In understanding how cutthroat the business of professional sports so often is at the expense of athletes, it pains me to ever side with management. That's usually because it feels wrong to offer billionaires the one and only thing they can't buy, that being sympathy. In this particular case, however, it's because a 7 foot freak of nature who was under the heavy influence of the destructive drug that is LeBron James' figurative and literal agency basically put everyone in a headlock and dragged them out of the way in an attempt to get a deal to the Lakers done. Of course, the NBA should have a high level of interest in their top-end talent taking center stage whenever they are available to do so, but - the way I see it - the league basically appraised the mess made by Anthony Davis at $50,000 then threatened to charge the victimized organization upwards of millions of dollars to clean it up. The fact is, it wasn't the New Orleans Pelicans' prerogative to change the designation on the most impactful player in franchise history from 'athlete' to 'asset', but it is their prerogative to do everything in their power to make sure said asset doesn't depreciate. Essentially charging them 100K, even if it's much less relative to the networth of the finee, for each game's worth of insurance just seems silly when all they are doing is trying to control damage that they didn't cause. This isn't some indictment of the NBA's player empowerment (of which I am a fan) or some principled stand on behalf of small markets (of which I find to be an overused excuse for failure). Rather, it's a nod to the everyday rivalry that is Risk Vs. Reward. Anthony Davis bet heavily on the latter in hoping he'd get quickly flipped to a historically prestigious franchise to play alongside the best player on the planet. The cost of the former covering should have been 20-some-odd games in which he, proverbially speaking, gets packaged in bubble wrap and prepped for auction. Fingers crossed that this argument is made moot by AD finishing his final, increasingly awkward season in New Orleans healthy. However, if he doesn't then it's going to be a terrible look for a league that apparently considers collusion less criminal than a couple dozen DNP's in games that will only be made meaningful if the disaster they are openly inviting strikes.
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