Am I the Only One Bothered by the Concept of the "Asset?"

You know what bothers me? When a player, particularly a black player, refers to the owner of the team for which he plays as "my owner." Just seems strange and reminds me of the pre-Civil War days.

The guy owns the team, he doesn't own you. You are just under contract with the team, that's all.

 

Err not to knock you off your high horse or anything, but these "dehumanized players" as you call them are getting paid millions of dollars. We aren't exactly slave traders treating these guys as commodities and trading them at will. They chose to become professional athletes of their own will, they are staying as professional athletes of their own will and frankly they're making off like bandits with the obscene amounts of dough they're getting just to play 48 mins of basketball.

The NBA is a business, and the NBA players while they're playing should be treated as properties of the business, or in other words as assets and liabilities. Whining about these being treated as objects is kinda' like movie stars complaining about their lack of privacy: its part and parcel of the business. Failing to differentiate between the business side and the player side is the reason why CD extended ridiculous contracts to guys like Kelvin Cato in the past. If it makes you sick then maybe you're watching the wrong sport bro.

 

ZING!

 

I have an appreciation for the game of basketball, but I truly despise the capitalist framework of the whole deal. Ideally, I would like to see worker democracy and the players as worker/owners of the league.

 

it's the business side of the game. i don't feel sorry for the player, i feel sorry for the families. the players are paid more than enough, they have very little to complain about. it is unfortunate for the players who are not expecting to leave, who have contributed to a team and feel like they have found a place, only to learn that you will have to restart somewhere else, but like i said, they are well compensated.

 

I'm definitely bothered that the Rockets are struggling to salvage some kind of value from McGrady's career with the franchise. I'll be glad if DM can get that done.

 

That is something that bothered me as well. Talking down on players as though you're on some high observatory tower looking down on an ant hill. Condescendingly enough like they're just little plastic army men that come in a bag of 500. Almost like circus animals.

And of course the video game analogy, how the players on TV come across as flat images, not actual people with feelings. As though a production company produced a CGI image of a being they called "Trevor Ariza", created just for us to opinionate on, twist around and "move about" in any way we like. Totally removing the self volunteering, agreed upon mutuality that a real human being puts into the situations.

Thats just how it is with contracts though. Squeezing every bit out of them until their term expires. Its about getting your money's worth until the end...

 

Totally agree with you there. I don't think it matters much to the players, though. They have been traded like pawns for a good long while now.

 

Great post jeff!!

 

Not true, Jamison is a prime example, the Wizards are doing the right thing by him by trading him because they think he deserves to go to a contender.

Fans are fickle themselves though, it was not long ago that we were rooting for T-mac to take an underdog Rockets team with Rafer Alston past the j*zz

 

You trade for assets; you trade away people. Players who don't currently play for my team aren't in my monkeysphere.

And except for people like the coaches who deal with them everyday, the feeling that the players on your team are in your monkeysphere is just an illusion, similar to the way that people call Paris Hilton "Paris", as if they know her personally on the basis of some PR events. As a fan, you only think you really know these players.

The perfect example of this is Kirby Puckett, and the careful facade that his wife constructed for so many years. Everybody "knew" what a great guy he was, until his PR machine broke down, and people got a peak at the real man.

 

uh-huh, "sell high" ...

 

How is this really different from anyone else's job? Every employee gets evaluated as to whether he is an asset to the employer or not. And those who are the employers ger evaluated by the market and public opinion.

The only difference is more people review Ariza's job cuz he does it more publicly.

 

It's not any different. And that is what makes it so sad.

If multi-millionaire athletes live at the whim of greedy, parasitical owners, well, can can you imagine the struggles of a working class or middle class worker? It ain't a pretty picture under corporate predatory capitalism.

 

I blame DaDakota.

 

So you want rockets management to keep their 25 million budget for an over the hill all star just because we have to stay loyal to him? I don't mind if it's hakeem being over the hill and gettin paid that much..because he got rockets 2 rings..tmac got them nothing and is gettin paid 25 mil which means rockets can do whatever they want with him. It's not even a humanitarian issue since he's like marbury right now when he was in his final years of his contract. IT's a business. Don't take it personal.

 

he is not an asset, he is a person, with real feelings, plus a cool person with coloured band name and at times sweet facial hair :grin:

 

Nope. But it should be recognized that it the players themselves who are the primary drivers of the revenues and profits that the owners receive, not vice-versa. It should be more of a player decision on who is compelled to stay or go, take pay cuts, etc. And management should be chosen by the players, rather than vice versa.

 

So, a lot of people, collectively, own him.

 

whats interesting is there's a somewhat similar issue in medicine. i was talking to a doctor friend of mine about how he can perform surgery on someone without thinking about how if he screws up, this person could die, or lose an arm, or be permanently damaged by his mistake. my friend replied that the only way to perform his job is to not think of the person as a person during the operation, but as a problem that must be solved, or a condition that must be corrected, or a tear that must be stitched. he said that if he allows himself to think about the person involved and the repercussions of a mistake, he could not do his job.

anyway, it's not necessarily related to the "asset" conversation, but I imagine that in order to be a good GM, a man has to be able to distance himself from the personal side of things in much the same way. hence the "asset".