Kobe Bryant made headlines today when, in an interview with Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports, he indicated that the coming 2015-2016 season could very well be his last. But he won’t say for certain, which effectively puts the kibosh on any plans for a farewell tour the league might have had in mind.
But there was another subtle yet salient point in that interview that went largely unnoticed. One of the biggest clichés that gets repeated ad nauseam by professional athletes is some variation of “I would play this game for free” or “I don’t do it for the money.” The banality of that sentiment is superseded only by its disingenuousness.
The 2011 lockout (and the one before that), when the entire league, at the behest of the NBA Players’ Association, literally stopped playing because they wanted more money, categorically debunked the myth that athletes play solely for the love of the game. Admittedly, that’s a reductive way to characterize the squabbles over the CBA, but the fact remains.
Which is why it rings false when someone like Bryant – regularly among the highest paid players in all of professional sports throughout his career – trots it out again, as he did today when Spears asked whether he’d consider playing a few more years in order to cash in on the TV money that will send the salary cap skyrocketing toward the $90 million mark.
Q: When you see the mammoth money that could be available to you as a free agent next summer, does that make it more attractive to continue playing?
Kobe: “Zero. Zero. I’ve never played for the money. It’s never moved me. Money can come and go. I have a perspective about finances. The family is fine. What is more money going to bring other than more money? I have my family, I have my health and we’re comfortable financially and that is a massive blessing.
“I don’t want to undervalue the importance of generating any type of whatever. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m underappreciative of that or not thankful for that. But at the same, what is really important? What is the important thing? I never played for money. When I laced my sneakers up when I was a kid in Italy I wasn’t thinking about money. I had no idea how much Magic [Johnson] or [Larry] Bird got paid. I played it because I loved it.”
Just last fall, Bryant was highly vocal in his criticism of players who take pay cuts to help their respective teams make the numbers work. During the past few years, Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki – both MVP winners, both NBA champions, both about the same age as Bryant – have taken significantly less money than they could have demanded. Nowitzki is set to earn a little more than $8 million this season, and Duncan will make about $10 million. Bryant, on the other hand, will make approximately $24 million.
The end result is that Dallas and San Antonio have been in the playoffs and, in the Spurs’ case, made consecutive Finals appearances, winning the title in 2014. The Lakers haven’t made the playoffs since 2012.
Just as important, the Spurs and the Mavs have been able to both attract and compensate high-profile free agents. Dallas has been able to sign Chandler Parsons and Wesley Matthews (and DeAndre Jordan before he had second thoughts), and the Spurs, in addition to convincing David West to take less money for a shot at a title, somehow landed the free agent white whale of 2015: LaMarcus Aldridge.
Conversely, the Lakers’ biggest summer acquisitions the past few years have been Jeremy Lin, Nick Young and Roy Hibbert. To be fair, some of Bryant’s criticisms about the financial dynamics between owners and players are perfectly valid. Here’s what he had to say to about the matter to ESPN.com’s Tim MacMahon last November:
“It’s the popular thing to do,” Bryant said after the Los Angeles Lakers’ shootaround prior to Friday night’s 140-106 loss to Nowitzki’s Dallas Mavericks. “The player takes less, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think it’s a big coup for the owners to put players in situations where public perception puts pressure on them to take less money. Because if you don’t, then you get criticized for it.
“It’s absolutely brilliant, but I’m not going for it. I know the new head of the players’ association ain’t going for it, either.”
Bryant isn’t alone in this thinking. Dwyane Wade, another aging and injury-prone star of late, has also grown weary of absorbing the financial brunt for his franchise. Wade took significantly less cash so that the Heat could afford to assemble the Big 3 back in 2010 and again last summer to try and keep the trio together. But his negotiations with management grew increasingly contentious this offseason when he refused to do so once again. He ultimately ended up signing a short-term deal that will allow both him and the front office to re-evaluate things next summer.
It’s certainly debatable who should bear the responsibility for building a competitive roster, but the bottom line is that other players have succumbed to the pressure to play for less money and have reaped the benefits of it, whereas Bryant has not. The decisions and the results speak for themselves. His words and his actions in recent history directly contradict the absurd notion that money hasn’t been a determining factor in his career.
(via Yahoo Sports and ESPN.com)
