[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Bob Ryan On The Players Greed
[The Boston Globe Online][Boston.com]
[Boston Globe Online / Sports]
Greed was truly the name of the game to most players
By Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist, 01/07/99
We are left to ask what the whole thing was all about.
The baseball strike of 1994-95 was all about deciding how management and
players were going to divide an estimated $1 billion in revenues. The
basketball lockout of 1998-99 was all about deciding how management and
players were going to divide an estimated $2 billion in revenues.
In a sport with just 12 players on a team.
One of the things we learned from this disastrous six months of arguing
about great gobs of money is that the NBA players have been so disgustingly
spoiled by our society worship of their skills that they have absolutely no
perspective. They really do not accept the fact that they live in a dream
world. This is probably not a news bulletin, but I'm not sure we all fully
grasped the degree of their insularity until now.
Did they actually believe the public would identify any of them as oppressed
workers? Did they actually believe that the public would sympathize with the
quest of the $3 million man to make $5 million, the $8 million man to make
$12 million, or the $15 million man to become Michael Jordan? Did they
actually believe the public would have the slightest amount of sympathy for
players in a league where the minimum salary was $250,000 (it will now be
much higher) and the median salary was $1.2 million?
What is the matter with these people?
When the lockout was imposed, they were already the highest-paid athletes in
American sport, by every measure. They enjoy fabulous working conditions,
flying around the country in charter planes that are equipped with every
conceivable luxury, staying in four-star hotels, and generally being treated
by both their organizations and the public as traveling royalty.
The players also seemed to have lost sight of the fact that we live in a
capitalist society. The owners put up the money and take all the risks. They
are entitled to a profit, and why shouldn't it be a hefty profit? That is
the very nature of our system. Left-leaning idealists might wish for some
sort of worker ownership situation, but we're nowhere close to having that
in any of our sporting ventures, and we probably never will be.
What is so apparent, and so little-discussed, is the notion that these
so-called sports unions aren't unions in the real sense at all, nor can they
ever be. Labor-management negotiations in sports are farcical. They have
nothing to do with real-life labor-management negotiations because in real
life, the workers really are all equal. There are no star players, regular
players, or fringe players in a real union. There are no individual
contracts in a real union. There are no hardball agents demanding
back-breaking salaries for stars that will, by definition, suppress the
earning capabilities of lower-profile teammates.
Once upon a time, there was a real need for sports unions. Players really
were exploited by uncaring owners. Fifty years ago, no one in professional
basketball, or any other sport, had health benefits. There was no minimum
salary, no pension, no body of rules governing working conditions. It was a
take-it-or-leave-it world, and that wasn't right, either. But the salary gap
between the highest-paid players and the lowest-paid players wasn't that
significant. They really were in it together.
Securing those basic rights is the most important function of sports unions.
You've got to stay on top of owners; we all understand that. Few owners get
into sport with altruistic intent. But that doesn't change the simple
reality that no sports union can hope to serve the interests of all when
within its umbrella, so many people have so many individual agendas.
The great fiction of the NBA lockout from the players' viewpoint was that
they were all in something together. It just wasn't so. It was always all
about the high-end players and their agents, and nothing else. How could the
rank-and-file have been so naive as to think that Billy Hunter, David Falk,
and Arn Tellem were looking out for their best interests? If the stars cared
about anything other than themselves, they wouldn't place clubs in such
impossible salary binds. Can't they see that?
I had to laugh when Hunter would lament the growing number of players making
the minimum salary. Did he ever stop to think that perhaps the Shaquille
O'Neals and Kevin Garnetts of the world were the reason? If people like that
are making $15 million-$20 million a year, what is left for the others?
Wouldn't $8 million or $10 million be enough?
Well, no, nothing is ever enough. We have baseball players signing $90
million contracts laden with, of all things, incentive clauses. And we have
NBA players, members of the highest-paid union in the universe, acting
insulted because someone is asking to cap their potential earnings at $14
million a year.
People are always asking the owners to say no, aren't they? Finally, they
did, but it was not as if they all morphed into Ebenezer Scrooge. When it's
all said and done, the NBA players will have retained the honor of being our
best-paid athletes. By accepting this deal, the players are not being
plunged into penury. There can still be a luxury car in the driveway for
both the player and his lady.
A frightening percentage of NBA players have been led to believe since the
age of 13 or so that they were Chosen People. Recruited by high schools, AAU
teams, and colleges, and fawned over by everyone they've met, they have a
well-developed sense of entitlement. We created this monster, and the NBA
owners are finally attempting to tame it.
Now we're going to find out if anyone still cares.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist.
This story ran on page D01 of the Boston Globe on 01/07/99.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.