By Daniel Barber, Yahool

Before the NBA lockout even began, I wrote an article confessing my ignorance of all the intricate financial details of the situation, and talked about how the two sides needed to find some kind of solution (or possibly follow the one laid out in a recent article by David Aldridge of ESPN) to the problems that have them so far apart in the latest labor negotiations; although I didn't hold out much hope they would.

However, after the recent spate of articles that have come out disclosing the financial shenanigans David Stern and the NBA are pulling, including a New York Times expose on their attempts at "cooking the books"—so to speak—I'm convinced there's almost no hope the two will resolve their differences without some form of outside intervention.

The NBA and its owners came out with an immediate response to the Times article, disputing the reports questioning their losses, and they apparently think that should settle that.

I can only think David Stern must not realize how easily discernible such a falsehood is. Perhaps he and the NBA owners simply believe the American public isn't smart enough to grasp all the complex details of the whole mess and thereby come to a sound conclusion as to who's lying.

And someone is lying.

For it didn't take long for the players to react to the NBA's statement by putting out one of their own making a sound argument there is an "adequate basis" to question the league's financial claims, and from reading the articles written by Kelly Dwyer and Eric Freeman for Yahoo! Sports' Ball Don't Lie blog, I'd have to say the players are understating their case.

Of course, we've been here before, really. The Enron Scandal of 2001 that led to the bankruptcy of the American energy giant based in Houston, TX called the Enron Corporation, as well as the dissolution of their accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, gave the public a hard lesson in how companies and corporations can finagle finances. We now know all too well these CPAs and CEOs can make numbers stand up and dance at their command like modern-day, western-style snake charmers.

That lesson, however, hasn't seemed to prevent every crooked person in the nation from trying to pull the same garbage with other companies, and it also didn't preclude the American people allowing their representatives in congress and the White House to hand out trillions as if it was candy in their pocket to numerous "failed" financial institutions and other corporations at the start of our country's current economic crisis.

Still, while we almost expect such things now from our politicians and many corporate heads, sports fans had a perhaps naive notion the NBA and its owners, when they say they're losing money, they're losing money. There was an expectation that if they claimed a $25 million loss, they actually "lost" the money, and didn't simply move some figures around on a balance sheet in order to get a tax benefit.

Going forward, though, I sense NBA fans will no longer have that expectation, and that may be a good thing, for the NBA players are certainly savvy to all the games the owners have been trying to play in order to gain a bigger share of the NBA pie, and they're likely to stick it out till they break the owners on this one.

That, of course, means fans will be left hanging, high and dry. Yet, at this point, and knowing what I know now, I'm hoping the players fight tooth and nail until the owners are broken. Those owners need to be taught a valuable lesson in life. Namely, that you don't cry poverty unless you're actually in the Poor House.

Doing so when you're raking in the dough only makes you look crass and disgusting to most Americans. They see your wealth and luxury, and then come to find out you're trying to pretend losses when you've actually been profitable, adjusting figures in a book to justify your bogus claims, and the public ends up wanting to do with you exactly what the French did to their tone-deaf leaders more than two centuries ago; cry "Off with their heads!"

As an NBA fan, there's no doubt I want to see basketball this coming October and November. As a fan of the Miami Heat, I'm even doubly so, as I want to see the "Three Kings" return to the court to claim their revenge and win a title.

As fan of what's right, and just, and fair, and decent, though, I'm hoping the players give it to the owners good. I hope they stick it to them bad. I hope they take a page from some old college football locker room chant and go forward saying, "fight, fight, fight, fight, fight!"

We'll all miss basketball till it returns, but trust me on this, no one is going to die without it; I sure won't.

Game On!