Let’s have fun with a hypothetical: Imagine you are in college, about to enter the workforce for the first time. For the sake of this exercise, you went to law school in hopes of becoming a high-profile litigator; the kind people call when they need the very best. You came to campus as one of the sharpest young legal minds in the country, and through your time in law school, refined and expanded that talent to the point every major law firm in the nation knows your name. The future is bright, the options are endless. Exciting, right?
Then, the night before graduation, an adviser informs you that you’re not allowed to pick which law firm you go to work for. Instead, you will be going to the worst firm in the country. Whichever one lost the most trials last year, that’s where you’ll be working. No, you don’t have a say in it. No, it doesn’t matter that much better firms want you to work for them. Yes, you have to move to wherever that firm is based. No, you don’t get to negotiate your salary. Yes, this discussion is over.
Doesn’t that sound fun? That’s the deal NBA prospects get every year, and in the wake of the (latest) gambling scandal rocking the league, the latest episode of “The Athletic Show” revisits the discussion on whether the NBA Draft has outlived its utility, and when that might have happened. Former vice president of basketball ops for the Memphis Grizzlies John Hollinger, now a senior columnist for The Athletic, joins the show to talk about draft-incentivized bad behavior, the multiplying effect the league’s cozy relationship with betting houses has had on that behavior, and what a draft-free NBA might look like.
In non-hypothetical basketball news, the episode also dives into the WNBA’s moment of unprecedented growth. With record attendance and viewership numbers, two expansion teams entering the league next season and a multibillion-dollar media rights deal, it’s a bad time for the league to have a labor lockout, and Thursday, the league and players union agreed to a 30-day extension on their labor negotiations. While young players like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and others are fighting for better pay for their industry-shifting work, college football programs are shelling out $40 million to $50 million payouts to get their underperforming coaches to stop showing up to the office. How can institutions say the name, image and likeness era is decimating their bank accounts while simultaneously spending big money to get failed figureheads to disappear? We break down the numbers and who’s to blame for the financial mismanagement.
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