With the Global Warming Crisis, We Cannot Afford These Takes

Mike Lupica, needless to say, thinks it’s somehow unsporting for Kevin Durant to leave for a better team because this is the lazy hot take du jour. But I love this argument in particular:

players control everything else in sports these days, why not their message?

Yes, the players control everything. They can even, after a period of several years, have some input into where they play! One way you can tell that the players control everything nowadays is that one of the biggest stars in the NFL got suspended for 4 games, at the cost of millions of dollars, for a less-than-trivial offense the league has essentially no evidence he even committed. And, of course, the fact that the NFLPA agreed to a system in which the commissioner could suspend anybody for any length of time for any reason without any effective right to appeal proves that the players wanted it that way, because if Gilded Age Supreme Court decisions have taught us anything it’s that management and labor have equal bargaining leverage, and it’s not as if the NFL would ever use scabs to break a strike or as if billionaire owners can afford to wait more than players with 2 or 3 year “careers” can.

Another way you can tell that players have all of the power now is that NHL free agents are insisting on getting paid mostly in signing bonuses for some entirely random reason. What, do you seriously think the league would ever lock out players for a whole season or something?

And yet, as profit-taking hacks go, Lupica is no Rick Reilly. See, your ordinary hack just gives the “if Durant were a REAL MAN he would stay in Oklahoma” hot take and moves on. But as Calacaterra says, distracting people from your redundant take with a sub-Catskills joke about Kate Upton’s breasts is how a real master of “Phone it in? Nah, have the pool boy phone it in for you” hackery proceeds.