Your surprise would fade if you had ever read an NBA CBA. If you read the off-court restrictions on personal freedoms, everything from freedom of speech to freedom to choose your own friends to freedom to dress how you wish to freedom to follow your own personal health regimen.... No amount of money can loosen the yoke of slavery, in truth it tightens it.
So were actual slaves (the ones who weren't paid anything at all and had no hope of freedom) subject to the loosest yoke of slavery? Ed O.
Comparing multi-million dollar athletes to slaves is a grievous insult to slaves, and really, any working class stiff anywhere. Seriously. Not funny.
The whole idea of a team owning a player's rights is similar to slavery. The reserve clause in baseball for decades was seen by many as a form of slavery. http://www.baseballchronology.com/baseball/Background/Glossary/F/Flood_Case.asp Even though Flood was making $90,000 at the time, he likened the reserve clause to slavery. Arguably, it was a controversial analogy, even among those who opposed the reserve clause. Even so, Americans have long been free to move to a new city and apply for positions in their chosen field. Not so for professional athletes and, thanks to the ridiculous antitrust exception the business of baseball had long enjoyed, particularly not for professional baseball players. It seems the incredibly rich owners believed whole heartedly in capitalism, except as it related to their employees, who they bought, sold, and traded much as slave owners had for hundreds of years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. Owners certainly would not have stood for being bought and sold by the communities that made their fortunes possible.
Having kids is a "kind of slavery". Being married is a "kind of slavery". Wearing your seat belt is a "kind of slavery". It's a lazy and weak analogy, IMO. Ed O.
You want to form a union? Why, do you hate America, democracy and capitalism and want to contribute to the death of our way of life?
Or play basketball for tens of millions of dollars. Or play basketball, period. They could all get jobs changing light bulbs, or pruning trees. No wait, that would be slavery.
Wow, the most Clyde Drexler earned as a Portland Trailblazer was $1,578,000. That's about what Elliot Williams is being paid. o0
This might be the most ignorant post I have ever seen on S2. You equate men making an average of 5 million dollars a year and living a lifestyle most people can only dream about with slavery?
How do you know this? Do you earn $5 million? Walk in someone's shoes before you say they have it easy. I heard one of them committed suicide.
Just messing with you, Mediocre Man. I better not give you a heart attack. If this were a weekday, more people would be here and I could get someone to start a big argument. Where's PapaG lately?
