The odds are tiny of them being paid exactly their market value.

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Just look at almost anyone who played for the Knicks in the last decade

But the best one is that Henderson did indeed once receive a million-dollar check from the Oakland A's and, rather than cash it, framed it and hung it on his wall.

"When you're a kid, you want to be a millionaire," said Henderson, who apparently wasn't clear on the concept that the money needs to be in the bank to achieve millionaire status.

When the check didn't clear, the A's phoned, asked him to cash it, and suggested he display a photocopy instead.

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after all this he takes his talents back to South Beach.

I could give you some according to my definition all day long, but that would do the discussion no good.

There's an ESPN ($) piece that dissects the problem more fully, but it's paywalled:

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11187113/lebron-james-proving-absurdity-nba-m...

Still, the theoretical basis isn't that hard to grasp: by setting max compensation for each age bracket, the NBA obviously caps the market value of its best players lower than what it might be in a free market (i.e., that is the entire point of the max contract). Obviously, there are corresponding dudes that are then overpaid relative to their production (e.g., Ben Gordon is probably not worth $4.5M per year), but given the dimensions of the figures involved it's safe to say that there are more dollars being left on the table by high quality players vis a vis the CBA than there are dollars going into the bank accounts of undeserving hacks.

When I hear that I think of is violence or involvement in violent crime. Physical intimidation, guns, that kind of thing. Being part of a gang. Financing a drug operation that needs muscle. All of that.

Latrell Sprewell? Fine. Aaron Hernandez? Fine. Taylor Lewan? Fine. Kobe (if you believe he was guilty in Colardo) Fine. Ron Artest? Fine. Cousins? Fine.

Bad Boys for how they played on the Court? Fine.

But most of the "bad" guys in the current NBA that I know of are just self-entitled douche bags. A guy smoking dope might be a loser or a druggie, but to me that's not a "thug." Holding out for a new contract, demanding a trade? Not a "thug." Lazy on defense? Not a "thug." Tattoos? Not a "thug." Overpaid? Not a thug.

that Michael Jordan offered him a huge contract. Some blame has to go to the dumbshit owners.

I haven't attempted to look myself. But given that the information came from some anonymous friend, I think it's BS.

That says one player (James) is not overpaid, which might imply that a lot of other player ARE overpaid, depending on who is the benchmark.

Look, I get where you're coming from - many of the NBA contracts seem out of line. I shake my head a bit when I see Gordon Heyward getting a max deal and guys like Jodie Meeds, Spencer Hawes, Boris Diaw, and Channing Frye getting $6-8 million per year.

But there are more than a handful of bad baseball contracts on this list (several of which run well into the last couple years of this decade).

http://www.spotrac.com/rankings/mlb/

1 Zack Greinke $26,000,000 Starting Pitcher
2 Cliff Lee $25,000,000 Starting Pitcher
Ryan Howard $25,000,000 1st Base
4 Prince Fielder $24,000,000 1st Base
Robinson Cano $24,000,000 2nd Base
6 Cole Hamels $23,500,000 Starting Pitcher
7 Mark Teixeira $23,125,000 1st Base
8 C.C. Sabathia $23,000,000 Starting Pitcher
Joe Mauer $23,000,000 1st Base, Designated Hitter
Albert Pujols $23,000,000 1st Base, Designated Hitter
11 Felix Hernandez $22,857,142 Starting Pitcher
12 Miguel Cabrera $22,000,000 1st Base
Masahiro Tanaka $22,000,000 Starting Pitcher
14 Adrian Gonzalez $21,857,142 1st Base
15 Matt Kemp $21,250,000 Center Field, Right Field
16 Jacoby Ellsbury $21,142,857 Center Field
17 Carl Crawford $21,107,142 Left Field
18 Matt Cain $20,833,333 Starting Pitcher
19 Jayson Werth $20,571,428 Right Field
20 David Wright $20,000,000 3rd Base
Justin Verlander $20,000,000 Starting Pitcher
22 Adam Wainwright $19,500,000 Starting Pitcher
23 Mark Buehrle $19,000,000 Starting Pitcher
24 Josh Hamilton $17,400,000 Right Field, Center Field
25 Josh Beckett $17,000,000 Starting Pitcher
Matt Holliday $17,000,000 Left Field
Adrian Beltre $17,000,000 3rd Base
Tim Lincecum $17,000,000 Starting Pitcher
Brian McCann $17,000,000 Catcher

value:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2013/02/05/lebron-james-is-underpaid-by-the...

