Thursday, July 19, 2012

$23 million, sure, that sounds about right

I have otherwise perfectly intelligent and logical friends who, amazingly, still don't understand why I'm not a fanboy for the NBA.  

The Washington Wizards yesterday paid Andray Blatche $23 million to go away yesterday, as part of the league's "amnesty" clause.  Here's a great summary of this complete bum's time in Washington, in the excellent D.C. Sports Bog.  

I'd love to expound on this, one of countless reasons (or might I say, 23 million reasons) why this league is unlikeable, but all I need to do is restate the fact in a way that the full effect is understood.  

Much like this nation's budget deficit, big numbers get thrown around so often that we become somewhat desensitized to exactly how much money we're talking about.  So let me spell it out.  Twenty-three million dollars.  To not play basketball.  $23,000,000.

And the NBA wonders* why it has problems relating to the average sports fan?  What a joke of a league. 

(*I don't think they actually wonder this, at least if they're being honest with themselves.)
 
You then might ask me, "But isn't the amnesty clause good?  What, would you rather teams be forced to keep these guys?"  The answer is, it doesn't matter, because NBA GMs are morons.  With one scrub off their salary caps, they'll just give the money to some other scrub anyway, which we've seen before


So, in two years (or maybe even less) when the Nuggets use their amnesty on "Wrong Way" JaVale McGee, paying him the remainder of his 4 year, $44 million contract to get him off their roster...just for giggles let's pretend it wasn't more predictable than a Three's Company episode.