Bust a cap in it...Part 1 - by Apollo

Well there isn't any real plausible explanation for the nearly month long hiatus, but don't worry, the 2 Wise Men are back strong like Vince Carter's suddenly rejuvenated inside game. In what will hopefully be the last of the VC references for a while, what's with all the haters saying Vince doesn't deserve to be in the All-Star Game? Last I checked he was averaging All Star numbers for his new team and was named Eastern Conference Player of the Week for the second time this year. Ah well, enough about Vince...

To close out the basketball talk for now, the Toronto Raptors welcomed back disgruntled point guard Rafer Alston this week following the team imposed 2-game suspension for his "conduct detrimental to the team". Alston was wisely contrite and apologetic and faced the media upon his return to practice. A discouraging trend that has come out from Toronto basketball media in recent days is this penchant for emphasizing Alston's past incidents of poor behaviour and the not too subtle suggestions that he is somehow a problem child who is more trouble than he's worth. Now, while I agree that Alston is rather overpaid at $5 million a season and more, anyone who thinks that Milt Palacio or Morris Peterson at point guard is a better solution for the Raptors, both in the short term and long term, is seriously misguided. More importantly, the suggestions that Alston is only well behaved if his contract and job are on the line is ignorantly cliched.

A fond farewell today to the NFL's all-time rushing leader, Emmitt Smith, who appropriately announced his retirement as a member of the Dallas Cowboys yesterday. Smith, who broke the late Walter Payton's rushing record several years ago, is the last of the vaunted "triplets" - including Quarterback Troy Aikman, and wide receiver Michael Irvin - who dominated football in the mid 1990's and led Dallas to three Super Bowl championships. While Dallas is a shadow of the organization it used to be, owner Jerry Jones has never been one to pass over an opportunity to wake up the vestiges of the past, signing Smith to a one-day contract much the same way he did with Aikman's retirement. As a long time Cowboys fan, I always admired Smith. He was never the fastest back, or the strongest, and he wasn't even close to being the biggest, but with a powerhouse offensive line and the ability to break tackles and read the holes, Smith is a guaranteed Hall of Famer.


Now...the main point...A lot has been going on lately in the current NHL labour negotiations and most of it has been irrelevant or overreported or both. However, a side note that has been dramatized far beyond measure is the recent decisions by certain players, including Chris Chelios, Derian Hatcher, and Kris Draper to play in the minor leagues while the NHL lockout continues. The predictable media and fan outcry has risen up in opposition to the idea that somehow, NHL superstars playing in Europe and in the minor leagues is morally "bad" - that players are taking away jobs from hard working, less talented players in these other leagues. How dare they do that? What nerve these players have! They oppose a salary cap in the NHL and then they go and happily play for less money in another league!

This attitude has always perplexed me, and for lack of a better term I'll call it "rich athlete discrimination". It's the idea that somehow, because a player makes a lot of money, he is supposed to be a better citizen than the average person or somehow have better values than any of the rest of us. Suppose Wongoz and I decided we wanted to quit our day jobs and go play in the German professional hockey league, or whatever it's called - the Bundesliga of hockey. Suppose we worked really hard (just indulge me here) and won roster spots on the Koln pro team (if one actually exists). What would we be? We would be regular players who took away the jobs of other regular players who could not compete with us for whatever reason. More importantly, there would be nothing wrong with it and no one would complain about two Asian guys beating out everyone else for spots on a hockey team. Now suddenly because a vastly superior, and vastly better paid NHL player decides to do the same thing, it's suddenly wrong? Let's all keep in mind the fact that we're dealing with a lockout here...the NHL players can't play in the NHL. Are we suggesting somehow that because they can't play in their own "rich league" that they aren't allowed to play hockey in any other league? It isn't as if the NHL players deliberately shut down their own league so they could take off on a modern day pillaging mission to oppress other pro hockey players in leagues across the world.

Is the point that if you have enough money to support yourself without working or playing hockey, that you should be prevented from playing and taking away someone else's paycheque? I doubt that highly. I'm sure if we conducted a breakdown of every athlete's personal finances, we would see many non-NHL players who should not be allowed to play ahead of another guy who's living paycheque to paycheque. The point is, personal wealth is and should be irrelevant.

Furthermore, I fail to see how it is at all hypocritical for NHL players to play in leagues that have salary caps. I'm sure if you took a poll of every professional hockey player in every league and asked them if they would rather play in a league with a salary cap or a league without one, the overwhelming majority would prefer NOT to put a ceiling on what they may earn. If the NHL players passed up the opportunity to play in a non-capped league in order to play in Europe, then I could see a problem. But, oh wait that's right...there is NO OTHER LEAGUE without a salary cap except the NHL! I'm sure I'm missing something here but I can't for the life of me understand what that is.

NHL hockey will return one day, although probably not this calendar year, and there will be other irrelevant issues to argue at that time. Both owners and players deserve an immense amount of blame for failing to negotiate a deal and forcing the cancellation of NHL games to this point. But, in the interim, please spare me the moral proselytizing that all NHL players and all rich athletes in general, should be somehow better than the rest of us, or that they are all somehow worse than us because they want to play hockey this year, regardless of the quality and stature of the league.