An NBA fan reflects on what should have, could have been

I visited the Yahoo! Sports page this morning – a morning routine of sorts – and was greeted by something I had never seen before in the schedule part in the top right corner.

"Your Magic should have been playing today …"

Thank you, Yahoo! Sports. Thank you for making my morning a little less sunny. I suppose it could have been worse:

"Your Magic should have been playing today … oh, and you should have been finished with your novel by now – you know, the one you left your steady job to write. And the Cubs still suck even with Theo. Bwahahahaha!"

(Sadly, this probably is the future of the Internet. I see it getting meaner and meaner as it grows older. Soon, it will be impossible to differentiate the Internet from Maxine, the tyrannical elderly Hallmark lady. But instead of telling us to get off its lawn, it will take our property and sell it to carnies. And then the Internet will have won.)

But, yes, Yahoo! Sports is correct. My Magic, the Orlando Magic, should have been playing today.

But they're not. Because there's no NBA. Because there's a lockout. Because the owners greedily want more money and the players union remarkably is taking the stance that it's willing to give up more in a lost year than it could win on the bargaining table. And instead of watching the opening-night Magic game to kick off what was supposed to be a great year of NBA watching, possibly the last year my team has Dwight Howard, the most dominant center in the game, I'll be attending a discussion on what Chicago and Illinois might look like in 2050. Sigh.

I have followed this lockout closely.

I've read just about every story published on ESPN.com, SI.com and Yahoo! about the lockout. It's the owners' fault. It's union chief Billy Hunter's fault. It's players' rep Derek Fisher's fault. It's Buddha's fault.

And everyone seems united on what will happen in the end. The players will take the 50/50 split of basketball-related income and the season will continue. The owners will have won and nobody will even remember all of this in a year.

This must be what Alice felt like sitting at the Mad Hatter's table. Craziness. Craziness. Craziness.

We're all waiting for the inevitable. And yet the inevitable is taking its sweet time to arrive.

And meanwhile, I'm forced to do adult, responsible things such as think about the future rather than rooting for my team in a fairly meaningless November game. And that's just not fair.

I'm one of the few hardcore NBA fans among my friends, maybe the only hardcore NBA fan among my friends. Most have responded with a resounding "meh" about the lockout. They'll respond with a "meh" when the lockout ends.

But me, I'll be continuing to wait impatiently at the Mad Hatter's table for the players to agree to the owners' patently unfair offer because – well, that's the way this will play out.

I don't blame the players for holding out. I'd probably do the same thing in their shoes. But they can't and won't win this fight with the owners. And eventually they'll sign this year. And I'll get my NBA back.

Or they'll hold out this year. And I won't.

But I'll be back no matter what because I love basketball and the NBA and will happily embrace my prodigal league when it returns. I'm just not sure how many people will be there with me, arms open wide.

• Subscribe to my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/therealjoegrace