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Keller @ Large: Greedy, Greedy, Greedheads

BOSTON (CBS) - I've tried to read up on the fine-print details of the dispute between the NBA owners and players, I really have.

And I keep coming back to the bottom line:

It appears that the owners, all of them millionaires, and the players, most of them making more in one year than regular folks will earn in a lifetime, are prepared to let a $4 billion business go down the tubes because of -- what else?

Greed.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

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Like Gov. Deval Patrick, who went out of his way to describe himself this way the other day, I am a capitalist.

I believe in merit, and in earning what the market will bear.

And I have absolutely no problem with millionaire owners making more millions by charging ten bucks for a skimpy beer, or with players making mega-millions for chucking up three-pointers.

In a perfect world, we'd be paying all of them less and paying nursing home workers, teachers and foster parents more, but we like our sports in this country and no one's forcing anyone to buy the tickets and ill-fitting warmup jackets that subsidize it all.

But now, in a squabble over divvying up this absurd windfall that seems to have deteriorated into a macho game of millionaire chicken, all parties are apparently prepared to decapitate the golden goose.

Greedy, greedy, greedheads, for whom the greed has apparently squeezed out any room for rational thought.

Even if they succeed in wiping out the entire season, perhaps there's a chance the fans will return a year from now with enthusiasm unabated.

But I doubt it.

All they are doing is teaching fans that they really don't need the NBA in their lives.

It took years for baseball to comeback from the strike that wiped out the 1994 postseason.

And the NBA's folly comes at a time when we're fresh out of patience with greed, having watched it destroy our economic growth.

The lawyers who advised the NBA owners and players into this mess ought to be sued for malpractice.

For their employers, I recommend a quick look around outside your bubbles at reality, and a decision that maybe this isn't the best time to be a profile in greed.

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. and 12:25 p.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.

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