The NBA has officially cancelled its 43 preseason games, along with indefinitely postponing team training camps. Damn. It's really happening. Without a doubt I knew it was coming, but to actually have to rip up my New York Knicks/Boston Celtics preseason ticket that I had anticipated is just a shame. Right now we have the NFL, college football, and the baseball season winding down to half distract us from this mess, but a time will come when (if they don't fix this) we will all be very frustrated with The Association. I'm very aware of the pressing issues such as how to divide the league revenue, salary cap structure, and the length of guaranteed contracts, so it's not like they're beefing over what uniforms to wear, but at the same time all the parties involved need to understand that if this lockouts does in fact cut deep into the season like it did in 1998/99, you're giving back a huge percentage of ground the league worked so hard to make up this past decade. The NBA was as hot as it's ever been. Yes, as hot as the Celtics/Lakers days, and as hot as Jordan's 1990's. The young rising stars that have risen to the elite level such as LeBron, Dwight, DRose, CP3, Melo, Duranchula, Amare, and Blake Griffin had the NBA as the main ingredient for sports talk fodder last winter. The lockout's ingredient is just water that can only damper the fire that was burning hot. Surely Jordan's retirement had something to do with it, but after the league came back after missing 50 games the last time 'round, the NBA had already lost so much momentum in the hearts and minds of its fans. Attendance dropped continuously the following 3 seasons after the lockout, along with season tickets and television ratings. It took the Shaq/Kobe 3-peat and the emergence of LeBron James to really get the league back on the track where it was before the league locked out for 204 days. I believe there's enough star power in the league at this point whereas a lockout on the shorter scale won't hurt the NBA too much, but they higher ups need to take notes from the NFL and make for damn sure they don't miss any 'real' games. You start missing those regular season games and you'll begin hearing the screeching frustration from casual fans, morph into a numb annoyance bordering on detachment. For the love of the game, please figure this thing out before November 1st so we're not picking up the pieces instead of riding a wave.