Is everyone having fun yet? The commissioner who acts on behalf of the 30 owners in the NBA locked the players out on July 1 after the collective bargaining agreement expired, surprising absolutely no one.

It’s true that there was some discussion before the owners, with Stern as their proxy, closed up shop after one of the most compelling NBA seasons in recent memory.

In their initial meetings with the union, the league offered to slash the share of the players’ basketball related income from 57 to 39 percent and impose a restrictive harder salary cap. The union, which acts on behalf of the 450 or so players in the NBA, turned it down, surprising absolutely no one. Then everyone went to the beach or went to Europe and no one talked about anything for a while.

Finally in September, with training camps around the corner, Stern and the owners moved a little and everyone got excited. People who care about the league (and yes, there are still many of them) figured that they would figure this out.

Camp will be delayed, we’ll lose some exhibition games – but who really cares about those besides the people who work at the arenas or want a chance to see NBA players in towns that can’t normally get to see NBA players? But, it will happen.

The first deadlines – set by Stern, naturally – came and went and still there was no deal. But, what was that about, a 50-50 split? Hope sprang eternal once again.

Monday, the 10th of October. That’s the real deadline.

The real deadline also passed without an agreement after the NBA and the union didn’t go near the money but became entangled in a mess of “system” issues, which as anyone will tell you, is where the real bodies are buried.

The union said they were not surprised because they had been expecting this scenario for the last two years, which raises the obvious question of what they were planning to do about it besides hoping Stern and the owners snapped back to reality.

So, here we are with no agreement and only a thin slice of hope hanging on a meeting on Tuesday with the estimable George Cohen, a distinguished federal mediator with a bag of pelts on his wall, but no real power to move things along.

In the interim, Stern has gone a media blitz so thorough that as the great Netw3rk on Twitter suggested, the commish was touring harder than Phish. What Stern is selling is a bag of magic beans. No one actually believes his claims, but man can he spin.

Most of the media, especially the surging Internet base, sides with the players. Not for nothing did Stern offer the back of his hand to the “bloggers.” To the extent that there’s criticism of the union, it’s in how they have handled the negotiations, allowing themselves to be backed into a corner by a slicker marketer with the power to take away the keys to the kingdom.

At this point, most of the fans of the NBA have stopped caring. The BRI split, the cap issues, it’s all just so much stuff that has nothing to do with Rajon Rondo (did you see this pass, by the way?).

The league has done a fine job in aiding this effort by stripping their websites of any current player content and turning NBA TV into a basic-cable movie graveyard, all of this in stark contrast to the way the NFL Network handled their own labor situation.

Via TVSportsratings

• NBA TV had an average audience of 11,000 viewers last week (fewest ever). Among measured ad-supported cable nets, only Fuel (7k) had less.
• Since start of lockout, NBA TV has aired Fish/Saved Pitt 16 times, One on One (Robby Benson) 14 times & Teen Wolf 8 times.

When they have shown lockout coverage, it was Stern getting face time. They showed his press conference on Monday after the union had their say while a tribute to James Worthy played on the channel. On Thursday night, Stern kicked off his media blitz when he appeared for a sit-down interview with David Aldridge on NBA TV.

Aldridge is as good as it gets and he challenged Stern on many of his talking points, but the commissioner makes so many dubious claims throughout that it became tempting to fall under the hypnotic power of the eloquent Uncle David. (Here’s Zach Lowe fact-checking Stern.)

Stern isn’t trying to reach the fans, although if he gets a few on his side it’s an added bonus. He’s talking to the players. He’s saying, "Here’s the deal guys. You’re going to lose, but here it is." He’s hitting them where it hurts, too, implying that they’re greedy and self-serving, which feeds into one of the worst stereotypes about professional athletes in general and NBA players in particular.

The union can’t offer coherent rebuttals because there is no one clear voice. That’s Stern’s advantage and he’s playing it for all it’s worth.  

So here we are and few people have any real idea how this will play out. There’s a deal to be made with the players giving back a lot of money and a few well-overdue tweaks to the system and then there’s cannibalization. This is the road the NBA is on right now and Stern and the owners have taken them there.