{"id":16,"date":"2003-06-25T02:07:00","date_gmt":"2003-06-25T06:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tradermike.net\/movethecrowd\/2003\/06\/why_is_that\/"},"modified":"2003-06-25T02:07:00","modified_gmt":"2003-06-25T06:07:00","slug":"why_is_that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/06\/25\/why_is_that\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is That?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The article ‘No Outrage Over Foreign Invasion<\/a>‘, raises the issue of why there is such protest over black teenagers going into the NBA draft, but no protests over the European teens going pro. The same question could be asked about why nobody cares when white tennis players, golfers, or baseball players turn pro straight out of high school. I can only see one difference in these situations — the color of their skin. In my opinion, anyone that can come out of high school and make millions has every right to do so. In fact, you may be a fool not to turn pro in that situation. Why risk a career-ending injury in college if you’re already capable of making millions in the pro ranks? I can’t see a good reason.<\/p>\n

But back to the reason for the protests… I think that most people can’t stand the idea of these (black) kids becoming instant millionaires straight out of high school. To them, something surely must be wrong with society if these kids can get paid like that for doing ‘nothing’. Well, to those people I say our capitalist system is working as designed. Take LeBron James for example. Many will complain about his $90 million Nike contract. But do they consider how much money he will generate? LeBron will likely single handedly revive the economy around Cleveland’s arena. And if he’s anywhere close to being the next Michael Jordan, that means billions of dollars in revenue to the NBA<\/a>. And there’s no doubt that he’ll generate millions in ticket sales for Cleveland’s road games too. Oh, and the shoes… you know Nike is gonna sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of LeBron James gear. (Jordan generated over $153 in revenue for Nike<\/a> in his first year with them.) So why can’t LeBron get his cut? If he had developed a Windows killing operating system nobody would have a problem with him getting paid. Many of those same people will whine about athlete’s salaries in general, yet they won’t complain about the money the team owners are making off of those same athletes. Now why is that<\/i>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The article ‘No Outrage Over Foreign Invasion‘, raises the issue of why there is such protest over black teenagers going into the NBA draft, but no protests over the European teens going pro. The same question could be asked about why nobody cares when white tennis players, golfers, or baseball players turn pro straight out… Continue reading Why is That?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":22,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/06\/25\/rise_of_international_basketball_talent\/","url_meta":{"origin":16,"position":0},"title":"Rise of International Basketball Talent","date":"June 25, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"This is sort of a follow-up to my earlier basketball post about the foreign invasion of basketball players. REAL Sports With Bryant Gumbel had an excellent report on international basketball this week. (The show will be rebroadcast a few more times if you missed it.) Here's a synopsis of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Race"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":254,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/12\/11\/rasheed_wallace_say_the_nba_is_exploiting_uh_brothas_\/","url_meta":{"origin":16,"position":1},"title":"Rasheed Wallace Say the NBA is Exploiting, uh, Brothas :-)","date":"December 11, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Rasheed Wallace had some strong words about the NBA in a recent interview: But there is no ambivalence, no question about how he feels, in the strong language he uses to criticize the NBA and how it treats black players. In a league where all but one team owner and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sports"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":89,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/07\/19\/chuck_d_is_a_signifying_monkey_wtf\/","url_meta":{"origin":16,"position":2},"title":"‘Chuck D is a Signifying Monkey’… WTF?","date":"July 19, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"This has to be the dumbest shit I've read in a very long time - Chuck D is a signifying monkey. The author of that article, Al Barger, made several statements that must be refuted. The first of which is this: The greatest act in rap history, by any reasonable\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":403,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2004\/10\/21\/yahoo_buys_stata_labs_going_after_gmail\/","url_meta":{"origin":16,"position":3},"title":"Yahoo Buys Stata Labs… Going After GMail?","date":"October 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The news of Yahoo buying Stata Labs, the makers of Bloomba, is very interesting indeed. It certainly seems like they're buying their technology expertise in an attempt to \"get with\" Google's GMail and their desktop toolbar. Here's the news: Dear Stata Labs Customer, We thank you for your support of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Business"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":76,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/07\/14\/my_favorite_hip-hop_albums\/","url_meta":{"origin":16,"position":4},"title":"My Favorite Hip-Hop Albums","date":"July 14, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been moved to do a few more music posts by some other posts I've seen recently. And also as a continuation of my 22 greatest MCs post. Many of those posts are on the excellent J-Notes blog, which mainly focuses on jazz and R&B (James took me back with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":302,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2004\/04\/10\/i_know_we_all_look_alike_but_damn\/","url_meta":{"origin":16,"position":5},"title":"I Know We All Look Alike, but Damn!","date":"April 10, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"My boy Jon and I had just finished our bike ride this morning when a funny thing happened. We're chillin' by this rest area when two white women ride up. They say hello and one says \"Oh, you're those two guys who just zipped past us...\" So I partake in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Just for Fun"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}