Ok, here's the thing that I still have trouble with... to clarify...
Suppose McDonald's decides to create a McDonald's organization and people can join. Now, those are the only people that can enjoy the wonderful privilege of flipping burgers. And they can be compensated for their time at the wonderful rate of $1.00 per day. (Or whatever --- I chose an insane number because it's essentially irrelevant.)
Now, since it's an organization like the NBA or a church or whatever, don't they get the same leeway?
Seems like too much of a scam and way far outside the spirit of labour laws.
But at the core, they are the same thing...
I just can't get past the rule of law.
-Renegade
No, the core is vastly different because of the size. The rule of law accounts for the CIA doesn't it? It's the same here only for consumers.
Size has a lot to do with the complexity. Context also.
Far as size goes, people within an organization may have smaller less powerful entities tied to a salary where all the leverage goes to whoever is on top.
The NBA is so huge and it is a sports league so it's not just a corporation but a mixture of businesses within businesses. Most of those people not really victims except in the eyes of whatever hardcore fanbase can get away with painting as a meme.
In the context of offiicating: this is the LA Lakers. It's like a bunch of people within Enron only what Enron actually did was illegal and unfair to everyone concerned within and external to the company with no clear sight of benefitting anyone except the entity that is Enron.
In the case with the NBA, if Paul goes to the Lakers, the NBA not only profits but they resurrect interest in one of their big market teams. Interest that was already there (and arguably at it's peak compared to ALL other teams) unlike the New York Knicks who had to acquire Amare Stoudemire and was on a slump for years. In fact the only time it waned was because of the players themselves in the last NBA Finals.
If Paul stays at NO, chances are he still gets traded elsewhere because NO simply can't compete. Even if he stays, NO still is nowhere near a title. It is by far less worse than fairer and more "according to the rules" trade such as what happened with Miami and LA. Trades that only seem fair because there was no paper trail left behind of any tampering as these two major teams have wisened up after the Joe Smith fiasco.
It's why I'm against such analogies. It's so important to know which NBA team is vetoing in this case because if you're not, you will severely underestimate the delusion hardcore fanbase would go to attach whatever extremities they can to make a situation look worse than it is in the name of making their already superior (and borderline unfairly built) team become even more superior. This is not to say the trade is unfairly leaning towards LA but believe me with the "superstar" player actually being moved to LA, you can hook enough fans into thinking that they are getting a superior deal yet again and fuel more arguments.
...and just so that it can't be said that I'm attempting to dodge the core:
The core is years in the making. This is again the problem with laws. Too many appealing to the rule, not many appealing to the right.
The core was that teams complained of "super" teams. The making of Bird's Celtics and Magic's LA was considered unfair.
Whether they were so unfair that they warranted a rule or not, the point was this was the most exciting point of the NBA and resurrected interest in it.
Then years down the line, post-Jordan, there was both a need (actually a want by fans and greedy league officials) for the next Jordan and a need (actually a want by teams who want to win without care for competition) for a super team that retained the interest of Jordan's peak years.
Here's where the conflict of interest started to unravel. Teams wanted to bypass the rules that keep them from being as super a team as possible. Yet they have players that aren't as good as Jordan though evolved much better in skills/athleticism and talent but without the heart and domination that defined Jordan.
Then you have players wanting more and more lucrative contracts. A product of the false marketing in which the core was that the league severely desired to fulfill a "guaranteed Jordan peak years way of profits".
That right there is the core but the size and the elements of powerful people involve means the rule of law is insufficient if not deficient at maintaining any semblance of the "better" old days. (I don't say good because it's not like it was peaches and pie during those years.)
The product got worse. The rulers got worse. Teams got greedier.
This created a culture where superstar trade decisions after superstar trade decisions occured so frequently and somewhat unfairly that even though the fanbase of those teams cheered for it, deep down the overall fanbase lost a lot of their interest in the actual teams as legitimacy of competition lost it's luster.
Meanwhile teams kept on stretching the ways they can build super teams "within the restricted rules". LA being a major market meant they hold a lot of leverage. It didn't hurt that they had arguably the only next Jordan player to have won several championships thanks to a combination of good management and again that leverage of being a big market. The combination which resulted not only in Shaq but to the point of trading Gasol-Kwame. A trade that jump start all these other teams desiring to tamper and create super teams to counter this new generation of bypassing fairness within the rule of law.
Such a culture creates chaos and as the NBA rulers/officiators try to maintain controls, try to keep lock-outs from happening, try to satisfy fans who delude themselves that every time LA wins it's not because of a team combining the elements of creating a super team and going against watered down teams ...the result is you have crazy decisions like this veto that sometimes backfire, sometimes get ignored or sometimes have fans reeling about on what is really fair or what's not. All while the rich get richer. Even being arguably richer than when the best players were winning championships and actually dominating the league without demanding for severe (even by the standards of the past) lopsided trades except for Jordan of course who is a special case that both dominated but also marketed himself while showing everyone that the hype was fully warranted. That latter was a special case but as special as it was, it was also the pre-emptive setup that created this culture. And no, I'm not trying to make the issue sound complicated. This is the core. You want to make slightly more legit analogies, make an analogy that considers this situation not some current events social whining that sound only legitimate if you haven't been following sports news. This isn't an issue of Joe Schmoe blue collar/white collar worker not being able to go to work on a place he wants. This isn't about animals chained to posts. Worst case scenario, the trade gets blocked, and a championship contending team gets to prove that they are a legit championship contending team by settling on their current roster. In fact if this so called team wins the championship again and the Paul trade doesn't really do anything, then all it is was a good off-season of news while (most) fans do a double take and thank the NBA for doing the veto.
