Does anyone care about the NBA?
By Micah Roberts
VegasInsider.com
Our sports world is currently filled to capacity with an assortment of great stories to follow. We have baseball’s championship series filled with all the twists and turns to be expected in October. Pro and college football is doing more than enough to meet and satisfy our expectations with so many upstart teams.
But amid all of this great stuff going on, we get a few reports from the NBA players and owners regarding their Tuesday meeting next week with nothing sounding positive from either side. It’s looking like more of the NBA season will be lost than just the first two weeks that has already been announced.
"Each side is going to meet with the mediator on Monday, and if there's a breakthrough, it's going to come on Tuesday," NBA Commissioner David Stern said in a Tuesday interview on NBA TV. "And if not, I think that the season is really going to potentially escape from us, because we aren't making any progress ... how many times does it pay to keep meeting, and to have the same things thrown back at you? We're ready to sit down and make a deal. I don't believe that the union is. Hopefully by Tuesday, aided by the mediator, they'll be ready to make a deal. Certainly I'll bring my owners ready to make a deal."
The question is, Does anyone really care?
Obviously the players and owners care, but what about the fans, especially now with so many other things captivating us at the moment.
I posed the question on Twitter and got about 10 quick responses from sports fans who all basically said the same thing, “NO!” Some cited that their NBA overdrive doesn’t start getting revved up until March Madness ends in early April, which is close to when the NBA playoffs starts.
However, one of the replies brought up a great point saying that he didn’t care if or when they play, but Vegas sure does.
The legal sports betting operations in Nevada are about to feel the effects.
“The NBA accounts for 15% of our annual handle,“ said Las Vegas Hilton Super Book executive Director Jay Kornegay. “We expect half of that loss to transfer over to the college game. While it’s not as drastic of a prospect as the NFL was during their lockout, it’s a portion of our day-to-day business that would be sorely missed.”
The day-to-day portion Kornegay is talking about is where that handle piles up. You’ve got 30 teams playing 82 games each with action being daily, Monday through Sunday, and then another full season of playoff games. The NBA has it’s own niche of regular bettors that exclusively bet the sport. It’s those players that won’t be coming in daily that the poses the biggest threat to the sports books financially.
For local sports books such as Station Casinos, Coast Resorts and the South Point, they'll feel the loss much higher than strip properties as the NBA accounts close to 25% of their overall yearly handle.
“The first two months aren’t as concerning because we’re still heavy into football,“ said Kornegay. “But when January comes around and there’s no NBA, that’s when it will truly be missed and reflected in our numbers. Hopefully they get it resolved by then.”
As of right now, every sports book is on hold with their season win totals with most offering odds to win the NBA title. While there isn’t a free agent available that is a franchise-changer like last season, there are a lot of pieces to each team’s puzzle that could alter their prospects for the season.
“We’ve put up odds to win the conference and title odds with a stipulation that basically says whoever the NBA crowns as champion and whenever played,“ said Hilton assistant manager Jeff Sherman. “However, we won’t be offering season win totals whenever they get things figured out. It’s just something we don’t want to do without a full 82-game schedule.”
The Hilton was one of the few sports books last season to wait out Lebron James’ decision before offering NBA Championship odds because he was such a huge part of the overall equation. A few Las Vegas sports books had the Miami Heat 25/1 before the news started to leak or finalized between three teams. Once James was in Miami, 5/ odds or less was the market price on the Heat. This season things are little different.
“We don’t have that one free agent that will drop a team from 20/1 down to 4/1, “ says Sherman. “There's a few nice players out there that can help make an existing team better or improve, but nothing like last year.”
Most people in the know expect there to be a lengthy delay to start the season and handle has been off on the futures, but not by much. There still are thousands of visitors daily coming to Las Vegas and much of the future play is from those who aren’t coming back and want to have a ticket on a few teams so they can root them in during the season.
Whenever that season actually starts or ends is anyone’s guess. As of now, it’s football season. Until that’s over and we actually see Kobe Bryant calling out plays in Italian, not too many -- outside of the sports books themselves -- are concerned that there is no NBA right now.
By the way, the Hilton has the Heat as 2/1 favorites, with Chicago 6/1, followed by the Mavericks, Lakers and Thunder at 7/1. Everyone else is 10/1 of higher.
I guess it depends on what your definition of "caring" is. I agree that it won't have the impact that NFL would but NBA is a long season with a lot of games across a lot of different markets.
It's impossible to ignore how many people losing a season would effect. From the owners and players all the way down to the people who sell hot dogs and run NBA related websites. You may not like NBA's product but it's going to be devastating if the season is lost.
From the betting side this article is spot on. Books need this NBA action to try to balance everything else out. You can't just take 82 games off the board and not feel the effect of that. Compound that with the hot start NFL players have gotten off to and I could see this being a pretty ugly scenario.
More games cancelled, no new talks scheduled either. Not looking good at this point for a season.