Re: Wink, wink!

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

At 11:18 AM 10/27/00 +0200, Hironaka wrote:
>I guess I'm reflexively defending Kevin McHale (and also small market
teams) out
>of pure bias. Regarding the CBA rules, I'm not the least bit sympathetic
with the
>notion that owner's need to be able to make a living or have a system that
"saves
>owners from themselves" at the expense of the players that fans care about. 

I think it's a mistake to think of it as "saving owners from themselves."
Maybe this is true collectively, but the owners are not a collection of
identical billionaires. It's really to save the typical owner from the Paul
Allens. Look at baseball, where the $110M payroll Yankees have won yet
again, while the small market teams you're defending have absolutely no
chance. You take away the CBA and go to a baseball system and Shaq is
probably in Portland with a $300M contract, playing alongside Duncan and
Garnett. 

It's definitely disappointing that we don't have a freespending billionaire
owner because that really helps your chances when you haven't drafted that
franchise player. We'd be able to take on as many overpaid players as we'd
want. Of course people on the list would still complain about how overpaid
they are. I mean, who cares if Randy Brown is making $2.5M instead of
$1.5M, say? Gaston's the one who's paying the bills. 

>If hypothetically I had access to any more money than needed to assure a
good life
>and support the causes that matter, I'd spend every last dollar of it to
help the
>Red Sox finally win a World Series.

Unfortunately, the type of person who would spend a ton of money freely on
an unprofitable endeavor is usually not the type of person who builds a
multimillion dollar fortune in the first place. I think that's why you need
the billionaire, because at that point it's just a hobby.

Alex