By Joe Schackman
Jeremy Lin made it in New York, but New York didn't make him.
Loyalty is as dead a sports term as the flying wedge and Big East football.
The moment free agency went mainstream, athletes became mercenaries, hired help acquired by the highest bidder. The business side of sports came bursting through our black-and-white TVs, eventually leaving us with what is now a system where the concept of loyalty between player and franchise is worth about as much as a Zimbabwean dollar.
This isn’t some misguided call for the return of loyalty. No, teams make far too much money to even pretend like that could happen. And the athletes shouldn’t factor it into their decisions, either. For stars like Peyton Manning and LeBron James, life is governed by one Jay-Z quote: “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.”
Jeremy Lin is one of the most organically interesting sports stories ever. An Asian-American and Harvard grad, he broke into a league where few from either background have thrived before. Then he lit up Madison Square Garden in a way that no one has for decades. And now it is over.
Lin is not returning to the New York Knicks. He took his talents to the open market and negotiated the highest contract he could. It was a deal that the Knicks were unwilling to match. His departure prompted an angry uprising against owner James Dolan and the Knicks’ front office, but in the fray Lin hasn’t escaped unscathed either. Many fans feel that he “owed” it to the Knicks to return to the team. They believed he should be grateful for the Knicks’ willingness to play him when two teams had already passed.
But does he really owe the Knicks anything? It’s not as if the Knicks took a flier on him in the draft, patiently groomed him and then stuck with him when he struggled on the court. Rather, they picked up a discarded player at a position where they were thin. He snuck his way into some late-game action against the Nets in February and exploded. His mercurial play in subsequent games basically made it impossible for the Knicks NOT to play him. It was an easy decision, and one they made solely for the good of the team, not out of any particular desire to see Lin succeed.
So when it came time for Lin to negotiate a contract, he took the Knicks to business school. He agreed to an initial offer with the Rockets, and then the Knicks played their hand too early, with one unnamed official saying the team would match a contract up to “one billion dollars.” Lin used it as leverage to get a better deal with the Rockets that included more guaranteed money. Everything spiraled from there.
Some Knicks fans are stunned by that move. They can’t believe their budding star would leverage the team that birthed his career just to make a bit more money. But can you blame him? Who are we to tell another individual how much money they should make? Who are we to meddle in their finances? It’s not as if Dwight Howard is sitting at the conference table when you ask your boss for a promotion. If you’re appalled by the millions that the athletes make, then here’s an easy fix for you: turn off the TV.
At the same time those fans were begrudging Lin and his extra millions, they were getting on board with the idea of a “stretch provision.” Simply, it’s a new CBA rule that would allow the Knicks to mitigate their losses if Lin ended up a bust. That’s right. Fans were bashing Lin for signing a higher contract while discussing how to cut him from the team if he was not successful.
Come on. This is an industry where the Colts cut Peyton Manning, arguably one of the top five quarterbacks of all time. The Colts, who owe all of their recent success (and probably a new stadium) to Peyton, released him to make room for a rookie quarterback because Manning’s health represented too big of a risk. That would be on par with Berkshire Hathaway firing Warren Buffett to hire some 20-something head of the Yale investment club.
Despite all the evidence, we fans still operate under this facade of loyalty. We recognize that sports is just another industry, but we still want our players to feel the same connection to us that we do to them. Lin gave Knicks fans a reason to watch, and Knicks fans want to be the reason Lin plays. They want him to stand up and say, “I love New York, especially you guys, so much that I’m giving up millions to play here.” But the cold truth is that that’s naive. Because shit, this is a business, man.
Joe Schackman is an editor and co-founder of Began in '96.
Jeremy Lin is one of the most organically interesting sports stories ever. An Asian-American and Harvard grad, he broke into a league where few from either background have thrived before. Then he lit up Madison Square Garden in a way that no one has for decades. And now it is over.
Lin is not returning to the New York Knicks. He took his talents to the open market and negotiated the highest contract he could. It was a deal that the Knicks were unwilling to match. His departure prompted an angry uprising against owner James Dolan and the Knicks’ front office, but in the fray Lin hasn’t escaped unscathed either. Many fans feel that he “owed” it to the Knicks to return to the team. They believed he should be grateful for the Knicks’ willingness to play him when two teams had already passed.
But does he really owe the Knicks anything? It’s not as if the Knicks took a flier on him in the draft, patiently groomed him and then stuck with him when he struggled on the court. Rather, they picked up a discarded player at a position where they were thin. He snuck his way into some late-game action against the Nets in February and exploded. His mercurial play in subsequent games basically made it impossible for the Knicks NOT to play him. It was an easy decision, and one they made solely for the good of the team, not out of any particular desire to see Lin succeed. So when it came time for Lin to negotiate a contract, he took the Knicks to business school. He agreed to an initial offer with the Rockets, and then the Knicks played their hand too early, with one unnamed official saying the team would match a contract up to “one billion dollars.” Lin used it as leverage to get a better deal with the Rockets that included more guaranteed money. Everything spiraled from there.
Some Knicks fans are stunned by that move. They can’t believe their budding star would leverage the team that birthed his career just to make a bit more money. But can you blame him? Who are we to tell another individual how much money they should make? Who are we to meddle in their finances? It’s not as if Dwight Howard is sitting at the conference table when you ask your boss for a promotion. If you’re appalled by the millions that the athletes make, then here’s an easy fix for you: turn off the TV.
At the same time those fans were begrudging Lin and his extra millions, they were getting on board with the idea of a “stretch provision.” Simply, it’s a new CBA rule that would allow the Knicks to mitigate their losses if Lin ended up a bust. That’s right. Fans were bashing Lin for signing a higher contract while discussing how to cut him from the team if he was not successful.
Come on. This is an industry where the Colts cut Peyton Manning, arguably one of the top five quarterbacks of all time. The Colts, who owe all of their recent success (and probably a new stadium) to Peyton, released him to make room for a rookie quarterback because Manning’s health represented too big of a risk. That would be on par with Berkshire Hathaway firing Warren Buffett to hire some 20-something head of the Yale investment club.
Despite all the evidence, we fans still operate under this facade of loyalty. We recognize that sports is just another industry, but we still want our players to feel the same connection to us that we do to them. Lin gave Knicks fans a reason to watch, and Knicks fans want to be the reason Lin plays. They want him to stand up and say, “I love New York, especially you guys, so much that I’m giving up millions to play here.” But the cold truth is that that’s naive. Because shit, this is a business, man.
Joe Schackman is an editor and co-founder of Began in '96.
1 comments:
1. Thank god I'm not a Knicks fan, and
2. Maybe they should bring back John Starks, Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley.
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