Posted on 02/16/2012 8:21:54 AM PST by SeekAndFind
I’m sure Obama is working on an NBA player bailout at the taxpayers expense.
Hussein loves giving our money to his buddies, especially the formerly 1% who spent themselves into destitution.
I used to work with a lady whose backyard abutted the basketball courts where Iverson would show up to play in the old ‘hood in Hampton. She told me Iverson exhibits the most arrogant, hood-rat type of behavior she’d ever seen. He acts and talks just as “street” as any gangbanger. Iverson is a real POS.
I remember Frenchy. If I remember correctly, he had a pair of platform shoes with a goldfish in the platform.
Yep... the most glaring example of that was Steve Young, who signed for "$43 million," most of which didn't exist, with the USFL's LA Express. IIRC, the Express ceased to exist after a year or two.
That 10-year hiatus, during which he found God and did a LOT of maturing, was the best thing that could've happened to Foreman. His is a prime example of how to positively market himself for his athletic career and afterward.
BTW, I met Foreman when he came to Yorktown, VA in 2004. He strikes me as a humble and decent guy, with an almost meek persona. He's been through some serious ups and downs in his life and has made the most of the opportunities given him. He has my admiration.
This person grew up in my area. He was a loser with a terrible attitude even before he got his B-ball contract. He and his “associates” served time at a local prison farm for getting in a fight with some white guys and tearing up a bowling alley.
Doug Wilder, the Gov of VA at the time, shortened his sentence so he could enter Georgetown.
ESPN4 needs to run a telethon to help feed this guy, so sad.
NOT
“Big time sports has become incredibly exploitative.”
I’ve never liked the term “exploitation,” mostly because of its slipperiness. You can use it for everything from enslavement to fair exchange. It can mean you’re getting the better of someone or simply utilizing something, like how I exploit my spoon to deliver breakfast. No doubt exploiters of the word want you to think of it always and forever in the negative sense. Which is why perfectly just and mutually beneficial exchanges can so easily be painted as immoral, and why nonsensical phrases like “wage slavery” aren’t laughed out of hand.
Certainly when the exploited party gets 100 mil out of the deal it’s not the bad kind of exploited. Even if you know beforehand they’ll fritter it away. Unless you manage to grab it from the other end, which is very, very true I suppose of the agent/management department of the sports industrial complex. But we’re needlessly complicating things. Iverson still made way, way more take money than he’d ever be able to earn doing anything else. Therefore, the vast sports conspiracy’s exploitation was also his gain.
“It grabs ghetto kids with every socioeconomic/educational/cultural/attitudinal deficit in the book”
Bear in mind that this is not done so as to get the most exploitable players. It happens to be, and always will be, that the best athletes are largely poor, aggressive, and stupid. Blame God or all of human history for that, not greedy basketball Fat Cats.
These people have been coddled since middle school, they didn’t have to crack a book in college and now look...
Looks like a lot of those prominent black ‘peoples’ don’t have a clue about money. Here’s this guy who somehow spent $154M and now wonders where it went, besides on tattoo’s. Then, there’s Moochie Michelle ........ taking million dollar tax-payer funded vacations..... thinking the Dept of Treasury only exists as her personal bank account. And, should her account run dry, she can order Treasury to bring in the second shift to run off a few million so she will have a little pocket change for her next vacation.
If Iverson was “The Answer”, then the question must have been, what thug can blow through $250 million by the time he’s 35?
Paying a guy $154M to play with a ball is “exploitative”??
All these kids had to do was plunk down 30-40% on the price of a couple of well located apartment buildings when they were in the money. They’d always have (1) a place to stay if needed and (2) a modest to good income for life.
The bling and hoes are a costly diversion with no future.
Yep....when you’ve got the big bucks, then everyone’s your friend. I remember when I used to cruise around town in my Yugo. You could just see the women thinking “Mama would like some of that fine living!”
I quit paying any attention to the NBA in late ‘74 when the GREAT Jerry West retired.
I've lived in the city for 30 years and have seen, year after year, the little kids, totally unsupervised, running around the streets, parks, and playgrounds. Until they're 12 or so, we don't have any problem identifying them as victims. Then they enter the awkward in-between years, and our attitudes become equivocal. By the time they're 17 or 18, they've become threats or, if female, baby mamas themselves.
So: why do I cast blame upon, and call for more responsiblity from, the sports establishment? Simple. If a young boy, raised in such circumstances, has athletic talent, he gets groomed from middle school onwards. It starts early. He is valued for his athletic gifts, and unless a responsible adult steps up, he gets exploited. He is likely to be socially promoted; he skates through school, all too often without acquiring even minimal skills; most colleges will be as bad as the high schools in waving him through; the freebies, favors, and under the table money start flowing early; and the pros no longer bother to give him four years of college eligibility to mature a bit. (I say "college eligibility," not "college education," deliberately.) There is plenty of adult malpractice to go around, starting with mom and (an absentee) dad, and including the schools and colleges as well as the NBA.
Sure, many athletes turn out fine. These are the ones with intact families, or with a mom who rises above the norm, or who luck into a solid adult mentor, who can be a neighbor, teacher, coach, or whatever. But if 60% of NBA players are going broke, it suggests that corruption is the norm, and solid role models are the exception. That's a problem.
In a better world, NBA players in their 20's shouldn't need the league to play in loco parentis.
But if 60% of them wash out as soon as the athletic string runs out, maybe the league needs to step up. Clearly, no one else has.
John Thompson is a black racist.
At least one person got the joke...
“We talkin’ ‘bout financial plannin’, man. Seriously? Financial plannin’?”
}:-)4
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