Yesterday evening the most important event since the death of Michael Jackson occurred. LeBron James (yes, I just did a Yahoo! search to see if I was formatting his name properly) decided what team he would play basketball for. I know! Amazing! Some guy from Cleveland who plays basketball really well decided where he would play a game for millions of dollars a year. Unfortunately, I was busy watching paint dry or something, I didn't catch the show. 7% of America tuned in to hear his decision, but I wasn't part of it. My roommates were watching. I was well aware that for several hours ESPN seemed to cover only this one story. This morning ESPN continued to cover the story. When my roommate left the room I flipped the channel to the news to see what was really happening in the world, guess what I found? LeBron James. Apparently in a country facing high rates of unemployment, a huge oil leaking disaster, war and a constantly-bickering-like-children group of people in the federal government the most important thing to discuss is where some guy will play basketball. It's really great though, he scores nearly 30 points per game. I bet you can't do that. As an aside, my friend Harris likes to point out how ridiculous it is that basketball players who only sink about 30% of their shots are seen as all-stars. He continues by asking how long you would last in your job if you had a 30% efficiency rating. Good point. Imagine a heart surgeon with a 30% success rate. Do you think he'd be making millions of dollars a year, or even be able to retain his license? We've got some mixed up priorities in this country. Last night people were cheering in the streets of Miami, the receiving team for James, and crying and burning James' jerseys in Cleveland, his hometown and previous play place for basketball. The whole business of where this one guy will play ball was even attended to by the president. At least he is representing the people. I like the Mets; I think it is fun to follow a sports team, but come on people! Do you think James or anyone in the viewing audience cares about where you take your next job? What makes him worthy of so much attention?
So let's make some lemonade. As I was preparing some food last night the guys in the TV were talking about how the Miami Heat don't have enough money now to pay for a full team. Apparently basketball teams in the NBA operate with 12 team members. Along with James were two other all-stars who signed with Miami. The three of these guys have such hefty salaries that the team is down to 8 players and can't afford more. I'm sure they'll figure it out, but in the meantime my roommate and I figured out a solution to their problem. We decided that we will play for the Heat. Two of my roommates and me. The three of us together are barely as tall as most NBA players (over-dramatization) and none of us have the skills required. Primarily me. But here is my plan: they pay us $50,000 a year to fill in the gaps on the team. 5 players are on the court at a time, so it's not like the three of us novices would necessarily play at the same time. They'd have 8 players for regular play, we'd just go in periodically to spell a guy and give them a few minutes to rest. I think it could really work. Given the points per game scored by these big three (James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh [had to look up spelling on these names too]) you've got to figure that if they start a game the score will be so lopsided by the second quarter that the three of us could play and not lose the game. All we'd have to do is run around and avoid the other team. We could play keep away or just sit on the ball until the shot clock runs down then throw haplessly at the basket. The fans would get a little Marx Bros. routine to boot. It might sound ridiculous, but I think this plan has some merit. We'd save the team a lot of money, make the three superstars look even better and provide comic relief. I'd suggest this as a movie idea, but I think Air Bud and Space Jam have already told this story sufficiently.
And with that I am done thinking about LeBron James. It's time we spend our worrying energy on something with practical significance.
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4 years ago
I was actually noting the batting averages of baseball players. But still, the best shoot in the high forty percent. Rick Reilly started an interesting column, "If Every-day People Could Use Athletes' Excuses (Surgeon, after patient dies: 'I don't know, I just came out a little flat. You can't get hyped up every single day.') (Hate Mail From Cheerleaders 16-17)." So, I agree with your implications: most would last about the life span of a fruit fly if they performed with Lebron-type statistics.. Sadly, I know this story line and know it too well. Apparently, because Labron wants to win so much, the is sacrificing a couple million (of 16 million, per year, I will add) to play with the other sub-50 percent performers. How noble of the King, to sacrifice so much so that his lowly peasants can have some joy in a championship that their overpriced seats paid for. Perhaps we just enjoy watching elaborate games of catch. How knows. But the fact is this is a multi-billion dollar business we are slandering here. Don't get me wrong, I love playing elaborate games of catch; admittedly, I like playing these elaborate games of catch too much. I, however, cannot answer your question. I don't know why people care so much. Perhaps fans think they have something to do with championships (they pay for seat; that money pays for big "superstars" to practice playing elaborate games of catch so on and so on). With the money in sports, a lot of good could be done. They only thing I see from the NBA are promos with superstars playing ball with underprivileged kids noting, "The NBA cares." Most don't know that the rest of the sentence reads, "about money, children. Life is about money and shiny trophies. If you don't have any, you are a loser." I feel filthy wearing this Nuggets t-shirt as I write this. I am seriously considering retracting my viewership from ESPN until sports do more good. Life is about self-control and sports could teach this well but doesn't. What is to be done Ajax? What is to be done?
ReplyDeleteYes, batting averages. As you say though,40% isn't much better. Sorry about the mistaken reference.I think your finished sentence of "the NBA cares..." is spot on and tells the story well. I don't know what the answer is. If I did perhaps I'd be sitting somewhere else with lots of money and shiney trophies and I wouldn't care anymore. I don't know if avoiding the sports will help. There are too many people involved. As it isn't immoral to watch sports, not directly, I'm sure we could make the case that it is, I don't think boycotting is the moderately priced ticket we are looking for. It comes down to supply and demand. Also, who are we to rain on their big business parade? Maybe we should applaud the ingenuity that brought these sports into the mega money producers that they are. It seems really ridiculous that one man gets paid however many millions of dollars a year to play a game while others are getting paid less than $50,000 to be police officers. Ridiculous or not, it's better than having someone regulate how much money someone can make and what they are allowed to do with that money after they earn it. We shouldn't take over sports and tell them what to do, instead we ought to educate people on humanity and hope that those who can develop a desire to help those who can't. If we try to force that then we are no better than the evil dictators of the world. The issue isn't really the money, it is the people and what they let the money do to them. We've got a machine going in this country and it can be evil or benficent. We all have to decide which machine we want to support.
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