Some Keys to the NBA Lockout

The 1998-99 NBA lockout, like the 1994 Major League Baseball strike, may have serious consequences for the future of the game. Already, the abbreviated training camps and compressed schedules have produced a spate of injuries and scores of ugly, low-scoring games. And the effects of the dispute on the game over the long run may be more difficult, if not impossible, to predict. But those questions are best left to those who track television ratings and ticket office receipts.

The more immediate question-the one put to me by the editors of this journal-is what the lockout contributed to labor law or, more generally, what the dispute tells us about the state of labor relations in the United States. So it is to those questions that I turn.