lakers’ team payroll reached $110 million last season. Meanwhile, the Sacramento Kings had an estimated team payroll of $44 million.

One way to combat the disparity between the have and the have-nots is having a bonafide superstar in each market. “You can have a bad team in a small market, but at least if you have a star that team can make money,” Barkley said. “You’ve got something to sell to the public. But if you are not gonna have these stars in these small markets they are not gonna survive.”

Miller, who also works for TNT, agrees with Barkley but has a pointed message for the owners. “Stop overspending on these mediocre players!” the former Indiana Pacers guard said on NBA TV. “Maybe you should hire better general managers who can evaluate talent better. There’s no way you give Rashard Lewis $120 million, a 30-year-old shooting guard in Joe Johnson $130 million, Travis Outlaw five years $30 million. Start looking at your general managers. That’s the reason why we are in this mess in the first place because you can’t assess talent well.”

Miller predicts the players will blink and there will be a 50-game season, starting in January. However, Miller also said he wouldn’t be surprised if the whole 2011-12 season is wiped out. Barkley sees a lost season if the players don’t agree to the 50-50 revenue split on basketball related income.

“If they get a 50-50 split they can make money. If they get a hard cap that can work, or they can have a better revenue sharing system,” Barkley said. “The NBA has been preparing not to play this season for two years. When they went through the whole LeBron thing for the whole season, then the Chris Bosh thing happened. Then you have the whole ‘Where is Chris Paul going next, where is Dwight Howard going?’ You can see the NBA saying ‘We’ve got to stop this.’ ”

Joel Huerto is the editor and publisher of OneManFastBreak.net. Follow him @onemanfastbreak.

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After a nonproductive day on the collective bargaining table with the players’ association NBA commissioner David Stern and his deputy Adam Silver said on Tuesday that the 2011-12 NBA preseason has been wiped out, and if no new deal is in place by Oct. 10 then Stern has no choice but to cancel the first two weeks of the regular season.

If you are judging from home and looking at this whole ordeal from the outside, it appears that Stern and the owners are winning this battle. The league is basically waiting for the players to crack, and it will be just a matter of time before that happens. Poor Derek Fisher, the embattled union president who has had the unenviable task of trying to keep his troops intact while satisfying those power-hungry agents. It’s like asking a bunch of 5-year-olds to not run around during recess. It’s an impossible task.

Just like 1998 when the season was cut down to 50 games, the players stood their ground until the majority of the players peeled off from the union and buckled under the pressure of losing their livelihood. Stern doesn’t seem concerned at all about losing regular season games in 2011 – and possibly the entire 2011-12 season for that matter – because that was the plan all along by the owners when the current deal expired on July 1.

“I don’t think they’re gonna play this year,” TNT commentator and Hall-of-Famer Charles Barkley said on NBATV. “I think the owners have said ‘You know what, we’re gonna be like hockey. We’re gonna have to burn down the house and start over, come in with a cap and make this thing competitive for all the teams.’ That’s what the owners have said from the beginning. They’re not gonna budge this time. They’re not gonna play at all this year.”

TNT commentator Charles Barkley

Barkley noted that one of the biggest mistakes the players are making is that they are banking on a repeat of 1998, but the difference this time around is the fact that the owners are more willing to sacrifice the entire season to save their own bank accounts.

“I think the players are getting screwed by 1998. In the back of the players’ mind they are [thinking] ‘Oh, we’ll start the season in January.’ I don’t think you can compare ’98 to 2011,” Barkley said. “We’ve been in a recession for the last two or three years, some of these teams are really hurting, players’ salaries have continued to go up and they’re gonna continue to go up.

“The owners are saying ‘We’ll lose less money by not playing at all.’ I think that’s been their strategy from the beginning.”

As for the option of playing overseas, Barkley says this strategy only benefits the superstars. “This probably hurt the players,” Barkley said. “This thing is about stars, and the stars have been somewhat selfish talking about going overseas. The majority of the players are not gonna be able to go overseas.”

Barkley believes this current standoff could have been avoided had guys like Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Kobe Bryant gotten more involved in the early stages of the lockout. Instead, after being absent for much of the summer, the stars came out in droves and crashed the collective bargaining meetings in New York, which made it harder to get a deal done. Wade and Stern reportedly got into a verbal joust in one of the weekend sessions, adding more tension to an already stressful situation.

“Those stars just started showing up [to the meetings] for the last week. They should have been in there [from the beginning],” Barkley said. “The stars have more to lose than anybody. They just showed up last week, and it’s too late. They should have been in there like a month ago.”

Barkley added, “The people who work for these teams and work in these arenas they’re the big losers.”

