'Follow The Money': Cuban Honest About NBA Re-Start Reasoning
I've made the point repeatedly in this space, about the NBA and the NFL: Yes, the leagues "want to provide entertainment to a needy America.'' Yes, he leagues are "in the business of sports, so it's naturally what we do.''
But the dead-serious catchphrase from "All The President's Men'' applies here, at it applies almost everywhere, to everything.
"Follow The Money.''
“Is it for the money? Yes, that’s a big part of it,'' Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said in a recent interview with Sean Gregory from Time Magazine. "Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t say that it ... had something to do with it.”
In some circles, NBA commissioner Adam Silver is being painted as a hypocrite for suggesting otherwise - unfairly, I think. Only a fool would fail to realize that in addition to all the "pure'' reasons for the NBA re-start in about 30 days in the bubble in Orlando despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there are salaries at stake, there is revenue at stake, there are mortgages to be paid and bills to be paid jobs to he held and a future salary cap to be influenced by what the league does in 2020 to attempt to fulfill another old slogan, "The show must go on.''
Having said that, maybe Silver committed a verbal misstep when he pointed out, only a little defensively, how costly it is going to be to stage games at Disney World ... as if the rest of us with our salaries, or bills and our jobs at stake are at all sympathetic with the woes of billionaires.
Is the NBA prioritizing money over health? That's a harsh way to phrase it. Is the NBA trying to secure a balance - the way many of us are when we go to work with a mask or grab a restaurant bite to eat from a distance - between health and economic necessities.
That's a more fair way to phrase it ... and with Cuban's frank comment, a perfectly honest way of saying it, too.
