| 
No one in the NBA is that charitable: Hometown Discount By John Nguyen
12.25.2008 - Updated on 12.25.2008
|
Sacrifice.
The theme for the holidays is sacrifice.
Santa Claus is not bailing out any common folk for Christmas except for Wall Street jerks, but even that’s not working out as planned. I’m no finance guru, but in a nutshell, the banks were re-capitalized. That’s about it. The bail out money was supposed to help people facing foreclosure and credit problems. The US government stepped in and sacrificed a good chunk of their money tree to help. This is laughable since the banks ended up hoarding the money.
What does this have to do with the NBA?
Plenty.
Players can sacrifice their starting role to become a Sixth man to help balance the team. They can sacrifice their stats to work with other teammates. Hey, they would probably sacrifice their groupies by passing them around to boost morale. For any feminist out there, it’s true. Sorry to say, but the NBA is a man’s league with tons of Republican money. Sacrifice is a nice gesture, but when it involves money, it gets tricky.
Examples:
- Last offseason after the Lakers lost to the Celtics in the 2008 Finals, some people asked Kobe if he would take a pay cut to resign Sasha Vujacic. His answer? He laughed it off.
- Luol Deng took the 6 year, $72 million dollar deal despite knowing that if he took a lesser offer, the Bulls could have resigned Ben Gordon.
- People praised Gilbert Arenas for taking a pay cut from the rumored deal he could have gotten. Why are you praising him? He didn’t take any pay cut for the good of the team.
- Kevin Garnett’s infamous, “It’s not about the money.”
- Carlos Boozer promised to sign with Cleveland if Jim Paxson doesn’t pick up the option. That was a good sign of loyalty until Booz signed for a bigger deal in Utah.
- Dirk Nowitzki recently proclaiming that he would take a pay cut for 2010 to sign another marquee player. My response? I’m laughing like Kobe.
I’ll rephrase it again in the world of the NBA. The theme for the holidays should be sacrifice, however; the true theme is greed. Once the fans, TV deals, and marketing money come in to recapitalize the owner(s), the individual players hoard the money. So what is this all about, great one? Fans really need to stop wishing for players to take hometown discounts. They’re not going to do it even if it does equate to the success of the whole. Even when they claim that they’ll do it, they absolutely will not because we don’t know the exact money amount to differentiate. This brings me to something I pose to you:
Would you take a pay cut in order to keep another teammate or two to win a championship ring?
For any NBA owner reading this, how the hell do you pay players if you don’t have money to pay them? What do you do when banks don’t give loans? When credit dried up? Please do not take money availability for granted. Put yourself in this scenario especially for small market teams. During these dark times of recession, to the people who have a lot of things already, I hope you didn’t get shit for Christmas. To the people who lost their jobs, lost homes to foreclosure, or suffered from personal tragedies, I hope you all bounce back somewhere.
[image:http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveblog/856945113/] |
| | |
Posted by
on 12.27.2008 | I wouldn’t take a paycut, you can’t trust your teammates to make the same sacrfice you make. Each player instinctively looks out for themselves. if they dont’ they can get screwed. What’s another 30 million on top of 90 million? 30 million bucks buddy. . | Posted by
40inchleaper
on 12.26.2008 | it’s still all about money for this MONEYstars. hate it especially when a player signs a multi-million dollar deal and then skipping practice particularly in the off-season . | Posted by
pete
on 12.26.2008 | Great article John, I agree completely. People say Arenas was not being greedy, HE STILL TOOK $116 million. No one needs that much money. It all has to do with players egos, thinking that getting paid more means their the best . |
No profanity or inaproppriate remarks. All i.p. addresses will be saved and abuse/hate posts will be reported to providers and authorities as part of the anti-spam act of 2003, thank you for posting comments on the articles only. | | | |
| | | |
|  | | | | | NBA Features | | | | | | |
|
|
