The Sports Page: Sunday musings…6/30/2024
Been sitting, stewing over a few things in the world of sports. As things have settled into whatever my new normal is, three pebbles in my shoe have finally worked their way into my foot far enough to get my attention. Any one of them is worthy of a Sunday sports page column. Alas, no one with a platform has stepped in, and no one has abdicated in favor of the eyeball guy.
So here goes…
Nepotism. You had to see this coming. Right? I mean, is there any sentient being paying the least bit of attention to the circus that has become the NBA off-season who didn’t see Lebron James pressing the Lakers behind closed doors to draft his son Bronny while Rich Paul made sure that every other team steered clear? Paul made it clear that Bronny would only accept a full NBA contract. No “two-way” or G-League tender. Don’t bring that soft 10-day contract “stuff” down the lane. Even the Cleveland Cavaliers, the only other “real” destination for La Familia James was invited to the table; Bronny worked out for only the Lakers and the Suns.
What’s your take on the nepotism angle? Honestly it’s the least interesting way to look at this, at least for me. There is just so much nepotism already taking place in professional sports, including the NBA, it’s just a non-story in my book if it has finally bubbled up to the surface. Isaiah Mobley, brother of superstar Evan Mobley, takes up a little bit of real estate at the end of the Cavaliers bench. So, too, does Giannis Antetokounmpo’s big brother in Milwaukee. What’s interesting is that these are all that I can come up with when it comes to the players.
Front office, on the other hand, are littered with the kinfolk of owners, senior management, and their friends.
Terry Pluto of the Cleveland Plain Dealer has taken a bit of a different approach, and I think Terry’s angle is much more interesting: LeBron James has acquired and gone on to use leverage more effectively and to a greater degree than any other NBA player in history. I think he actually under calls it to be honest. Arnold Palmer is responsible for what we know as the modern PGA tour, but he played in perhaps the epitome of an individual sport. In all of my years as an athlete and as a fan I simply can’t remember a single athlete in any professional team sport that so actively and so publicly used the leverage that he had as a superstar to influence the actions of the teams in his league.
Not Bobby Orr or Wayne Gretzky in the NHL. Heck, Gordie Howe had to convince the management of the Hartford Whalers that adding him to a roster already populated by two Howes would be a plus. Bill Russell with the Celtics in the 60’s is a candidate, in that he likely would have retired rather than play for anyone other than Red Auerbach. The Celtics named him the last player coach in league history. Larry Bird, whose expiring contract prompted a change in the rules allowing teams to sign their superstars to a larger than “allowed” contract was not so much using leverage he “owned” as being the leverage used by ownership and agents to achieve the goal. NFL and MLB teams are simply too big to be levered the way LeBron has done to the NBA.
Think about it. Beginning with “The Decision” and “taking my talents to South Beach”, LeBron has changed the business dynamics of game. I wrote an essay here “It’s Not About the Money”, imploring LeBron to make the kind of decision that only he could, to turn away from the glitter and the gold of a “hot” city and make his hometown a perennial winner. Sadly, he didn’t listen. He chose the superstar he wished to partner with in Dwayne Wade, and then openly recruited Chris Bosh to form the nucleus that won 2 titles in Miami. Opted out of his contract when it looked like he could do the same thing again in Cleveland, and burnishes his reputation by bringing the city its first championship since 1958 or some such. Rather than stick around he decides he really belongs with all of the other Hollywood folks he is now getting ready to crush with his new production company and kicks off Showtime v2.0 with the Lakers.
Seriously, compared with all of that, getting your kid a job at the office doesn’t really seem like all that big a deal, does it?
I guess what I’m saying is that I’m underwhelmed by all of the kvetching about nepotism in the “Lakers draft Bronny” thing, and much more impressed by how LeBron has once again maneuvered himself exactly where he wants to be. Do you think he will follow in the footsteps of Magic and Michael and use part of his fortune to by an NBA team? Seems to me that doing so would be aiming too low for LeBron. This is a guy who understands power, and more importantly a guy who understands how to use that power. Terry Pluto is correct, more correct than he realizes. LeBron James is certainly the NBA player who has used his leverage more than anyone before him, including Michael Jordan. Short of literally starting a new league a la Arnold Palmer, my bid is that LeBron is the professional athlete without boundary who has done so.
Folks who know me might raise an eyebrow since one of my kids has been working with me for some 5 years now. It’s been a really good thing for us, but I do wonder about how this will affect young Bronny. How LeBron will look back on this move as a Dad over time. Will playing with your Dad, arguably the most famous non-soccer playing athlete in the world, be worth 10,000 times the attention that a player on the fringe would typically attract? How will the Dad/Son thing play out in the bright lights of LA and the NBA? Fatherhood and sonhood is tough enough around the dinner table. But that’s a topic for another “Sunday musings…”, and I still have two more topics yet to cover.
I’ll see you next week…
This entry was posted on Sunday, June 30th, 2024 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.