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Dwyane Wade will always have a leg up on LeBron James in Miami. (GETTY IMAGES)

LeBron James has never looked so small.

When James ditched his homestate team of Cleveland, Ohio, for a chance to play with not one but two of his All-Star buddies in Miami, Fla., it was loud and clear admission that the self-proclaimed King James can’t rule a kingdom on his own. Sadly, it was almost a cry for help. This is The Chosen One? The guy who is supposed to be the biggest and the baddest player in the Association and heir to Michael Jordan’s throne as the greatest player of all time? What a royal disappointment.

In James’ quest to conquer his first NBA championship, the 25-year-old two-time league MVP raised his right arm and waved for more troops. He needed Chris Bosh. He needed Dwyane Wade. He didn’t want to be in the frontline nor the backline. He just wanted to jump on someone else’s troop and win the battle playing as the second or third fiddle.

To put it in a New York Yankees perspective, LeBron is Alex Rodriguez and Wade is Derek Jeter. That leaves Bosh as Mark Teixeira. Much like A-Rod, James went lead role to a supporting actor, and didn’t mind it one bit.

Can you imagine Jordan teaming up with Isiah Thomas with the Detroit Pistons? Or, how about Larry Bird leaving Boston to play with Magic Johnson in L.A.? Can you see Kobe Bryant opting out of his contract with the Lakers and teaming with Wade and Bosh in Miami?

No way! Heck no! And hell no!

Miami is Wade County and American Airlines Arena is D-Wade’s house. Wade owns a championship ring and a Finals MVP trophy. Because he was The Guy who led the Heat to a championship in 2006, he will always be toast of the parties on Ocean Boulevard in South Beach.

During the Heat’s news conference at American Airlines Arena Friday night, James was introduced first, then Bosh and then Wade. Wade also got the loudest ovation from the more than 10,000 Heat fans in attendance. Then, during the session with the media, Wade sat in the middle of the table and was flanked by James and Bosh. That’s going to be the pecking order with the Miami Heat. Wade will always drive the Heat bus, with James and Bosh as his passengers.

Charles Barkley, one of only six regular-season MVPs to not win an NBA championship, said that  during his prime years in the league, it never even crossed his mind that he needed help from other All-Star players to win a title. In fact, Barkley thought he could do it on his own every year because he wanted to be The Guy.

Barkley wanted to be The Guy who took the last shot, grabbed the key rebound, made the crucial pass that led his team to victory and ultimately to a championship. That title never came, but at least Barkley never took a backseat to anyone. When he first arrived in the NBA in 1984 as a member of the Philadelphia 76ers – a team who won the NBA title the previous year and boasted Hall-of-Famers Moses Malone and Julius Erving – Barkley, in his mind, was the best player on the team. He didn’t care if Moses or Dr. J were on the same court.

“If I was 25, I’d try to win [a championship] by myself, not technically to win it by myself, but I would make sure I was The Guy on the team,” Barkley said on NBATV. “We just started giving Kobe Bryant credit the last two years. There was that stigma that he hadn’t won without Shaq. You see, we have elevated him because he won the last two as The Guy. And LeBron is never gonna be The Guy. Dwyane Wade has already won a championship, so it’s his team.

“I still think LeBron is the best player in the NBA. But there is a knock – and it is a fair knock – because the reason why I say that is if we’re gonna use the same criteria on Kobe Bryant we have to use it on LeBron James also.”

Barkley said he was disappointed James didn’t stay with the Cavaliers because winning a championship in a title-starved city like Cleveland would have been sweeter, especially for a player who grew up in nearly Akron and is all too familiar with the sad sports history of Cleveland, Ohio.

“It would have been a lot more significant to win a championship in Cleveland than piggyback on Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh,” Barkley said. “If he wins a championship in Miami, would it be a great thing ‘yeah, it would be a great thing.’ But it won’t be nearly as significant and it won’t enhance his legacy. That’s the bottom line.”

Barkley is completely miffed at the fact that James, who at 25 is very much in the prime of his professional basketball career, would choose to defer to another superstar just to win a title. In other words, LeBron took the shortcut instead of staying on the long road to the promised land. Barkley used Karl Malone and Gary Payton as examples of two basketball legends who stuck it out on bad teams, hoping to win titles as the leaders of their respective teams.

“They tried to win it by themselves. That’s why I admire and respect those guys,” Barkley said. “They did go the Lakers and Gary went to Miami to win a championship, but they didn’t try to piggyback on anybody else early in their careers. When you’re 25, you shouldn’t have to piggyback on other people.”

James said during his one-hour made-for-ESPN special Thursday night that the No. 1 reason why he decided to join the Heat was because he felt, with Wade and Bosh in the fold, Miami gave him the best chance to win a title, which is an unwarranted indictment on the Cavaliers organization, owner Dan Gilbert and former GM Danny Ferry.

