Here we go again.

Another labor dispute, another lockout, another mess.

On Thursday, the owners and players met in the hours before the NBA's collective bargaining agreement expired, searching for a last-ditch connection with their miles-apart positions on terms of a new deal.

It's a gap too wide, a bridge too far.

Owners want reductions in player salaries, a hard "flex" cap and to give up a smaller percentage of basketball revenue, of which the players had received 57 percent. Originally, the owners wanted to jettison all guaranteed contracts but have since eased off that demand.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Fans, of course, don't care much about any of that, although they do want economic terms that level the court and make it so teams from bigger markets aren't always playing downhill and others from smaller markets uphill. The notion of guaranteed contracts bothers some fans because … well, because of Rashard Lewis and players like him.

Lewis was the second-highest-paid player in the NBA last season, making more than $20 million, despite playing in only 57 games and scoring 11.7 points and hauling in 5.1 rebounds. Some fans correctly suspect that players who sign five-year deals for $120 million might lose motivation to give their all. They also realize that somebody in management had to offer that money in the first place, so … the fault isn't exactly one-sided.

But for Jazz fans, Andrei Kirilenko is an example of what can transpire out of a single mistake on the part of ownership, a reach to hold onto an emerging player with what turns out to be not just a big dud of a deal, but a deal that hamstrings an entire franchise.

Fans care about that.

They care about divisional and conference rivals who, for whatever reason, can and will pay out larger chunks of money for players than what their own team can or will pay.

As sweet and sweet-faced as the Dallas Mavericks' run to their title this postseason seemed, shooting down the Miami Heat and their evil three-headed starship, the fact is that the Mavs were the second-highest-paid team in the NBA. What a coincidence.

For the most part, though, fans couldn't give a flying rip about what percentage players or owners get from basketball revenue. They often think players are greedy and overpaid, even as they enjoy those players' accurate bombs from the floor and their soaring thunder-dunks at the rim. And they view owners as privileged rich guys who pass Grey Poupon to one another out the windows of their Rolls-Royces.

Millionaires versus billionaires. Your average fan who puts in a 50-hour workweek nailing shingles onto roofs or melting metal joints together, all to the tune of $35,000 a year, would rather jab himself in the eye than hear about the poor plight of basketball players who think they're getting ripped off by owners because they make $15 million instead of $17 million. Or owners crying imminent disaster on account of players demanding 54 percent of available billions instead of 47 percent.

All the fans want is decent basketball.

They are rather convinced that no matter who comes out the winner in these negotiations, it won't be them. Their ticket prices won't be reduced, their access to players won't increase, their overall enjoyment of the game won't be positively affected in any way.

They are the losers.

They are always the losers.

There are those who say it's the fans' own fault for caring so much about the game. If they just walked away and stopped caring, the thing would be corrected.

That may be true. If fewer cared, fewer paid out money for tickets, fewer watched on television, maybe NBA players would act more like MLS players. They'd be more appreciative and gracious.

But it's not always that simple. There are Jazz fans, for instance, who became Jazz fans because their dads and moms were Jazz fans and those dads and moms passed that interest down in a kind of intergenerational transmission. Sports are weird and cool that way. There are ties that bind. There's a familial and community bond that comes out of the experience.

The entire endeavor of pro sports was built on such favor and partisanship, long before television came in and jacked the money through the roof that the average fan painstakingly nailed in place.

We'll see what happens this time around. There have been few encouraging signs.

Man, I wish a representative for the fans had a seat at the table, an attorney every bit as clever and full of clout as any hired by the parties already there. Maybe he or she could nurse this process along — and help the owners and players and their reps remember upon whose backs all their opportunity was built.

The same backs that, if they were ever turned, would sink the privileges heretofore relished by the millionaires and billionaires and force them to face the power of the customers they screwed.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Gordon Monson Show" weekdays from 2-6 p.m. on 104.7 FM/1280 AM The Zone. He's at gmonson@sltrib.com.