Within the past few years, some of this country’s most popular athletes have been hit with allegations of dog-fighting, sexual impropriety, sordid affairs, and at least two instances of inappropriate behavior with handguns. It isn’t hard to sympathize with those who feel like the off-the-court world of professional sports makes being a fan nearly impossible.
So it should have come to as a pleasant surprise to even casual sports fans to learn that a superstar player decided to take less money and sacrifice individual glory in an attempt to win a championship, and that in announcing his decision to pursue this goal he created a special TV program that wound up generating millions of dollars he donated to the Boys & Girls Club.
Yet in doing so, LeBron James’s approval rating may have sunk 61%. Sadly, its quite clear that James was doomed all along. If he stayed with the Cavaliers, he would have been criticized for not singing sooner, for putting such a strain on the city and giving himself a built-in excuse for never winning a ring. (Also, since everyone says this was the wrong way to leave, will someone please explain to me the right way to leave your hometown team as a superstar athlete?) If he went to New York or New Jersey, it meant he cared more about money than winning. And as we’ve seen, joining Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami means James is somehow taking the easy way out.
As my college track teammate used to say, "don't hate the player, hate the game." And when the game is free agency, how can we hate LeBron?
On October 7, 1969, the Cardinals traded Flood, catcher Tim McCarver, outfielder Byron Browne, and left-handed pitcher Joe Hoerner to the Philadelphia Phillies for first baseman Dick Allen, second baseman Cookie Rojas, and right-handed pitcher Jerry Johnson. However, Flood refused to report to the moribund Phillies, citing the team's poor record and the fact that they played in dilapidated Connie Mack Stadium before belligerent – and, Flood believed, racist – fans. Flood, who began his career making only $17,000 was worth over $100,000 in the open market. That fall he wrote to the commissioner and the courts saying,
"I do not feel I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several States."Commissioner Bowie Kuhn denied his request, citing the propriety of the reserve clause and its inclusion in Flood's 1969 contract. In response, Flood filed a $1 million lawsuit (which would be automatically tripled under the Sherman Act) against Kuhn and Major League Baseball on January 16, 1970, alleging that Major League Baseball had violated federal antitrust laws.
On June 19, 1972, the United States Supreme Court in Flood v. Kuhn, 407 U.S. 258, (1972) ruled that the longstanding exemption of professional baseball from the antitrust laws, Federal Baseball Club v. National League, 259 U.S. 200, (1922); Toolson v. New York Yankees, Inc., 346 U.S. 356, (1953), was an established aberration, and in light of the Court's holding that other interstate professional sports are not similarly exempt, but one in which Congress has acquiesced, and that is entitled to the benefit of stare decisis. Removal of the resultant inconsistency at this late date is a matter for legislative, not judicial, resolution.
While Curt Flood fought hard to win his free agency, it wasn't until the first day of the 105th Congress in 1997 that Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-Michigan) introduced Baseball Fans and Communities Protection Act of 1997;numbered HR 21 (Flood's Cardinals uniform number) which removed baseball's controversial antitrust exemption with regards to labor. [Technically baseball got free agency in 1976, although the players were still suffering under the anti-trust exception for two more decades.]
Each of the major sports in the United States, have had various levels of free agency were introduced throughout their existence. In the National Football League (NFL) in 1992, in the National Hockey League (NHL) in 1995, and the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1996. Although players can shop their services to all teams, free agents do not necessarily take the highest salary bid; compensating differentials, such as being close to home or having a chance to win a championship, might induce a player to accept a less than maximum bid for their services.
Ask the average fan, especially today, and he or she will likely cite reasons why free-agency is a bad thing for sports. While often the fan will point to a certain player leaving their favorite club, they may also point to the fact that certain work-stoppages such as the 1994 MLB player’s strike, the lockout of the NBA players in 1998, and the lockout in the NHL after the 2004 season, all had free agency as a primary point of contention.
