Barack Obama Worried About Losing Entire NBA Season

Barack Obama has already talked about how the NBA lockout is negatively affecting him, and during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night, he expanded on his fears concerning the hoops work stoppage. From EOB: “Obama called the league’s current labor impasse ‘heartbreaking’ — the same word he recently used in Florida shortly after the NBA cancelled the first two weeks of its regular season — and suggested that the NBA’s players and owners turn to the National Football League, who reached its own new labor deal in time to save the 2011-2012 season, for guidance. ‘If you look at the NFL, they were able to settle theirs,’ Obama said. ‘I think they understood: ‘Players we’re making millions of dollars, owners some of us are worth billions of dollars, we should be able to figure out how to split a nine billion dollar pot so that our fans, who are allowing us to make all of this money, can actually have a good season.’ I think the owners and the basketball players need to think the same way.’ Leno then asked if Obama, a noted basketball aficonado, was worried that the entire season might be lost. ‘I’m concerned about it,’ the President admitted. ‘They need to just remind themselves that the reason they are so successful is because a whole bunch of folks out there love basketball. Basketball has actually done well, but these kinds of lockouts, a lot of times it takes a long time to recover.'”