First and foremost, let's dispel a myth. 

People really do enjoy NBA basketball. 

For all of those who say they don't, the numbers speak for themselves.  Last year's NBA Playoffs on TNT were the most-watched in cable television history.  Over the six-week playoff run that preceded the NBA Finals, TNT averaged 5.5 million viewers.  So either many of you are trying to persuade yourselves otherwise, or your friends aren't telling you the truth when the topic of the NBA comes up.  Because nearly 24 million people watched the last NBA game, we were all able to see (and an average of 17.3 million people watched the entire six-game series), thanks to this stupid lockout. 

And that's the sad part.  The league is now in a state of inertia because its 30 team owners think the 450 players are getting too much of the revenue that comes from us watching. 

We're all deprived of being able to see if LeBron James bounces back from his subpar Finals performance, if the Heat really can flirt with the Chicago Bulls' 72-10 record season, if any team (including the Atlanta Hawks) can slow Miami down, if the Dallas Mavericks' title was a fluke, if Kobe Bryant still has any spring left in those 33-year-old legs, which have now logged one more full professional season than Michael Jordan's. 

We're left wondering if the New York Knicks are going to become relevant for an entire season for the first time since the early 2000s, if Derrick Rose can improve even more than he did when he made the leap from second-year player to youngest player ever to win league most valuable player honors. 

See, I'm an NBA fan.  A huge one.  I can tell you which teams played during conference finals, finals.  I can name MVPs probably all the way back to the early 1980s -- on memory.  I'm that big a fan of the league. 

Which is why it pains me so when I hear the normal criticism aimed towards it.  Now that the perception is the players are greedy, it hurts even more. 

For those of you who don't know, let's first get it straight that the owners are the ones who are keeping us from watching NBA basketball.  They agreed to a deal years ago that has, over time, left them unhappy.  They have exercised their right to opt out of that deal and renegotiate.  The players are not on strike. 

The players agreed to decrease their revenue share from 57 percent down to as little as 50 percent, if certain other measures were considered, only the owners have shrugged their shoulders and turned their noses up at the players' suggestions.  So let's be clear, the owners are keeping us from the game we love. 

The worst part of it all, though, is the wonderful, hard workers throughout the league's 29 arenas (the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers share STAPLES Center) are forced to come up with other means to supplement their incomes while billionaires and multimillionaires fight it out over money they should be able to split up amicably. 

I've met many of those arena workers in the places I've worked.  All of them are happy to be there.  They're even happier to be a part of what takes place in those arenas.  We can only hope a deal is reached before long, so they can go back to work.  Believe me -- they need that money much more than the owners and players who are squabbling over it. 

However, the 30 team owners are holding out -- some figure they will be more than happy to sacrifice the entire season, much like the National Hockey League did during the 2004-05 campaign -- until they get the collective bargaining agreement that they want, one that will put more money in their pockets. 

How many of you think any of that extra money will go to the workers who are kept from working the games that have been (and will be) lost due to this nonsense? 

The owners also know that we, the fans, will be back because of our love for the game -- its history, its artistry, its pure brilliance. 

And they're right.  I will be watching again as soon as a collective bargaining agreement is reached.  I'll be as happy as can be. 

The question is, will those owners ever get back the people who were only casually interested in seeing if LeBron would win his first ring?  Will the viewers who don't necessarily love the game, but were curious, ever come back? 

If the owners don't care, then this lockout will have been worth the risk. 

The rest of us are just fools in love with a game we're sadly unable to enjoy.