Post by dex on Jul 4, 2017 23:27:03 GMT -5
COMMENTARY
In NBA, rich get richer
BILL REYNOLDS
Three mini-columns for the price of one ...
NBA SALARIES
It all seems like some elaborate board game, complete with fantasy money. Forty million dollars for this guy. Sixty million dollars for that one. Pick up the paper and every day there seems to be somebody else, the figures going up like the thermometer on a hot summer morning. So what's going on here? Welcome to the new world order where the rich get richer, and the rest of us get higher ticket prices. Overstated? Not by much. It was one thing when the superstars made the kind of money that made eyeballs bulge in their sockets. We all expect that. Home run hitters never drove Chevrolets, even back in the day. But this has reached the theater of the absurd in overpriced sneakers. Twenty-three million dollars for one year for J.J. Redick? Really? Not Larry Bird in his prime. J.J. Redick. And I know is that in some way the numbers don't even seem real, like the fake money in Monopoly. And I know that professional sports can be a what-are-you-doing-for-me-now business, as cold as an accountant’s ledger sheet. And I know that careers can be short, and in many ways every player is one bad fall away from the cruel reality of the marketplace.
But still.
You can’t pick up the sports page these days and not see someone who is signing some new contract in an economy that’s left too many people on the wrong side of the American Dream, in a country where there are too many people struggling.
You can call it what you want.
I call it, if not obscene, then in the same neighborhood.
MILLENNIALS
They are the future, of course.
And they are different.
No big surprise. Every generation is different.
But what makes millennials really different — at least according to Jere Longman in the New York Times — is that they don’t have the same passion for traditional sports that their parents and grandparents had.
Think about the potential ramifications for a second.
The signs are there if we just look.
The cable cutting of millennials reportedly is one of the significant reasons for ESPN making layoffs. The lack of big crowds in Yankee Stadium this season supposedly is due to a new generation with different interests. Longman writes about how the 2016 Olympics drew the oldest television audience since 1960.
Is this just coincidence, or does it speak to something larger in the culture, the beginning of some sea change?
Consider yourself sufficiently warned.
THE BASKETBALL WARS
The gloves are off.
Or at least they should be.
For if the NBA set out with a game plan to destroy college basketball it couldn’t do a better job.
Is there a more odious phrase than one and done?
If nothing else, it says that college is little more than just some penance you have to endure before you can grab the big bucks. Education? The concept that college has the potential to help you see the world in a different way, can expand your horizons, wherever the future takes you?
So yesterday, right?
That’s the one-and-done message, one as limited as the marketplace. It’s the message that nothing is more important than money. Not education. Not knowledge. Not maturity. Not personal growth. Not self-awareness. Nothing.
This is the siren song to 19-year-old kids who have grown up with seductive basketball dreams floating around their heads, the inner-city fantasy. So what if virtually all of them would be helped both academically and maturity-wise by spending more time in college? So what if having a college degree is one of those things no one can ever take away from you, regardless of what happens in your life?
So the NBA should just drop the pretense: For the rare 18-year-old who believes he’s ready for professional basketball, then go for it.
For the ones who choose to go to college instead? They are not eligible for the NBA Draft for two years.
A perfect scenario?
Of course not.
But the NBA and the lords of college basketball should come up with something to replace one and done.
In NBA, rich get richer
BILL REYNOLDS
Three mini-columns for the price of one ...
NBA SALARIES
It all seems like some elaborate board game, complete with fantasy money. Forty million dollars for this guy. Sixty million dollars for that one. Pick up the paper and every day there seems to be somebody else, the figures going up like the thermometer on a hot summer morning. So what's going on here? Welcome to the new world order where the rich get richer, and the rest of us get higher ticket prices. Overstated? Not by much. It was one thing when the superstars made the kind of money that made eyeballs bulge in their sockets. We all expect that. Home run hitters never drove Chevrolets, even back in the day. But this has reached the theater of the absurd in overpriced sneakers. Twenty-three million dollars for one year for J.J. Redick? Really? Not Larry Bird in his prime. J.J. Redick. And I know is that in some way the numbers don't even seem real, like the fake money in Monopoly. And I know that professional sports can be a what-are-you-doing-for-me-now business, as cold as an accountant’s ledger sheet. And I know that careers can be short, and in many ways every player is one bad fall away from the cruel reality of the marketplace.
But still.
You can’t pick up the sports page these days and not see someone who is signing some new contract in an economy that’s left too many people on the wrong side of the American Dream, in a country where there are too many people struggling.
You can call it what you want.
I call it, if not obscene, then in the same neighborhood.
MILLENNIALS
They are the future, of course.
And they are different.
No big surprise. Every generation is different.
But what makes millennials really different — at least according to Jere Longman in the New York Times — is that they don’t have the same passion for traditional sports that their parents and grandparents had.
Think about the potential ramifications for a second.
The signs are there if we just look.
The cable cutting of millennials reportedly is one of the significant reasons for ESPN making layoffs. The lack of big crowds in Yankee Stadium this season supposedly is due to a new generation with different interests. Longman writes about how the 2016 Olympics drew the oldest television audience since 1960.
Is this just coincidence, or does it speak to something larger in the culture, the beginning of some sea change?
Consider yourself sufficiently warned.
THE BASKETBALL WARS
The gloves are off.
Or at least they should be.
For if the NBA set out with a game plan to destroy college basketball it couldn’t do a better job.
Is there a more odious phrase than one and done?
If nothing else, it says that college is little more than just some penance you have to endure before you can grab the big bucks. Education? The concept that college has the potential to help you see the world in a different way, can expand your horizons, wherever the future takes you?
So yesterday, right?
That’s the one-and-done message, one as limited as the marketplace. It’s the message that nothing is more important than money. Not education. Not knowledge. Not maturity. Not personal growth. Not self-awareness. Nothing.
This is the siren song to 19-year-old kids who have grown up with seductive basketball dreams floating around their heads, the inner-city fantasy. So what if virtually all of them would be helped both academically and maturity-wise by spending more time in college? So what if having a college degree is one of those things no one can ever take away from you, regardless of what happens in your life?
So the NBA should just drop the pretense: For the rare 18-year-old who believes he’s ready for professional basketball, then go for it.
For the ones who choose to go to college instead? They are not eligible for the NBA Draft for two years.
A perfect scenario?
Of course not.
But the NBA and the lords of college basketball should come up with something to replace one and done.
