bondom34 wrote:Outside wrote:bondom34 wrote:?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Saw this posted elsewhere, and am not totally sure I get it. Maybe I'm missing more, but in general felt like this is more or less an issue of fandom. I know players will always stick up for players, and tbh don't always have issues with someone asking for a trade.
I'm very much anti-"shut up and dribble" but at the same time don't know if this really applies for this issue (and tbh think fans problems are more when a player acts unprofessionally, not just when they ask for a trade).
The point Draymond is making is the inequity of how like scenarios are treated, depending on who is initiating the scenario.
Scenario 1: Player wants to be traded, team doesn't want to accommodate the trade, player does various things to make the situation uncomfortable to pressure the team to trade him.
Scenario 2: Team wants to trade player, team sits player, player has to sit, work out (but not too hard, don't want him to get injured), and cheer his temporarily current teammates until he is traded.
Both scenarios are someone wanting to initiate a trade. In scenario 1, the player is often viewed negatively for wanting to be traded, and sometimes/often called unprofessional for initiating the trade. In scenario 2, the team wanting to initiate the trade is considered part of the business, and unless player follows the script, the player is viewed as unprofessional.
The player and team have a contract, but due to the way sports leagues are structured, it is almost never a contract between equals. The team almost always has leverage. Unless the player has a no-trade clause, there is nothing the player can do about being traded by the team, even if the player wants to stay. But if the player wants to be traded, he has little leverage to get that done. He can ask the team for a trade, but if the team doesn't want to accommodate that, there is little a player can do other than make life miserable for the team.
From the players' standpoint, they have very limited careers, and if things change significantly in the middle of a player's contract so that the team is no longer a good fit for the player, the player has to either accept his lot in life (Bradley Beal) or do what is necessary to get to another team (James Harden).
When Harden signed his contract in 2017, things looked pretty good in Houston. D'Antoni was the coach, Morey was the GM, they had traded for Chris Paul, and they were set up to be a contender. Fast forward to this year, and Houston hadn't gotten to the finals, Morey was gone, D'Antoni was gone, and the Paul/Westbrook experiments had failed. Harden is 31. If he waits until his contract is up in the summer of 2022, that's two seasons of his prime wasted. He has career goals, and he's focused on winning a title or at least contending. That's not happening in Houston now. So he did what was best for him and forced a trade, using what he had at his disposal given the inequity in leverage.
Back to Draymond, I think he's just venting about players typically being viewed as "unprofessional," the bad guy, in those situations for doing what's best for them and forcing a trade, while teams are almost never viewed as the bad guy for doing what's best for them and trading players.
I guess I'm coming at it from the fans perspective. As well, I'm a little less sure on fans being against players wanting a trade and more against them acting out on it (ie I don't know if there's pushback if Harden doesn't party maskless or if guys don't act out). Westbrook asked out of the same team at the same time and there wasn't really much backlash, Paul George asked out of OKC by some rumors and there really wasn't any either.
Not sure if this makes sense as a way to think on it, but most fans cheer for a team, not a player all the time. There are some cases of fans only cheering a player over a team, and I've heard folks also claim this as a negative connotation toward fans. So if we're ceding that most fans cheer for a team, they're going to inherently side with what's best for that team, and if we're not concerned with fans I'm not sure what the league is doing either. Plus in the end I guess I just see it as sort of the nature of the business, it's a public position where the player knew what they're getting into beforehand.
I guess just in the end the league is sort of not run by fans but if there are no fans there's no league, and most of them cheer for their given team. Saying this I love listening to Draymond talk, just not sure I really totally get him on this one.
Edit: Also, even just in terms of people in general I guess it seems like something that's a part of being a pro athlete. It's not always a situation where everyone will like what you do, but in some way the players are employees of the team I'd think, so the team sort of has that ability more. IDK, maybe I'm off on this one, it just almost feels like this one falls under something that's part of the job.
You're right about the fan perspective. Also, Westbrook and PG are good examples of "acceptable" ways for a player to get traded, so that does happen, though I think the PG trade out of OKC was somewhat of a mutually agreed upon thing after the Westbrook-PG experiment flamed out in the first round.
Also, to be clear, I'm not necessarily in favor of changing the player-team leverage dynamic. My main intent was to explain Draymond's point of view as I understand it. While I'd be open to tweaks in how things work, my guess is that an NBA world with the leverage balance in the players' favor would come with a different set of negative impacts and be significantly worse than what we have. But that's a whole nother discussion.
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