More on the NBA lockout

After Tyler linked to our inaugural Grantland piece, many of the commenters at Tyler's site were complaining that the situation regarding losses is symmetric for each side, and thus the owners have just as much to lose as the players.

But people, it is NOT symmetric.

First, the owners are losing net revenues, the players their gross revenues. Do we really think operating profits are >= labor costs?

Second and more important, owners are sacrificing short run net revenues for long run benefits. If they can shift the cost curve, then the present value of the long run savings should get capitalized into their franchise values. The current owners can capture the long run benefits from "winning".

By contrast, the current players have no capture-able long run economic gains to motivate short run pain. They only gain what ever revenue increases they get over their playing days. They don't have a long run claim on the revenue stream they are sacrificing to try and protect.

It doesn't get much more asymmetric than that.