[PJ] Enough is enough, and if professional sports team owners haven’t realized it yet, succumbing to bullying and children’s temper tantrums never works out for anyone... especially in this case, where the adults who own the teams bear all the financial risk.Let’s all be brutally honest. Athletes are extremely well-paid entertainers. The average Major League Baseball player makes $4,051,490 per year, and the average NBA player earns a whopping $7.7 million. They are paid as high or higher than the biggest stars in film, music, and television. But they are entertainers, and in the same way that an actor is paid huge sums because they cause even higher profits for the studio or production company, these athletes are getting paid exorbitant amounts so that the team owners can make profits. These players have no financial risk and should be incredibly grateful that they are paid such large amounts for playing a sport.
All people, including entertainers of every sort, have their own opinions, especially political opinions in the current divided climate. But there are precedents for athletes using their popularity to further the expression of their goals. Jackie Robinson, Tommy Smith, and Muhammad Ali are only a few of the many athletes who have effected positive change in our culture through the use of their popularity as entertainers. Other athletes went on to become actively involved in politics and became true leaders: Bill Bradley, J.C. Watts, Jack Kemp, and many others capitalized on their popularity to become legitimate leaders on a national level. They became true policymakers by building upon their athletic successes.
But the current athletes in the NBA and MLB do not act as responsible leaders, but as spoiled children. And they need to be taken to task for their behavior.