Keith Strudler: Athletic Choices

This is a commentary about choices. Or more specifically, about the choices that athletes make. From the most basic perspective, athletes have both endless and limited opportunities to make decisions, at least compared to the rest of us. For example, a basketball point guard makes hundreds of decisions every game, each one of which could severely harm the team’s chances of winning. Same goes for a quarterback or a pitcher, or the myriad of sports positions where split-second rapid-fire decision have far-reaching and often long-lasting impact. On the other hand, athletes often aren’t able to make the most benign and routine of choices, like what time they have to go to bed because of a team curfew. And they can’t choose what they want to eat and sometimes they can’t even decide what classes to take in college. The kind of things that most of us take for granted as personal domain.

 But perhaps the two places most athletes have a neutered decision tree, at least for professional athletes, is deciding where they want to play and when they want to stop playing. Or retire, if you will. I suppose in some regard that’s true for everyone and every profession. But it’s the price of entry for an athletic employee. Most athletes play wherever and for whomever drafts them or trades for them or picks them up on free agency. Which means you may end up in Seattle or Minneapolis or Charlotte or wherever the market may take you. And that largely continues until it doesn’t, when no GM from any city wants your services anymore, which could happen at age 23 or 30 or, for the select few, the senior age of 35. That’s the career path of pro athletes in major American team sports. You exchange personal destiny for the relative fame and fortune that comes with the job.

This week, two superstar athletes have indicated they will take a bit more control of their own trajectory – in different ways. Frist, NBA Center Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans was fined $50,000 this week for publicly asking that he be traded to a team that has a chance to win the NBA Championship. I suppose that request actually came from his agent, but either way, you’re not allowed to publicly demand a trade. To be clear, Davis may not notice that 50 grand out of his 25 million dollar annual salary – and that’s just basketball, not endorsements – but the NBA does consider his statement to undermine the relationship between employer and employee. And to add further clarity, Davis is on the open market at season’s end anyway, so this is all just a matter when, not if.

Also dictating his athletic future is NFL Super Bowl quarterback Tom Brady, who this week proclaimed that there is zero chance Sunday’s Super Bowl is his last game. Of course, Brady is 41 years old, which is the age when most NFL quarterbacks are either years into a coaching career or hanging out on a beach somewhere in-between filming commercials. Brady has defied all odds, including those that would assume he’d tire of getting beat up by 300 pound linemen every week. It also served notice that New England would need to employ his services next season whether they want to or not – and obviously, the Patriots aren’t in a position to cut the greatest quarterback of all times, assuming they want to remain in the greater Boston area.

What’s interesting here isn’t that either Davis or Brady want a little say over what they might do for the rest of their professional lives. We all want that. Which is why we take a call from a headhunter or spend some time on job sites. What’s interesting is that in both cases here, they’re going to get it. New Orleans has no better chance in keeping Anthony Davis than Trump does of getting Mexico to build the wall. And Brady will play quarterback for the Patriots until he decides not to. That’s something of a seismic shift from the past of professional sports, when player’s unions simply tried to keep up with management. In sports, like in media, content is truly king. And there’s little better content than a superstar center and a quarterback that has more rings than Tiffany’s. So owners may still own teams, and commissioners may lead leagues. But it’s a player’s world for now. Which means for the time being, the choice is all theirs.

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