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Monitor their website dev and twitter follows?

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have been out of the league for multiple years now.

that Peter Warrick really makes college football unappealing to me

I don't think Richard Sherman is a thug at all. He is an extremely intelligent individual, and very well-spoken.

Ron Artest is a thug. DeMarcus Cousins is a thug. Jason Williams (Sacramento Jason Williams) was a thug.

Yes, there are overpaid players in baseball, but I don't think it's as rampant due to the control a team has over a player in the first 6 years of his major league career. In the NFL, a player that is way overpaid is just cut.

I never said they're ALL egotistical douchebags, but I do think a lot of them are. You definitely have your "superstars" like Carmelo, Dwayne Wade, and Dwight Howard but you also have idiots like Lance Stephenson, Ron Artest, PJ Hairston,DeMarcus Cousins, JR Smith, etc., etc., etc. I'm sick of hearing guys like Latrell Spreewell say a $42 MM contract isn't enough because "my kids gotta eat." I know he's not in the league anymore, but the "I gotta get mine and no one better disrespect me" feeling is something you hear in the media all the time. These assholes need to get some goddamn perspective and look at how 99% of this country lives. It's insulting. Yes, I know there are players that do a lot for the community, but not enough of them.

As far as Manziel goes - idiots in the NFL are (a lot of times) suppressed by the control the NFL and the owners have. If Manziel doesn't get his shit in line, he'll either not play or get to be too much of a headache that he'll get traded or cut. The NFL is probably going to suspend the leading receiver (yards-wise) in the league last year for the entire season. You would never see that in the NBA.

@edsbs 42s
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Oh man John Calipari's greatest work would be getting LeBron a max deal to play one year at Kentucky

but that was more than a decade ago. I don't think anyone here will defend the early-2000s NBA on any dimension.

The current crop of both players and stars is really a lot more sophisticated, not only are arrest rates way down, but I can't imagine seeing anything in this day and age like Latrell Spreewell choking his coach. Now the biggest beef with the league is that guys are too happy, jolly and friendly with each other. The first thing popping to mind for me when I think "scumbag" is probably Jason Kidd.

It is reflexive and not very intelligent to simply throw the thug label on these guys because they are large and have tattoos, but Richard Sherman already told us that.

But that Deadspin thing isn't really disproving his claim (for example, what about police reports vs. arrests, conduct that would get a normal person arrested but not a player, etc.)

In the early 2000s, there was a serious problem in the NBA:

Based on a first-of-its-kind investigation into the criminal histories of 177 NBA players from the 2001–2002 season, Out of Bounds shows that an alarming four out of every ten NBA players have a police record involving a serious crime. They are All-Stars and they are journeymen, involved in crimes ranging from armed robbery to domestic violence to gun possession to rape.

http://www.amazon.com/Out-Bounds-Jeff-Benedict-ebook/dp/B000FC1RBY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital...

Of course it goes without saying that it's very complicated, distressing, and good and bad people are in every industry on the planet.

to watch him play at the start of his career and again as he's slowing down, but missing out on all the Championships.

This is, however, a comparison against the entire population. Maybe NBA players are actually more violent than males in their age group, which we'll define here because that's how the census presents it. By those data, there were 29,808,343 males 20-34 in the U.S. in 2010. In that same year, 3,928,463 males in that age range were arrested, for 13.18 percent. We will not get too far into black arrest rates (27.86 percent; again, higher for young males) more than doubling that of their representation in the population (12.6 percent), but believe this is relevant to whatever point Pat Garofalo was trying to dislodge from his ass.

According to Basketball-Reference.com, 469 NBA players appeared in games in 2013-2014. This number does not include players who were rostered, but never saw the floor, and because this exercise is idiotic, and I can actually feel my will to live fading with every keystroke, I am not going to bother to dig up the other, much larger number. Anyway, there were 469 active—well, "super-active," I guess—against nine arrests for NBA players in 2013, according to Arrest Nation. This includes a citation, not an arrest, for Michael Beasley, Ty Lawson showing up twice, and Boobie Gibson taking a second-degree battery charge, even though he was not on an NBA roster at the time. As a point of accuracy, Gibson was the only instance of what could be called "street crime"—though this shouldn't diminish the incidence of domestic violence in the other arrests.

