Those of us lucky enough to have jobs are, for the most part, paid every two weeks or so. So when we hear about NBA players missing paychecks, we tend to think of those missed paychecks being two weeks' worth of money, flushed.
It's not exactly so, however.
Players will be reporting to work on December 9 instead of October 3. That's almost ten weeks late. Five paychecks, or so, if you're paid every two weeks. Out of an eight-month season, that hurts.
If you or I missed five straight paychecks, we'd take our paycheck amount, multiply by five, and just deduct that from our annual income.
There are so many ways, however, that you and I are not NBA players.
Players may have missed roughly a quarter of this season's paydays, but they won't lose anything like a quarter of their NBA income.
That's because no matter how many weeks they're on the job, this season they'll get their promised 50-percent-or-so of the league's basketball-related income. (In the first season, it's actually 51.15 percent.)
The parts of the season they missed -- training camp, preseason, and early season silliness -- don't move a lot of cheddar. The part of the season they saved -- from Christmas Day through the Finals -- is far more lucrative. When this season is over auditors of all 30 teams' finances will tally up all those dollars and give the players half of them, no matter when the season started.
BRI may be down somewhat because of the shorter season, but it's unlikely it will be down much, and it could be flat or hypothetically even up. And as BRI goes, so goes player income, no matter what dollar amounts are in their contracts.