Basketball never stops. Well, at least that’s what the people at Nike are attempting to convince us of with their new line of commercials. And despite the copious amounts of evidence seemingly pointing to the contrary, I am trying my very best to believe them.

I grew up with basketball. The sport has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Ever since I could walk I have played competitively, starting out in the “Iddy” division of a league called “Biddy Basketball.” And even though half of our games ended with someone running off the court in tears, my love for the game was instantaneous.

I would play out on my driveway every night — sometimes with my older brother, sometimes alone — staying out well past dark. Out there, I got to be John Starks hitting a buzzer-beater, or Allan Houston dropping a floater in the lane, or even Charles Oakley crashing the boards with reckless abandon on the rare — read: common — occasion that I missed. Anything was possible out there on the blacktop. I could have recreated any player’s greatest highlight — granted, of course, that I was able to watch him do it first.

So that’s why — as the mood surrounding the NBA lockout begins to change from “Just let me know when the season starts” to “Please God, tell me that I’ll get to watch professional basketball again” — the thought of not having an NBA season, or league for that matter, has been weighing heavily on my mind. I haven’t been able to stop wondering: If this lockout does in fact change from temporary to permanent, what would actually happen?

Basketball is, by most measures, the most player-driven sport in the world. That’s the reason why Michael Jordan, years after retirement, is still the most marketable athlete alive and also why you can’t turn on your TV these days without seeing Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire, Blake Griffin, Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul or Dwight Howard on the screen.

Think about it. How many football players outside of Peyton Manning, Troy Polamalu and occasionally Tom Brady have you ever seen in a commercial? How many baseball players not named Derek Jeter or Brian Wilson are ever even allowed to appear on TV? Not many.

Yet NBA players are everywhere, and during the lockout this fact has only been exacerbated. Players have been trying with all their might to connect with their fans in ways which transcend the NBA. They have starred in commercials, appeared in “Entourage” cameos, improved their Twitter game, shot “SportsCenter” promos and played in countless charity events, all in the hopes of reaching us fans. They want to prove to the world, and probably to themselves, that their personal brand can continue to thrive without the global NBA brand protecting it.

Heck, that’s half the reason the league is locked out in the first place. The owners want a 50-50 divide of the revenue — saying basically that both sides are equally important to the success of the NBA — a significant change from the 57-43 split the previous collective bargaining agreement had granted to the players. The problem, however, is that the two sides are not equal by any stretch of the imagination.

Without the players — especially the most famous and talented ones — the NBA as we know it would immediately cease to exist. It’s a league predicated on stars and individual talent, more so than any other. The idea that it could survive with replacement players — akin to the NFL in 1987 — or even B-level talent is absolute nonsense. Nobody is going to pay to watch the Lakers, starring Luke Walton and Steve Blake, play the Heat touting a lineup of Erick Dampier, Juwan Howard and Jamaal Magloire. It just would never happen.

But what about the players — flush with star power, big personalities and immense talent, but now without the financial and structural backing of the NBA?  Well, that brings us back to where we first began, a Nike commercial and the idea that basketball never stops.

The commercial shows NBA stars playing basketball in obscure locations from empty high school gyms to street ball courts throughout the country. It shows Kevin Durant getting engulfed by adoring fans at the end of his epic Rucker Park run and LeBron James fist-bumping hundreds of kids in China on his global tour. And then right at the very end of it, those three magical words show up on the screen — basketball never stops.

It’s the ultimate subliminal message, saying that no matter if we lose the NBA for a year or — gulp — even forever, we will never lose the players. It implies that lockout or no lockout, NBA or no NBA, the fans will still somehow satiate their basketball fix.

Now, I have no idea how they plan to accomplish this. Maybe through an independent, player-run league like Amar’e mentioned off the cuff a few weeks ago on ESPN, or maybe through a nationwide tour showcasing the quaint, neighborhood-like events that star players have already been running in local gyms throughout the country. The only thing I know is that it’s possible. It’s possible that even if I don’t get to watch my Knicks finally return to prominence after years of pathetic suffering, basketball will live on, at least in some capacity.

Right now — after everything I’ve witnessed transpire in this lockout — that’s really the only hope I have left.