That is 1.92 percent, and obviously high because we didn't bother to dig out players who did not appear in games, or to sift through any who appeared in the latter half of the 2012-2013 season. Garofalo also alluded to players acting as though they are above the law, but we do not have data on how often they—or other wealthy Americans—are given a pass by police.

http://regressing.deadspin.com/do-nba-players-really-get-arrested-more-than-usual-no-15...

And I disagree with your premise that all NBA players (or even a majority) are like "egotistical douchebags". It's a subset (primarily superstars) who crave media attention. And the media gives them that attention because John Q Public eats it up. There are plenty of very good NBA players - Duncan (and really, most of the Spurs), ZBo (yes, I'm aware of some of the crap he did when he was younger), Steph Curry, Anthony Davis, etc - who are far more active in their community than I could ever hope to be. Duncan did not opt out of his reasonably-priced current contract this offseason. ZBo signed an extension with the Grizzlies at a lower price than he could have gotten elsewhere.

BTW, is it safe to say that Manziel has been the NFL player most discussed this offseason? He's certainly not an "egotistical douchebag". That league's full of choirboys.

That was about 10 years ago. He actually gave a talk to my sportswriting class at Columbia, which for context was taught by a grizzled, old SI reporter who had cut his teeth covering the AFL.

ESPN's system seems to screw up whatever talent it has. I remember talking to Bob Ley in another class and visibly depressing him by mentioning those old Sean Salisbury-John Clayton segments.

fake, and Sheridan was retweeting a fake account.

EDIT: Yep. https://twitter.com/search?q=sheridan%20fake&src=typd

Who gives a shit?

NBA players are the most overpaid, egotistical douchebags of any of the major sports. Half of them are outright thugs, half of them can't read, and it's sad how the sport is marketed. The Spurs, the epitome of a "team," just DESTROYED the team with the best player on the planet, and no one gives them a shred of publicity.

I wish people would stop fucking caring about what these assholes do and worry about things that actually matter, like Notre Dame football.

And perhaps they need to have a sale on LeBron jerseys in the area so everyone can pretend this didn't happen:

https://www.google.com/search?q=lebron+jersey+burning&rlz=1C1ASUT_enUS521US521&...

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I'm disappointed that so many threads have been dedicated to the World Cup. What a waste of space.

The biggest sports story of 2014, maybe the biggest sports story since Ali-Frazier II, has been where James will sign so he might be able to lose another NBA Finals series.

Although I look forward to the 2014 ND season, I'm concerned that those football games will take away focus from James.

…this is why the NBA gargles my balls. A "championship team" that's about 90% fabricated based on convenience, economics and back-room deals. It would be a cool deal for Cleveland, obviously, but I'd have a difficult time getting behind them. Maybe if the Spurs win another 5 titles in a row, other franchises will stop trying to pursue the "get rich quick" model like a bunch of Ralph Kramdens, but probably not before then.

It's also not a coincidence that LeBron (a girl's name) is not giving serious consideration to a team in the Western Conference.

There's some "personal trainer/streetware model" twidiot that everyone in Cleveland is following because he's gotten a couple parts of the story right so far.

Windhorst went to St V/St M, and his mom taught LeBron if I'm remembering correctly. He has ridden Lebron's coattails from the Akron paper to the Cleveland paper to ESPN. Lot of pressure on him to get the story first and to get it right.

Broussard is from Cleveland too.

Smith's pontificating condescension coupled with his penchant for just barely using big words incorrectly make him unbearable in any segment longer than 30 seconds. Broussard's loud Cajun drawl is Cronkite, comparatively.

They're both several rungs above Mike Francesa, though.

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"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." - Yeats

Broussard or Screamin' A. Smith?

Broussard. barely

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But sadly, if this happens, I'll no longer hate LeBron and in fact hope the Cavs win a championship. What is wrong with me?

It sucks that the Bulls are going to get left out in this game of musical chairs again. Though if they get Gasol to go with Mirotic, McDermott and a healthy Rose (and no Boozer!), I could live with that.

Well, check this out:

http://bluegraysky.com/forum/index.php?id=229038

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parlance, "done deal" means "completely impossible."

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at least according to Chris Sheridan, a longtime NBA writer. He's the only one sticking his neck out there at this point, but ESPN's Chris Broussard isn't far off. Supposedly James informed Riley at their meeting today, and he'll announce it on his website tomorrow.

The latest juicy rumor is that the Cavs also have a deal in place to trade Wiggins and Anthony Bennett to the Twolves for Love. That would be a heck of a three-headed monster, arguably as good as LJ-Wade-Bosh in 2010.