There's an ESPN piece by Larry Coon (he of the fantastic CBA faq):
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/s ... als-110630Nice and easy read to understand the argument about losses without really being for either side.
That being said, I tend to lean to the player's perspective about the losses. Under the owner's version those losses include the entire cost of purchasing a team, but not the potential future sale of "intangible" assets. Just because a sports franchise doesn't have paper assets adding up to 370 million or 500 million or whatever doesn't mean the purchase price is going to be less. Yes, these are investments and they deserve a ROI, but if the Nets were writing off 40 million in a single year off of 200 million of intangible purchase price, then they're trying to re-coup their entire purchase price in like 5 years, which is a pretty fantastic rate and no wonder they aren't making it for a company they bought in the 100's of millions of dollars.
Now, I'm so far from an accountant, someone is free to come and correct me, but by my reckoning the league is including losses that make future sales of franchises 100% profit and doing so in very short windows of time (like you've already paid off the entire mortgage on your home when you sell it again). That's not barely turning a profit, that's turning as fantastic a profit as you can get anywhere.
Unfortunately for Mr. Coon, I may have just butchered what he was trying to explain, even after I said it was a nice and easy read, but I was mostly drawing conclusions of my own from his info not cribbing what he was saying so it's my inferences, not his article, that would be at fault.
fml..