Union Pushing for Shorter NBA Season?

USA Today's Chris Colston took a look at the pending NBA collective bargaining agreement negotiations through the prism of one of the league's current, fleeting points of concern (or annoyances, depending on the range of your perspective): a lot of players are hurt. The epic Bulls-Celtics series itself is missing Kevin Garnett, Luol Deng and Leon Powe, with Paul Pierce and John Salmons obviously gimpy. Every other first-round series has had injury issues.

Colston ties this to the length of the NBA regular season, long a bugaboo for pundits. Few say the regular season means nothing these days, but the complaints remain, especially as keystone players like Dwyane Wade wear down in the playoffs. Colston suggests the players union, as a condition to taking a smaller slice of the revenue pie, may demand a shorter season in those CBA negotiations.

Lakers guard Derek Fisher, the union's president, suggests a shorter season will be one of several things the players will ask for should the owners push for a different revenue split (it's currently 57% for the players). Here's Fisher:

"The way this game has evolved into a global power, each game deserves to be the maximum of what it can be. If you consistently have key players missing games due to injuries and things that can be avoided, I think that's a fair point to discuss."

As Mavericks owner Mark Cuban notes in Colston's story, this is a "size of the pie" issue. Maybe every game will mean more as teams can't wait around forever to lock up playoff positioning, but less games means less revenue. One, maybe two franchises lost money by hosting games this year. Gate receipts have to be really bad to lose money on game day. For every other team in the league, shortening the season to (say) 60 games would cause a loss in potential revenues. You can't exactly add more seats to a sold-out Staples Center for a Lakers game that means more, you know?

This seems like a non-starter to me, even if it's a good idea. As we discussed when the "c-word" (contraction) came up, shrinking anything is a sign of weakness. The league doesn't need to do that. I have a solution, though: that Best of 99 series I talked about! Imagine if this Bulls-Celtics series went on until next February. It'd be great!

Follow all of FanHouse's NBA collective bargaining agreement coverage.