Two remarkable events occurred this month involving major North American sports leagues.

The NBA and Major League Baseball agreed to new collective bargaining agreements with their players.

Before the old CBA ran out.

No weeks or months of acrimony between deadlocked players and management. No games lost to a strike or a lockout. No seasons put at risk.

For which all fans are quite happy … if not necessarily grateful … that management and labor showed the wit not to interrupt the gravy train that is modern team sports.

MLB got its work done in the first few days of this month, ahead of the winter meetings.

Their settlement was such a foregone conclusion that the New York Times led its a-deal-is-made story with the end of the practice of awarding home advantage in the World Series to the winner of the league winning the All-Star Game.

An interesting development but not one that will change the game or tweak the balance of power.

The NBA followed suit today, hammering out a deal that seems to leave pretty much everyone in the game happy.

And why not? The NBA has enjoyed explosive growth over the past 10 years, pushing baseball for the No. 2 position in overall popularity in America, behind only the National Football League.

Why would they want to risk that popularity … all that wallowing in big green piles of cash … with a work stoppage?

Well, perhaps because they had several times in the past, including 2011 and 1998-99, when lengthy lockouts limited the regular season to 50 games and 66 games, respectively.

Chris Paul, the Clippers guard and players union president who has been around long enough to remember these things didn’t always end peacefully, said: “It’s amazing. I’m excited. I’m happy for our fans, the owners involved. It’s a great thing.”

Toronto guard DeMar DeRozan noted that the pie has gotten so big, it would be madness not to dig in. “It just shows you how big the NBA, how popular the NBA is, that it can’t afford a lockout,” he said. “People love the game too much. It’s great.”

The average NBA salary is expected to be $8.5 million by next season. Stars are making enormous amounts of money, up to $30 million per season. But owners don’t seem to mind, because they are raking in their own record amounts of cash.

In May of 2014, Steve Ballmer paid $2 billion (with a “b”) for the Los Angeles Clippers, or about four times what some had expected the club to cost. The Clippers are a middling club with very little history worthy of being recalled, and they are worth $2 billion?

Gulp.

The best part of this for fans?

All they ask is that their professional sports leagues play their full seasons, as scheduled.

If a league will do that, fans will allow themselves to be hoisted into the air, feet first, and be shaken until all the cash and coins and credit cards have fallen out of their pockets, for players and management to scoop up.

Long term, the prices of tickets continue to rise, as do all costs surrounding a game (food, parking, souvenirs) … but people who follow the big American sports leagues pretty much prefer not to think about that and, for now, are not mulling some future era when the costs just get too shocking for anyone who does not count his personal worth in the millions.

Games. Fans want games. To see in person, to see on TV, to see on their basic (and expensive) cable or satellite hookup. They don’t really even care if it makes millions for marginal players or hundreds of millions for hapless owners.

The NBA and MLB showed this month that they get that. “We play, we get paid.”

Thus, they will be turning up, on schedule, well into the next decade. Hurrah. I guess.