For a sports oxymoron without equal, consider the term “free agent.”
Nothing about these out of contract players is free, but the NBA is the most egregious example of setting huge sums of money on fire in return for nothing.
There are eleven players who landed lucrative free agent contracts before the start of the 2106 – 2017 NBA season, with a combined tab of $167.8 million USD (231.25 AUD), roughly $30 million AUD more than the entire 18-club AFL payroll.
That is right. Eleven NBA players earn more than the 718 listed senior players in the AFL do.
The true shock value to that comparison, however, is that the eleven NBA players contribute so little to their respective teams that we will not even embarrass them by revealing their names. Several of them are not even playing due to injuries. Some play such limited minutes per game that their per minute or per point value is scandalous to a degree of scandal that no rugby player could ever hope to emulate. Several others of the eleven are on the back ends of their careers and will continue to debit millions from their teams even when they are no longer playing.
Think on this Aussie youth. You can be one of the top footy players in all the land, and perhaps be one of the four players who earned more than $1 million AUD in 2015, or you can go to the U.S. and totally suck at basketball and rake in millions, perhaps whilst observing from the sidelines or in the stands.
