While the National Basketball Association awaits the next step in its drawn-out industrial dispute between players and owners, Kiwi basketball pioneer Sean Marks is enjoying rare down time with his young family.
"I've got my youngest son [Owen] here, rolling around on the floor and I'm basically on daddy duty," he says. "It's my first decent break in about a decade and it's been fun."
The NBA lockout took another turn for the worse this week, when the players' union rejected an offer that would have seen a 50-50 split of league revenue and a 72-game season starting December 15. Instead, representatives voted to take the dispute to the federal court, beginning what commissioner David Stern described as "the nuclear winter of the NBA".
The fate of the 2011-12 season hangs by a thread and players missed their first pay day on Tuesday at an average cost of US$220,000 each.
Marks (36) stands powerless on the sidelines, awaiting further developments and considering his options. He ended last season as a free agent, traded from the Portland Trailblazers to the Charlotte Bobcats in February but was promptly released without taking the court for his new team.
