Blacksheep25 wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:Blacksheep25 wrote:
What do you mean by this? I’m trying not to wave it off as clearly baseball has a much better union and way more powerful as evidenced by their ability to fend off any salary cap and inflate salaries at a time when the sport has a median viewer that’s 65 years old.
Do you mean the individual superstars have more power relative to the union? I’d still think that’s wrong in a league where 95% are vaccinated, but would make a little more sense considering it’s not even the strongest sports union.
Everyone I know who works in HR, who are dealing with mandates, has said the same thing. The people complaining most that x person is unvaccinated, and why aren’t they fired yet, we’re those employees who also weren’t vaccinated until the mandates. They are like, “I’d think the early vaccinated would be the ones bitching.”
Those who felt pressured to get it when they were hesitant will be the first to insist he does also.
Do you realize that the average NBA player is making more than double the average MLB player? We're not talking about as a situation where the average MLB player is getting all sorts of goodies that the average NBA player is not.
Part of why this is, is that there are less NBA players than MLB players, so I'm not going to claim that average salary and union strength are the same thing, but I think it's clear that the NBA player union is sticking up for those in the minority here, and this does have quite a lot to do with the power of rank & file players.
Now, you might argue that the players' union is only sticking up for minority views on the vaccine because certain stars are the ones in the minority, but I'll note that LeBron and others have been very cautious about advocating for the vaccine and I don't think it's because LeBron is afraid of Kyrie. I think it has a lot more to do with what they're hearing from the Black community in general.
Re: who is complaining the most, early adopters or those who felt pushed? I don't know what to expect with regards to this. As someone with a scientific background who got vaccinated as soon as he could, I'm frankly frustrated with pretty much everyone who is antivax, but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what should be done about mandates because I know I personally have no control over these things.
I’m with you. Vaccinated first chance I had. I guess that’s the difference. We view it as a gift. I’m also irritated at all anti-vaxxers, but have been for six months. The newer feel forced or that it was some sacrifice, and from what I hear, way more vocal about others not vaccinated being penalized. I was surprised when I heard it the first few times, but generally view them as somewhat sociopathic, so I guess not that surprising. It’s a sacrifice, not a gift or part of some social compact for them.
Ya, I guess it depends on the health of the sport. If MLB was as popular as the NBA, lack of salary cap and 10 year contracts would make it much stronger. As it is, it’s a sport where the high end players make out much better, whereas the younger guys get screwed worse than lower tier NBA players. The NBA actually hurts the high end players as their value is so much more than any single MLB player could ever be. They are close, but the NBA is growing in popularity and global and baseball is dying. It’s also more regional. Have and have nots. That’s true in the NBA, but not like baseball where teams have 25% the payrolls of other teams.
I guess it’s closer than I realized, and the NBA PA will likely surpass it if it hasn’t already.
Cool, we're mostly on the same page.
I'd push back against the idea that MLB superstars are necessarily making more than NBA superstars. We have guys in the NBA right now with contracts in the $40 mill per year range, and Russell Westbrook already guaranteed to make at least around $340 mill in his career despite not being someone whose game is aging well at all.
I get why you say what you say. In theory you can make more money in baseball than basketball, and ARod made more money than any basketball player so far, plus you see these super-long MLB contracts and they look really impressive. But the big guns in the NBA to me seem to be making comparable money at the very least to top baseball guys at this point.
Now, you can still say "Yeah, but no baseball player is anywhere near as valuable as a star basketball player, so if you consider these guys based on a salary per impact ratio, baseball players get paid WAY more, which seems like an accomplishment for the union", but I think it's important to also factor in that different sports are just different.
In baseball, where the winner of each game is largely determined by randomness, the league doesn't have to worry about parity. The Yankees could spend a billion dollars annually, and they'd still lose 40% of the time and not win the World Series in most years. In basketball, you let the Lakers do this and they win everything all the time.
Hence, the state we're in with basketball contracts where it's the different factors among the owners that results in many of the constraints in addition to the negotiation with the players.
