Caring less than zero is difficult

Howard Beck has an article in The New York Times about the NBA lockout:

When the clock struck 12:01 a.m. Friday in New York, Arn Tellem was in his backyard in Los Angeles, hosting a cookout. This is not how an NBA agent typically celebrates the arrival of July.
In a normal year, Tellem would have been juggling phone calls and meetings, shuttling between players, coaches and general managers, managing the happy chaos that is free agency. But this is not a normal year.
At midnight Thursday— when free agency usually starts— the NBA declared a lockout, putting an indefinite moratorium on all league business.
With no meetings to arrange and no contracts to consider, Tellem invited a dozen colleagues from the Wasserman Media Group over for a barbecue. The guest of honor was the Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose— an agency client who happened to be in town. A year ago, at that same hour, Tellem was in his office with Joe Johnson and Mike Miller, welcoming eager delegations from the Knicks, the Miami Heat and the Atlanta Hawks. “This is quite a bit different,” Tellem said.
Everyone associated with the NBA is adjusting to new realities as the league navigates its first lockout in thirteen years. Negotiations have ceased, although a bargaining session could be held in the next two weeks. A resolution may not come for months.
In the meantime, players are barred from using team facilities and from communicating with team personnel at any level. Team officials are prohibited from discussing the lockout, under the threat of million-dollar fines.
And while Rose, the NBA’s most valuable player, could be found in Tellem’s backyard, he could not be found on the league’s home page. As the lockout commenced, the league stripped all images of its four-hundred-plus players from its web sites, replacing them with cheerleaders, mascots, and somber-looking portraits of Commissioner David Stern.
The Bulls’ site featured a large photo of the Luvabulls dance team. The Bulls’ roster was nowhere to be found.
Across the league, marketing employees have been instructed not to use player images in promotional material. The decision was tactical, not legal, according to the NBA. “We do not think it is appropriate to be using video and photography of current players at this time,” said Mike Bass, an NBA spokesman.
Gabe Feldman, the director of Tulane University’s sports law program, said there was no compelling legal reason to remove player images. He suggested the decision was “a symbolic move,” implying that the owners would not only shut down the league but would “stop promoting the players, too.”
The NBA home page now includes a “Labor Central” button and a prominent history section, which features, curiously enough, a photo of Oscar Robertson, a critical figure in the league’s labor history. Robertson sued the NBA in 1970 for the right to free agency. The case was settled in his favor in 1976. (Robertson’s NBA.com biography, which includes this bit of history, has been removed from the web site. The link still comes up in a Google search, however.)
In another twist, Stern said Thursday that the league would continue its community service programs, such as Basketball Without Borders, by using retired players. “Because we’re going to work hard to talk to our fans in a positive way,” he said.
Legends are also dominating the NBATV schedule, which on Saturday will feature a ten-hour block of dunk contests, all from 1994 and earlier, long before any of today’s players had entered in the league.
The league said it had no plans for layoffs or furloughs, although that could come if the labor stalemate stretches into the fall. The 1998 lockout lasted for six months. Many agents and team executives expect this one to be just as severe. There will be little urgency to settle the dispute until September, when teams must begin planning for training camps.
If there is an absolute deadline to salvage the season, it will be on or around 6 January. That is the date that the lockout ended in 1999, just in time to put together a fifty-game schedule. At the time, league officials said the season would have been lost had they waited longer.
For now, there are no games to cancel or highlights to miss. But free agency is a treasured time for fans, who will spend months wondering if Nene will leave Denver, if the Dallas Mavericks can re-sign Tyson Chandler and J. J. Barea and which teams will try to lure Marc Gasol out of Memphis. More than a hundred free agents are now in limbo.
The locked-out players broadcast their frustration, hopes, and wry humor on Twitter. Chris Kaman, the Los Angeles Clippers center, posted a photo of himself outside a Costco, with the message, “Gotta start buying in bulk now!” Derek Fisher, the president of the players union, struck a more sober tone: “To all our players, you have my word that I will do all I can to find a fair resolution. Nothing less.”

Rico says there's probably a sport he cares less about than basketball, but he can't think of it right now... (Curling, maybe. Nah, curling's better...)