Professional Sports. Where all the blood, sweat and tears
finally pay off for hundreds of athletes. Well, most of the time anyway. All
sports organizations, like people, go through their ups and downs during their
time in the game and trials are bound to happen at one point or another. Over
the years images of athletes, coaches, and entire organizations have been
tarnished, many of times from a single individual. As team sports emphasize the
importance of “team”, sport strikes have certainly used the words meaning to a
whole new level.
Understandably, financial reasons are main factor of sports
going on strikes. In 2011 trouble among the NBA managers and players was brewing, causing a shutdown for many NBA athletes. Around 65 players left the
organization to go play overseas. Even though the majority of those players
were definitely not the all-star NBA athletes everyone talks about, their financial
influence is still recognized. These players in the NBA have a minimum of
$500,000 salary while some deals go for the game winner salaries, like $6
million game winner salaries to be exact. It makes sense that the strike was
successful months later and the continuation of the competitive free-agentmarket was back on track.
One of the few sport organizations that had the entireseason canceled was in 2004-2005. The NHL players went on strike and were
waiting for all the ice in hell to melt if they had too. The financial decrease the players were offered
was simply offensive, from 57% to 43% to total NHL revenue.
Perhaps the most painful strike to date happened in the MLB
back in 1994-1995. Nothing screams America more than the love of baseball to
the fans. This was the first time in MLB history that, because of the strike,
the World Series was shut down. This
created an all-time low for the sport of baseball and its fans.
It seems that over the years athletes have been taken for
granted. Power hungry managers and owners can’t get enough money in this world,
especially when it’s so easy to make money off of an athletes and decades of hard
work. It’s good to know that the players are still willing to ma
ke a stand when
the time comes.
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