David Falk dropped some absolute bombs in the New York Times Sports Section on Sunday, but unless you read the paper, you would not have heard about it. It is a subject no one wants to talk about because it is the NBA’s worst nightmare.

Falk, the original Super Agent, representative of Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing among many others, says when the NBA’s current collective bargaining agreement expires, there is the potential for disaster. In a riveting interview touching on a variety of subjects, he dramatically lays out the likely events and why there is almost no avoiding it.

The N.B.A.’s system is broken, Falk says, and fixing it will require radical measures that almost guarantee a standoff in 2011, when the collective bargaining agreement expires.

“I think it’s going to be very, very extreme,” Falk said, “because I think that the times are extreme.”

How extreme? Falk said he believed Stern, the commissioner, would push for a hard salary cap, shorter contracts, a higher age limit on incoming players, elimination of the midlevel cap exception and an overall reduction in the players’ percentage of revenue. And, Falk said, Stern will probably get what he wants.

“The owners have the economic wherewithal to shut the thing down for two years, whatever it takes, to get a system that will work long term,” he said in an extensive interview to discuss his new book. “The players do not have the economic wherewithal to sit out one year.”

The players, he said, must recognize that the owners have the ultimate leverage. Many are billionaires for whom owning an N.B.A. team is merely a pricey hobby. Some of them are losing “enormous amounts of money” and would rather shut down the league for a year or two than continue with the current system.

So Falk is urging the union to take a more cooperative approach.

“And if we don’t do that, in my opinion, there’s an overwhelming probability that the owners will shut it down,” he said.

There is a major factor, though, that I think David Falk is leaving out; a factor that also makes the situation that much scarier: Europe.

It is possible that Europe is the reason why players do have the wherewithal to sit out a year or more. It’s easy to forget that just six months ago, during the Olympics, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade and Lebron James were asked if they’d ever consider playing across the Atlantic. When reporters threw out absurd numbers like $50 million a year, they started making headlines, and the NBA’s three biggest stars didn’t exactly rule it out.

The potential lockout is the precise opening rich European owners would need to start throwing money at the NBA’s most familiar names in sums that we have never seen. Once they go, the flood gates open.

But even if we assume those guys resist the urge to drop the National Basketball Association, what about lesser paid players? The financial setback of a lockout will hurt them more than the Lebrons or Kobes of the world. In some of their minds, Europe might be a pretty solid alternative if they want to play hardball and try to hold out for something like their current agreement.

And let’s not forget the American Dollar isn’t exactly holding its own against the Euro right now–its an option they won’t be able to ignore. After all, the NBA will be back eventually and they can always come back to the States.

Unfortunately, the NBA won’t be back if that all happens, at least not the NBA as we know it. Just imagine the mess of trying to get all European-contracted players transferred back over here, many of whom probably will have signed different one, two, or three year deals, depending on the league and/or their personal situation.

Making matters worse, that’s just the players piece of this puzzle. What if the economy is still struggling five years from now? What if some teams don’t want to come back at all? The scenarios are endless.

There is no doubt NBA brand will always survive, the basketball market will never go away for a host of reasons too obvious to name here, but it is possible, if we are to believe David Falk, that in a few years the league will look radically different than anything we’ve seen before.