“Let’s be realistic. Cleveland, to me, they were still one of the five or six best teams in the NBA. Think about that,” Barkley noted. “They lost to the Celtics, that was a tough matchup. You take away Orlando and they’re still in the mix as the best team in the East, and other than the Lakers in the West, they would have been in the mix. [Cleveland] has had the best record in the NBA [the last two years] so it wasn’t like he was playing on a bad team. So I wished he would have tried to win it by himself as The Guy.

“[LeBron's] legacy is going to take a hit.”

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LeBron James has failed twice in the NBA Finals. (GETTY IMAGES)

LeBron James collected his second regular season most valuable player trophy in 2010, becoming the 10th player in NBA history to claim back-to-back MVPs. However, the key words there are REGULAR and SEASON. Legends are born in the playoffs, and James knows that in order to wear the crown of the king he must be fitted with a championship ring.

Since 1956 when the first NBA MVP award was handed out, two players who won the MVP award finished their pro careers without winning a championship and four are still in pursuit of that elusive chip. LeBron is currently a member of this dubious ringless fraternity.

Here are the six NBA players with regular-season MVPs, but don’t own a championship ring:

Charles Barkley (MVP in 1993)
Sir Charles captured the MVP during the 1992-93 season and led the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Finals that season. But Barkley’s Suns ended up losing to Michael Jordan’s Bulls in the ’93 Finals, and Barkley never got back to The Finals. Barkley finished his career with 23,000 points and 12,000 rebounds. He has said that not winning a NBA title shouldn’t define his career, but you know deep down Sir Charles would give up all those points and rebounds for one ring.

Karl Malone (MVP in 1997 and 1999)
With the help of his good friend John Stockton, The Mailman delivered two MVPs to the Utah Jazz. Unfortunately, Stockton and Malone couldn’t deliver a title to Utah. Malone led the Jazz to appearances in the NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998, but both times his teams lost to Jordan’s Bulls. Then, in 2004, Malone joined Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal with the L.A. Lakers hoping to make one final push for a ring. But Malone fell short again in The Finals, losing to the Detroit Pistons in five games. Malone finished his career as the second-leading scorer in history (36,928), and will go down in history as one of the greatest power forwards to ever play.

Allen Iverson (MVP in 2001)
When we’re talking about Iverson, we’re talking about the best little man in basketball. AI answered the call several times throughout his 13-year career, putting together a MVP season in 2001 and leading the Sixers to the NBA Finals. But Iverson ran into Goliath in the form of Shaq and the Lakers, and the Sixers were defeated in five games. After stints in Detroit, Denver and Memphis (extremely short stint there), Iverson rejoined the Sixers but did not finish the season. He took his talents to Turkey, but now he’s itching to get back in the NBA. In a recent interview with SLAM Magazine, Iverson said: “I want to finish my career out in the NBA, if that’s possible.”

Steve Nash (MVP in 2005 and 2006)
Nash is the only two-time MVP winner not to reach The Finals. He captured his first regular season MVP in 2005, leading the Suns to the NBA’s best record, but the San Antonio Spurs bounced Nash and the Suns in the Western Conference finals. Then, in 2006, Nash won his second MVP but was eliminated by the Dallas Mavericks led by his good friend Dirk Nowitzki, who removed himself from the ringless fraternity in 2011. Voters made a huge mistake by giving Nash the MVP in 2006. Nash didn’t deserve to win it over Kobe Bryant, who had one of the best statistical seasons that year and should have won MVP.

Derrick Rose (MVP in 2011)
It’s almost unfair to put Rose on this list because he’s only 22 years old. But, the fact of the matter is, D-Rose has an MVP trophy sitting at his home but doesn’t own an championship ring nor has he set foot in the NBA Finals. The Chicago Bulls have a very nice nucleus and Rose is only going to get better. Also, head coach Tom Thibodeau is one of best defensive minds in the game, so the Bulls will always be competitive.

LeBron James (MVP in 2009 and 2010)
LeBron is one of four players on this list who can still change their fate. The very reason why LeBron left Cleveland for Miami is because he believed he had a better shot at winning a title if he was surrounded with better players, and they don’t come any better than Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. But the storybook ending didn’t happen in 2011, as Nowitzki and the Mavericks outlasted James and the Heat in the six games and now LeBron will have to hear those echoes of doubt all over again in the offseason. And it probably will never go away until he wins that elusive championship ring. LeBron certainly didn’t help his cause by playing so poorly in 2011 Finals, especially in the fourth quarter in which he looked incredibly passive. The longer James goes without a title, the pressure will only get worse.

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