In today’s world of sports, money is being thrown around like its nothing. Teams are offering hundred million dollar contracts to players all over the place. Over 20 players in the NBA are currently signed to a deal worth over 100 million dollars. Are these players worth this amount of money? The NBA is bringing in such a high revenue every year that it can afford to pay the astronomically large contracts to the players. So if the NBA is making tons of money, shouldn’t the players be rewarded and compensated fairly? The answer is yes. These players are extremely gifted and their skills provide for great entertainment to the millions of fans around the world. It is because of the players, that the fans are willing to pay a good amount of money to watch games live or online. Therefore, the players deserve to receive a high cut of the revenue that the NBA brings in each year. The total amount of revenue made by the NBA last year was just about $6 Billion. In comparison, Lebron James, the consensus best player, made about $23 million. That is less than 1% of all the revenue. That statistic is the reason why players contracts seem like a lot to the public but little to the people in the NBA business. My dad for example, works for NBA and so he has an inside scoop on their financial situation. Each year, he looks at the money the league has brought in as well as the player’s salaries and makes assessments based on those numbers. 

To some people, it is understandable that an athlete is able to make millions of dollars per year. Others would overwhelmingly disagree. Michael Walden of the Charlotte Observer was one of the people on the other end of the debate. His wife posed this question to him, “Explain this to me,” she said. “Why do professional baseball players, who engage in a sport that was invented for fun, earn 1,000 times more than school teachers?” She added, “Certainly teaching school is more important than hitting and throwing a baseball. How can our economy – or any economy – allow such a disparity to happen?” She certainly does make her case here. Teachers are vital to the future of America as they provide the backbone of knowledge for which the children use as they grow older in order to make a difference in life. Doctors can also fit into this category as they are literally “life-savers”. Doctors are arguably the most important people on the Earth as they are the ones who cure people of diseases and give hope to people and families who are ill. 

It is understandable why people would argue that doctors have a much more serious job and therefore deserve a higher payday. However, if you look at the amount of revenue a hospital brings in, and then compare it with the doctor’s salary, you will find that doctors make a higher percentage of the revenue they helped bring in compared to an NBA player. By using this as a measure of comparing pay for each profession, it would appear that doctors are paid accurately. The thing that separates them is that the NBA revenue is so much higher than what a hospital makes that even the smallest of percentages is greater than almost all of the doctor’s salaries regardless of their high percentages. 

Athletes today are worth millions of dollars to their teams. When the owners pay their players, they aren’t just getting the skills, but also their name and with that comes the real value. Walking around the street today, kids are wearing basketball jerseys with the team name on the front and the player’s name on the back. It is the player who brings the popularity to the team, and with that comes jersey and apparel sales. Just last season, Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors made over $6 million off the court from apparel sales. That is just one player on one team in the NBA. The owners are bringing in loads of money by selling merchandise with their player’s name on it. This leads to the main idea that athletes should be paid millions of dollar which fairly compensates the player for all his worth. 

Michael Jordan is a known to the world as the greatest basketball player of all time. He is also known as one of the most successful businessmen of all time. He was able to maintain his wide popularity even as he gets older and older. You’d think that once a player retired, his name would begin to fade and he wouldn’t be mentioned as often. Michael Jordan was able to become a mainstay in the basketball world which he will forever control. When Michael Jordan retired, he changed paths, and started to focus all his time of his apparel brand, JORDAN. By being the best player in the world, people naturally thought that the cool thing to do was to buy apparel with his name on it. Basketball players wanted to wear the same sneakers as him while adults wanted to wear his sweatshirts and act like they were him. Everyone wanted to be like Mike. He had a movie made about him and he also started in a major motion picture, Space Jam. He has turned his name into a Billion Dollar Industry. Just last year, the Jordan Brand sold over $1.4 Billion worth of apparel/gear. Basketball was his gateway to success in life. Without basketball, who knows where/who Michael Jordan would be right now. He made basketball a household sport and turned is games into performances as he orchestrated his way through the defense. He attracted different fans to the game who are now diehards. The Chicago Bulls put their money on Jordan and he certainly gave them all his worth. It is stories like this that make people realize why athletes are getting paid this much. Jordan could have become a successful businessman and lived a good life. Instead, the NBA gave him a chance and he changed the lives of not just himself but millions of people all around the world. 

Putting this idea into perspective now, how would an average person feel about making a boatload of money by playing basketball in the NBA with millions of fans cheering your name. Its highly unlikely that too many people would turn down that offer. So in that case, should today’s players be punished or looked at harshly, because they are talented enough to be in the league and are better than the average friendly competitor. People envy what they can’t have. The reason why athletes getting paid millions is such a big topic of discussion is because of greed. The logic is there: a player plays in a game, fans are entertained and buy merchandise/ tickets, the league generates a total revenue and splits it with the owners, and finally the owners distribute that to the players. The players are putting on a show for millions of fans around the world who are theoretically willing to collectively pay billions of dollars to continue seeing their favorite stars on the big stage. There is no reason why a player shouldn’t be fully compensated for what he’s worth and what he has brought in to the league as a contributor. People don’t judge successful businessmen for making this type of money because they believe that those men/women are professionals and are properly earning their money. What does a businessman do that contributes to others “average” citizens that basketball doesn’t? The only reason basketball players are critized for earning such high salaries is because adults watch their kids and other children play and think “Wouldn’t it be great if I could act like a kid and become rich?” It all comes down to jealousy which is huge in this day and age. People are never satisfied with what they have and continue to try and improve to be better than the next. Basketball players may appear to be impossible to surpass to certain people because they are doing two things that most people can’t do: Making millions of dollars, and having fun enjoying life while making the cash. 

Basketball is critized way too harshly around the adult community because of the lack of professionalism it displays. When in reality, basketball players must deal with hard times as well. At any given moment, an owner can release a player and he would no longer have a  job which is exactly the same as any other job. If there performance isn’t adequate, then the owner waives them and signs the next best player itching for a chance to make a name for himself. There is also a possibility that a player is traded at any given moment. A player could be forced to uproot his whole family without any say just because the owner felt that the package of players being received was greater than the player currently on the roster. This type of job movement does not come to other professions in this extreme of a way. People do not truly understand the dark side of the sports industry which can be compared to the worsts of almost any other profession in the world.
