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“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.

I agree with a lot of what you've said, but still ... if 60% of the players are going broke five years after their last basketball check, that's a problem. Enough of a problem that I have no difficulty seeing the situation as exploitative. Or if you prefer, abusive.

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.