Originally Posted by
ChillinDuke
I see your general point, but I don't believe it's that simple. Often, people make this argument about employment rights (read: players vs owners). I don't explicitly care about that.
What I care about is the fairness of competition, irrespective of who has the "power".
In the vast, vast majority of industries in the U.S., companies and the related business context are complicated enough that single people don't change the balance of power as it relates to competition. There are too many forces and dynamics at play.
In the NBA, one single player can change everything for a team. Only in sports do we find people complaining about players having control because sports (really, the NBA) are the only example I can think of where the power is so concentrated in a single person.
If a U.S. company was driven by a singular employee having the right to make (nearly) all decisions, and that singular employee was able to lure the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc best employees so as to make a mega corporation that commanded all the business in an industry and all the revenues, I can darn well assure you that it wouldn't be "weird" for a ton of people to want to break up that company and not allow such a thing to happen, for the benefit of collective stakeholders throughout the industry (and world). But that doesn't really happen because businesses have developed into such complex organizations that they mostly require many people to operate them.
So I don't view it as a rights issue. It gets boiled down to that, but my view is that's misdirected. The issue to me is fair and balanced competition - because this is sports and that's the point of it all - in theory - at least to me. Others may say it's only about entertainment, I guess, but I don't think athletes view their industry as explicitly entertainment - that's more of a byproduct of the competition.
Anyway, this got away from NBA regular season - my question was originally legitimate and interested. I wanted to hear others' views on how the NBA has developed over time and what the future held for the NBA's business direction. But I guess I should have expected being indirectly labeled an "owner homer" that doesn't think players should have employment rights. Because why would anyone actually want to talk objectively about Lebron's legacy, the NBA's brand, and their combined go-forward impact on the next generation of NBA talent?
- Chillin