On July 1, as the league’s collective bargaining agreement expired, the NBA’s owners locked out the players. Between that day and September 1, the two sides met for negotiations one time. They barely even spoke during July before they finally scheduled three meetings for August, and even then they only honored one of those meetings. The reason I am re-hashing this garbage is because the players have had three and a half months to do one simple thing – remain loyal to the fans. They failed, as did the owners.

Instead of reaching out to the fans to side with them, the players showed indifference, as many of them shifted their attention to Europe and China to get their big paychecks, a far-fetched yet complete slap in the face of the American NBA fans who have long lined the pockets of the owners and players. Instead of asking us to flex our muscles against the owners, the players, led by players union rep Derek Fisher and executive director Billy Hunter, just said, “Screw it, we’re willing to sit this one out.”

Until now. Because now, as yet another deadline has passed, the players finally went to their fan arsenal for some crucial ammunition. Too bad the chambers are empty.

NBA players starting with union president Derek Fisher and on through LeBron James, Chris Paul, Gilbert Arenas and maybe 100 others started doing tweets like this.

It’s an effort to get public support and the fans behind them.

(Via Pro Basketball Talk)

I really want to know who is running the PR campaign for the players. It’s like they were sitting around a table scratching their heads and asses when someone looked up and shouted, “EUREKA! I’VE GOT IT! TWITTER!” Well, at least Brian Cardinal, that guy who wore a Dallas Mavericks uniform for a few minutes in June, understands that it’s too little, too late. Of course, he also got some sh*t from his former players for not going with their genius plan, but LeBron forbid he call something that is stupid stupid.

As of this evening, the first two weeks of the NBA regular season are about to be canceled. NBA.com’s David Aldridge believes that both sides are closer to a deal than ever, but screw the players right now. They’ve had all this time to kiss our asses and get us on their side and now they just send out a Tweet and expect us to jump off the bridge, too. All I know is the NHL is looking awfully sexy to me right now. Maybe those players are smart enough to start reaching out to us now*.

*They’re not.