Do You Think Kobe Wants To Play in Turkey? REALLY

 Most of us peons in this world agree that we will go to work for you and each and every year we will sit down and decide whether we should get a quarter an hour raise this year or we go find somebody who will give us 50 cents an hour more.  We talk all the time about how un loyal professional athletes are and yet we do the same but for much less.

The NFL lockout is over.  Football's case I see there is just no other place to go to play football.  The owners have the upper hand.  We have something in football that you can't get unless we give it to you.  We are not going to continue to pay these high prices.  Yet when the lockout is over they do.  It is the new guys that will get less.

Owners locked the doors to change the way they do business but they will go right back  to paying Peyton Manning 18 million and Tom Brady 15 million.  Why not start all over with a new salary structure for everybody.  It sure does look like we have wasted about 135 days and in the end business as usual.  Sounds like our government at work here?

Basketball is another animal all together.  Seems as if the world plays basketball and jobs are easy to come by.  I don't see the NBA owners in any position to lockout because players do have other options.  So lets say Kobe decides to go to Turkey to play basketball next year.

How can he since he is under contract to play for the Lakers.  This is where I am really confused.  How can any owner close his doors  and when they open them again keep on doing it just as before. What was the purpose of closing the doors to begin with.  If  you deny any one work don't they have a right to look elsewhere?  By locking everyone out  aren't you voiding contracts?

I see the NBA being totally different from the NFL as the players have all the leverage where the owners had it in the NFL talks.  The only possible advantage the owners have is all the players can't go over seas and play but the elite just might.  They are of course the only ones who really don't need the money so they will get the over seas jobs while the end of the bench guys will suffer working at Wendy's while Kobe and company go off to Turkey

I  have to ask this question. Does Kobe really need to go any where to play basketball?  Is this a power play like the power play of last summer when LeBron and D-Wade joined forces.  I can see the minimum wage guys in the NBA needing to go and I say minimum wage laughingly half million a year.  Least when Michael Jordan play in double A  baseball he bought Birmingham a new million dollar bus and he rode with everyone else.  Can yo see Kobe riding a bus from Istanbul to Ankara.  No, he will fly and meet the team  at the next game.

I heard in all this  bantering going on that the average NBA player plays 4.5 years.  That stat is very close to any professional sport.  We hear about the Larry Birds who play 15 years but forget about the Monte Towe's who lasted only two.  Can any player risk his NBA future in going to any foreign country to play for one year and while there blow a knee out that will take two years to recover or end his career?

The NBA is betting there will not be enough that will try it and I am sitting here thinking why do I have to endure all of this talk to begin with. Let's face it Professional sports team owner know their players are broke until the next check comes.  There are very few players who understand how to sign a check without hiring somebody else to do it for them. 

I have always said that if I won the lottery I would put half of it in the bank or invest it  and we will see about the rest of it.  I don't believe in the lottery until it hits a hundred million then  I might be able to afford to pay off my debts.  These high contracts are like the lottery every two weeks .  Instead of investing they buy cars that they can't even drive or live the high life and one day wake up with a busted knee and knocks on the door to meet the next ridiculous payment for something they didn't need to begin with.

The NBA owners are betting those guys come around to the owners side and the NBA goes on as if nothing happened.   That's what the NFL did for over four  months as sides sued each other  and in the end a handshake and kiss and everyone is back to making money.