It’s like comics writers are some strange people stuck in 1964
Adrian Woknarowski, who I think is one of the best NBA reporters today wrote a column over at Yahoo! Sports last week about Carmelo’s desire to be traded from the Nuggets during his current contract year. There has been lots of talk about this and it’s obviously not new news. Frankly as a Jazz fan I would love to see him go, preferably someplace far away on the east coast where we wouldn’t have to see him very often, either that or let the Jazz pick him up.
It’s not that I don’t like Melo, I actually do like him unlike many Jazz fans, he’s clearly one of the premier scorers in the NBA and I think would be great with D-Will. It’s the Nuggets that I hate. For years they were the also-rans of the whichever division the Jazz were in. They were bottom of the barrel, almost every year, which made them that team, at least when they had the Skyline Jersey, the crappy team with the awesome Jersey that you could sport without caring they were a “rival”. Golden State has for years been that team on the west coast. But since moving to the baby blue and picking up Melo and forming this latest team, they have moved to contenders for the Northwest Division almost every year. They are like your little brother that has finally gotten big enough that he can hit back and pull girls almost as hot as you can. Of course they fizzle every year and loose to the Jazz in the playoffs and obviously loosing Melo and whomever else they will have to dump will put them back into the rebuilding phase, which I can’t wait for.
But enough of my little schadenfreude variety hour. What I wanted to address here was the very negative light that the Polish Penman (hoping that nickname will stick for Woj, little play on Jaws and the Polish Rifle, my favorite ethnic nickname ever) displayed Melo’s agents in. There is obviously a distaste for agents among fans and media members that try to approach from a fan perspective. A distaste that I cannot understand.
The structure of the NBA and all professional sports in the US that have been unionized and work off a CBA absolutely need an agent. It is the agent that fights both the owner and, although it is never talked about, the union to get an individual player the most value for their work. I think it’s hard for your average fan to relate to a guy that wants $17 million instead of $15 million, they are both huge amounts of money, but it does matter. The other issue is the one at hand here, deciding where you get to work. I think this one irks fans even more, mostly because they feel a loyalty to players and don’t like them to leave, like it’s a personal affront.
But just think about your job for a minute, how many of you are locked into a long term contract with your employer that can not be terminated from your side? How many of you even have to give more than 2 weeks notice before you can move on to something better? Let’s say you work at a bank, Chase for example, you can’t leave for 6 years, and at any moment they can send you off to work for Wells Fargo across the country. It’s a very unusual work circumstance that most of us can’t even relate to.
So when you are sick of being a waiter at the Olive Garden, you throw down a plate of All You Can Eat Pasta Spectacular, tell your boss to go fuck himself, make a semi racist comment about those stupid commercials with the 3 white couples and the one white couple that happens to have skin that looks kinda black and storm out to get a job at Fluffinuggers Pizza and Beer next week. Well Melo has to do the same thing, but using a bunch of agents and their PR people and the news paper and get traded to another place. He is a resource with market value, it’s just that he can’t make use of that value because he is locked into a contract.
I have said for years that the CBA and the unions in sports need to be blown up. I don’t think that sports leagues are monopolies, and by the actual definition of monopolies they are not. But until the talent is free to choose their contracts as they see fit, this is the only way to go about things. The only thing a players owes a team is to maximize their playing performance while they are under contract, not to extend that contract, not to be satisfied with that contract and not to stay in a place for the duration of that contract.
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