While these concerns are often expressed in the general media and are often arguments for artificially limiting player movement in professional labor markets, sports economists have generally found that while salaries do increase after free agency is introduced, competitive balance tends to be unaffected, and no team in U.S. professional sports has ever been bankrupted by free agency. Further, while free agency does increase the incentive for good players to leave better teams for worse teams and for players to move from small cities to large cities, it does not seem that free agency has substantially increased the movement of players across time. Finally, concerns over fan apathy are not supported in the aggregate: free agency does not reduce attendance or television viewership. The empirical evidence suggests that fears that free agency will increase player mobility, skew competitive balance, and reduce the attractiveness of the sport, relative to no-free agency, seem to be misplaced. (see Cymrot, D. J. (1983) “Migration Trends and Earnings of Free Agents in Major League Baseball, 1976-1979,” Economic Inquiry, 21(4), pp. 545-556.)
Were we in a pre-free agency period, for example in the days of Oscar Robertson a player was drafted territorily and was bound a player to a single NBA team in perpetuity. LeBron would have been committed to Cleveland forever. Not such a bad thing? What would their motivation be to put good teammates on the team? Why would they build him a new stadium? Why would they promote him at all?
Nearly every employee in America is at-will to the extent that they can leave the company they work for and choose to work for another corporation. Some employees in intellectual property-specific industries are constrained by non-compete clauses, but most of us can simply decide to go work for someone else. Not LeBron James. Because of the salary-cap structure in the NBA, LeBron will get only two or three opportunities to switch companies and negotiate his worth. Of those two or three, this is the one time that his value is probably the highest. This is probably the most important decision of LeBron James’ life, and he should get the chance to make it based on whatever set of criteria he so chooses.
As much as I feel for the people of Cleveland, they don’t automatically get to be part of the choice. It came off poorly, but I agreed with James when he said he had to make the best decision for himself. Would you stay at a job you hated for years just because you felt it wasn’t right to leave your co-workers?
Yes, I realize people will feel that this was all too "scripted." But a review of the facts suggests otherwise. No one would script a situation where they leave $150 million on the table. No one would let a "camp policy" make them look like a sore loser after being dunked on (when he simply played good help-side defense). Having Jim Grey wouldn't have been my choice for host, but apparently it was the brain-child of ESPN and Jim Grey in the first place. And who would you have chosen, Craig Sagerr? Stephen A. Smith? And how would you have done this special if you were trying to ensure that the Boys and Girls Club of America would receive the most money? Would you bring sponsors in, like State Farm and Vitamin Water? Of course you would.
Sure, he should've "scripted" a better response than using the term "South Beach" and sure, he should've "scripted" a better answer than one in which he referred to himself in the third-person, but for heavens sakes, he's not Prof. James at Cleveland State he's a freaking ballplayer. I mean if you are going to nitpick about the third person (which is as much a part of the spoken word of professional athletes as his other impediment "ax" in place of "ask" is a common impediment in the African-American community). He has no college education! And guess what, he speaks better than a whole heckuva lot of University of Wisconsin graduates.
You may be mad that he didn't pick Cleveland or whatever city you were pulling for, and you certainly might be mad at him for hiring a bad PR staff (although I think its neat that his team his all of his friends from Akron), but to lose respect for him at a time when he makes one of the toughest decisions any American employee can make? That's just jealousy. That's all.
EDITED TO ADD THIS (from Simmons):
I blame the people around him. I blame the lack of a father figure in his life. I blame us for feeding his narcissism to the point that he referred to himself in the third person five times in 45 minutes. I blame local and national writers (including myself) for apparently not doing a good enough job explaining to athletes like LeBron what sports mean to us, and how it IS a marriage, for better and worse, and that we're much more attached to these players and teams than they realize. I blame David Stern for not throwing his body in front of that show. I blame everyone.
We are already fools for caring about athletes considerably more than they care about us. We know this, and we do it anyway. We just like sports. We keep watching for moments like Donovan's goal against Algeria, and we keep caring through thick and thin for moments like Roberts' Steal and Tracy Porter's interception. We put up with all the sobering stuff because that's the price you pay -- for every Gordon Hayward half-court shot, or USA-Canada gold-medal game, there are 20 Michael Vicks and Ben Roethlisbergers.
