Chapter 1881 The Devil’s New Season

December 7, 2011, is destined to be an extraordinary day in the history of the NBA. On this day, David Stern appeared on TV and gave a televised speech. In his speech, Stern also officially announced to the outside world that he would start playing basketball on July 1. The shutdown that began on Sunday has officially ended.

Stern said this would be his last agreement in office.

"This is a fair collective bargaining agreement," Stern said, "and this will be my last collective bargaining agreement because it's a 10-year agreement."

"It's finally over..." Looking at the old man on the TV, Ji Feng lay comfortably on the sofa. In the past two months, even though he had not participated in the entire negotiation process, he was still very tired.

In fact, the labor and management reached an agreement on the 26th of last month. After a total of 22 hours of negotiations and voting in the previous two days, the suspense finally ended and a new agreement was born.

In the just-concluded internal vote of the players union and the team owner vote, both parties majority voted in favor of reaching a new collective bargaining agreement. Among them, 30 team owners voted with 25 teams agreeing and 5 teams opposing.

According to the voting rules, both labor and management will express their acceptance of the new agreement as long as they each obtain half of the votes.

For the employer, as long as 15 bosses raise their hands in favor, it will be passed; for the labor side, due to the large number of players, the electronic voting of the labor camp will be conducted under the supervision of the American Arbitration Association, and it only needs half of the votes in favor. to accept the new agreement.

Today's result is that most people on both sides voted in favor, which means that the lockout is officially over and the new season is approaching us.

The specific content of the agreement is very complicated. It involves all the details about every aspect of the alliance that you can imagine. This is why the ice-breaking was announced in October and the new agreement was not actually adopted until the end of November.

After the lockout ended, the losses caused by the lockout were also placed in front of everyone. The nearly five-month lockout period had a huge impact on both labor and management, the NBA's brand influence, and all aspects, especially the economy.

In terms of players, David Stern has canceled all games in the first six weeks, a total of 321 games. The players’ direct economic losses have reached 530 million U.S. dollars; while the league’s losses have been more than 1.2 billion U.S. dollars; plus two preseason games If the loss is 1.93 billion U.S. dollars, the total economic losses for both labor and management will be as high as 1.93 billion U.S. dollars after only canceling the game for one and a half months.

In addition, it can be seen from the above figures that during the NBA shutdown, the economic losses of the owners were much higher than those of the players, with at least twice the gap between the two.

One thing is certain, the team's income has been greatly affected by this suspension; in fact, because of the league's consecutive losses in recent years, many advertisers have already hoped to terminate cooperation with the NBA. This shutdown was just an opportunity for them to get out.

Therefore, in the 2011-12 shortened season that is about to begin, the league will lose a large amount of advertising sponsorship; last season the league's revenue in this area was 600 million US dollars; it is still unknown whether it can reach half of this in the new season.

More importantly, although this year's lockout is not too long, the NBA has lost a large number of fans. It is believed that stadium attendance in the new season will show the same downward trend as after the lockout 13 years ago.

However, regarding the specific content of the agreement and its impact, except for some fans who like this field, most fans do not care. They only care about one thing, and that is that the NBA is finally going to resume!

Their happiness is finally coming back! ! !

And then the fans began to wonder again, that is, what are the specific arrangements for the new season.

Fortunately, NBA officials are obviously not willing to make fans wait any longer. After all, they have already lost too much time. In order to make up for the lack of time, on the night of the 7th, just 8 hours after Stern gave his speech , the arrangements for the new season have already been released.

Due to the impact of the lockout and shortened season, there will only be 16 days for NBA teams to conduct training camps in the 2011-12 season, and each NBA team can only play two preseason games.

According to the latest arrangement of the NBA league, the 16-day training camp will begin on December 9, local time in the United States. During the training camp, NBA teams will be able to sign free agents and prepare for the start of the regular season.

The new NBA regular season will officially start on Christmas Day!

Due to the NBA suspension and the shortened season, the NBA schedule will become tighter. Each NBA team will play 66 regular season games in 119 days. The total number of regular season games in the NBA will be 990 games.

"It's too crazy for me to go to this new season!" Ji Feng looked at the schedule fax sent by James and felt his scalp numb. This season is definitely a test for them.

In the entire schedule, the NBA has arranged a total of 42 back-to-back games, with each team having at least one and some more than one.

In terms of relatively easy back-to-back games, the league has arranged a total of 529 games. This number is 2.5 times that of last season.

Take the Lakers' schedule as an example. They started with three consecutive games. After welcoming the Bulls on Christmas Day, they played the Kings and Jazz in two consecutive days.

Since the Lakers are the most popular team in the league, they have arrangements during holidays such as Christmas, the day before New Year's and New Year's Day.

The Lakers will face the Thunder three times and the Heat twice throughout the season.

As far as January is concerned, the Lakers will encounter a more difficult schedule. They will first face the Mavericks at home, and then challenge the Heat and Magic away from home.

The Lakers actually had two back-to-back games!

"It's really amazing." Ji Feng was really convinced. Is this Stern's revenge? Should he be so cruel?

The Lakers' schedule is definitely the most devilish among the 30 teams. The only one that can compete with the Lakers is the Celtics. From April 13 to 15, the Celtics will face the Celtics for three consecutive days. The Raptors, Nets and Bobcats, and have a total of 19 back-to-back games, which is slightly higher than average.

In March, they will face the most difficult schedule, with 9 out of 10 games being away games. In terms of opponents, they will meet the Heat and Bulls four times each, and play twice with the Thunder, Mavericks and Lakers.

Looking at the Heat, not only did they have only one back-to-back all season, but their early-season schedule was simply a walk-off. Only 5 of their first 12 opponents made the playoffs last season.

"These back-to-back games are difficult for every team. We are a young team, but we will also feel tired." After learning about the schedule, Josh Smith of the Eagles said to the media. .

Even a team like the Hawks with an average age of only 25 years old will feel tired, let alone the Lakers, a team dominated by veterans. Moreover, the schedule is also very unfavorable, which will undoubtedly make it more difficult for the Lakers to achieve 5 consecutive championships in the new season. .

"No more words, boss, maybe we need to change our thinking in the new season." Ji Feng said to Kobe on the phone.