[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Bud Shaw: Charity Game Swindler's Dream
Charity game is swindler's dream
Thursday, December 10, 1998
BUD SHAW
PLAIN DEALER REPORTER
NBA players have a dual goal in staging their
Dream Team exhibition game in Atlantic City.
They mean to raise money for UNICEF. They
mean to raise money for themselves. You guess
the order of importance.
Well-paid athletes and UNICEF. There hasn't
been a more bizarre pairing since Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in "Twins."
The smart consumer would skip the game and
send a check directly to the United Nations
Children's Fund.
Aligning themselves with a charity is such a
shameful twist, it rings of one of those
copycat scams in which a parasite company
adopts part of a respected corporate name and
then solicits charitable donations over the
phone.
It makes you cynically wonder whether UNICEF
in this case stands for "Union of Needy and
Indigent Celebrities Endowment Fund."
The saving grace is that the players and
agents who devised this exhibition game
strategy aren't so devious. They're just so
out of touch with reality that nothing they
come up with should surprise anyone at this
juncture.
Not if they asked Willie Nelson to stage a
"HoopAid" benefit concert. Not if Hollywood
celebrities all showed up at the next Academy
Awards ceremony wearing lapel pins in their
honor. Not if they put an "NBA Players Charity"
collection can in every convenience store in
America.
The reality is that once a court ruled that
NBA owners did not have to make good on
guaranteed contracts during the lockout, the
players lost their hole card. The rest has
been like watching a turtle cross an
interstate.
The owners aren't only better equipped to
lose a season, they also seem intent on it.
The players who can afford to see the season
scratched are riding herd on the membership.
The strategy now is for the superstars who
are wielding the union clout in this labor
impasse to throw a bone to the lesser-paid
players who are hurting financially. They're
the ones who figure to get crushed first,
along with the better-heeled who've
mismanaged their millions.
Union leaders could announce they're
arranging low-interest loans for players who
need it. Or they could put on an exhibition
game of Dream Teamers, charge $1,000 for
courtside seats and pay the "suffering"
players with somebody else's money.
Bingo. That's the chosen path.
Players would receive help on a need basis.
Not just the players making the NBA minimum
of $272,500, the poor serfs. But also - as
Patrick Ewing put it - the players who "make
a lot of money and spend a lot of money."
Doesn't that bring a tear to your eye?
No hankies were necessary when David Falk
talked of the "average" player lasting only
4.2 years and how the lockout was jangling
nerves.
"If he was locked out for one year, he's
losing 25 percent of his lifetime wages,"
Falk said. "If you asked the average man on
the street would he be nervous if he was at
risk to lose 25 percent of his lifetime
earnings. . . ."
Honk if your job gives you the chance to work
4.2 years and earn a "lifetime" of wages.
There's one reason to give the players and
agents credit for being clever. They know the
value of a casino town.
When they met to discuss union strategy, they
met in Las Vegas - where a guy can't help but
look responsible so long as as he doesn't get
drunk and marry Carmen Electra.
Now, Atlantic City. The Dream Team game will
have its share of high rollers filling the
courtside seats. A casino town is where
people go to throw away money, large and
small amounts alike. There will be people
only too happy to pay to watch the NBA
superstars stay out of each other's way on
the court.
The scary part is that a turnout might
inflate their sense of importance to
civilization. It might give them another idea
for how we can help them out of this
difficult predicament.
Coming next: "Hoops Across America?"
Yikes.
© 1998 Cleveland Live. All rights reserved.