Player Empowerment Isn’t Real
YES! I SAID IT!
It’s as real as WWE on a Monday night.
And I truly mean this.
Only the players (certain wrestlers) get to bend the ways (empowerment and actual wrestling technique) of what’s real in each respective field.
As we’ve moved through the last several years of basketball culture explosion, we’ve had the term crammed down our throats. I’m sick of it. Contracts, holdouts, and trades are all at a head in the new era (or lack there of). I wanted to take a look at this whole discussion that we’ve been having.
Star Players Have Always Had Power
LeBron James has leverage, power, the balls of most NBA executives — he’s a force that can have a team cater to his every request. So does James Harden and Kevin Durant. That’s the way the dynamic works in any workplace when you have that talent and production. The buck stops at the elite though. Solomon Hill doesn’t have that. Reggie Bullock isn’t pushing any buttons. And that’s no disrespect to these guys, I just wanted to paint the picture and draw the line. An even older example is Latrell Sprewell. In the 2004-05 season, he was offered a three-year, $21 million deal by the Minnesota Timberwolves. Rather than accept a deal, which he felt was below his worth, it ultimately led to Sprewell retiring from the league during the start of the 2005–06 season. It went down as one of the worst understandings of market and leverage. Granted, he could probably score that money in 2021.
When Leverage Blows Up
Kyrie Irving and Ben Simmons were on some kind of collision course opposite of any rumored transaction that fans concocted. They’ve both reached it, and find themselves in this weird flux of an absence. Just when we thought they would put their executives over the proverbial balcony, we’ve watched the Brooklyn Nets and Philadelphia 76ers move on without them. Simmons is closer to back in the fold. And Kyrie — who knows…but he’s been put on leave with the blessing of James Harden and the aforementioned Durant.
Kill It Dead
What many perceive as empowerment, I chalk up to visibility. The social media boom has opened the doors for podcast, streaming, etc. etc. Players have taken those mediums by the horn and turned them into their own mobile press conferences when needed. It’s a big reason we’re addicted the Twitter machine. At any point, a player can fill in a few characters and send a franchise, and the league to a lesser extent, in a craze.
(I can’t believe this tweet is still up)
But front offices can’t continue to trip over their feet at the sight of these things. The Ringer’s Wosny Lambre spoke recently about the current impasse between the Phoenix Suns and rising star, DeAndre Ayton. Ayton is looking for a deal for the max on a fairly limited body of work. It appears that the Suns aren’t ready for this kind of commitment. On the surface, we lose our minds about this news, but Wos goes on to break this down more eloquently than I can write via The Ringer NBA Show: Group Chat.
Farewell to player empowerment. It was almost a thing that fooled us all. Over the last two weeks, we watched some of the best and brightest falter down the stretch of their use of their name and fame. We are at the point where we can support players all day, every day. But at the same time, we can balance that with understanding that the NBA business is not swayed by as much as we have been led to believe.
