It's approaching 6 o'clock in downtown Minneapolis on a wintry Wednesday night, when the Timberwolves and Milwaukee Bucks once were scheduled at play at Target Center.

Walk into Hubert's just across the arena corridor from courtside and the only crowded table includes Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve and Lindsay Whalen saying their post-championship season goodbyes. Stroll over to Smalley's 87 next door and when you ask a waiter about an NBA labor lockout that now has reached Day 143, he gestures to show a completely empty restaurant.

At Gluek's just down the street, three customers sidle up to the 25-seat bar on a quiet night that otherwise would have been pulsing with people and pregame chatter.

While NBA owners and players have taken their disagreements over a new labor agreement to U.S. District Courts, basketball fans and workers from all walks of life tabulate their shifts and paychecks lost.

"There's enough stuff these days for people to be depressed about," Gluek's manager Donna Fyten says from behind the long, worn wooden bar. "We didn't need one more thing."

While millionaire ballplayers play charity games or accept temp jobs overseas, everyday people go on without their basketball or their work.

THE ANGRY FAN

He loves the game, but count him out: Paul Morita loves basketball.

Loves to watch it: He grew up in Chicago and watched Michael Jordan and the Bulls win six NBA titles, then moved to Minnesota 14 years ago and fell in love with a guy named Kevin Garnett. Loves to play it: "A 40-year-old Asian-American," he says of himself. "A 6-foot power forward, like Charles Barkley." And he is offended that "rich and richer" guys can't fairly split $4 billion in revenues annually, offended enough that he started his own Facebook "Boycott the NBA" page. "I will not give them any more money, not for a long time," said Morita, who works in advertising, lives in St. Anthony and has a basement filled with sports memorabilia that in particular celebrates his beloved Cubs. "Look at the unemployment numbers. Look at all the people homeless. It astounds me that these billionaires and millionaires are fighting, and they expect me to care? "The players are so rich already and they feel so entitled. You see them on Twitter, making jokes about having to apply for a job at Home Depot now. They're making fun of all the millions of people who are unemployed and really hurting. It's disrespectful to the whole situation, and I find it really revolting."

THE LAID-OFF EMPLOYEE His job for now is family man: Four months after he was one of a dozen Timberwolves employees laid off, Matt Chapman still is looking for a job. But he has found some perspective on the NBA lockout. While he waits for somebody to answer one of many résumés sent out, he has spent his summer and fall wisely, investing it in family time with his 4-year-old daughter, Libby, and 8-year-old son, Xander. "It has been amazing to spend time with them that I wouldn't have had otherwise," he said, mentioning an August vacation with his wife and kids to visit his parents in New Hampshire. "At the same time, it'll be interesting to get back to work in the not-too-distant future." The Wolves' former broadcasting director, Chapman led a 12-person department that now numbers just four radio employees partly because of the lockout, partly because the team concluded it can't make money by buying air time, selling ads and producing broadcasts for over-the-air games on Ch. 29. When the NBA resumes, the only locally televised games will be on FSN cable. Until then, broadcasters Tom Hanneman and Jim Petersen -- paid by the game -- are out of work, too. "We all had been looking at the potential for a lockout," said Chapman, who received a severance package from the Wolves that helped soften his transition. "I told all the people who worked for me to prepare for the worst and pray for the best. I'd have been a fool not to take my own advice." A WCCO TV news producer before he joined the Wolves five years ago, Chapman is searching for a job in marketing or public relations or might start his own food-industry business. "Probably not pro sports or television news again," said Chapman, 38. "TV news, that's a young person's game."

THE BAR MANAGER

'I just didn't think it'd ever get this far': Donna Fyten walked past an outdoor patio table last summer at Gluek's -- the downtown Minneapolis restaurant/bar where she has worked the last 13 years -- and overheard Timberwolves employees talking about an impending NBA lockout.