Workplace Traditions That Would Never Fly in the NBA

Is there a drag on our lives quite larger than waking up early in the morning and going to work for the next eight hours?

Oh, it could be much worse. You could have no job at all or you could be dealing with health problems far more significant than dealing with the given annoyances of work.

It's just that the concept of work is such a crippling though. Waking up at 7:00 a.m. five days a week and then driving in traffic for an hour is enough, but then you actually have to work? That lasts for another eight hours, we'll get to what you actually do during this time, and then you head off into traffic before getting home nearly 10 hours later.

It's a grind, but we all have to do it. We all must become beneficial parts of society and feed ourselves and our family. We do this by working in jobs that we don't want to do and disappointing the inner child in all of us.

Today, we take a look at the NBA as a business and find out five workplace traditions that would either not fly in the NBA or have been done before and were as bad as originally perceived.

Avoiding Deadlines

It's something that we have done our entire lives. Procrastination and avoiding the eventual time where you have to complete a task seems to be more of a staple to life than eating, drinking and breathing.

Everyone has done it. From the average third grader to the President of the United States, every single person on this earth has put off something to do at a different time. It's just something that's implanted in our brains. Why do something today when you can just do it tomorrow?

Or the next day? Or the day after that? Better take a raincheck. That's where procrastination leads us. As much as we'd like to start sooner, finish up the project and then have time to ourselves, the majority of humans would much rather use up all their free time and then finish a rushed project that could have easily been down either weeks before or over the course of time.

Every worker or student has done it. Movers hold off moving the largest piece of furniture until the end, businesspeople who have to make a presentation will usually hold off until the night before it's due and even NBA players have become casualties of this relaxing disease.

Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic became a master procrastinator over the past few weeks with his reluctance to come up with a decision on whether or not he wanted to stay with his current team or ultimately get the trade he asked for at the beginning of the season.

Howard flip-flopped for weeks before eventually deciding to stay in Orlando. Well, that is until today until Stephen A. Smith reported on SportsCenter that Howard would demand a trade upon the end of the season. Real swell guy as you can clearly see.

Procrastination is a gift, but it's largely a curse that will hurt you in the long run as shown by the Magic. Howard's inability to make a decision and then stick with it is going to hurt the Magic just as bad as if he was traded when he was supposed to.

The Office Harlot

For those who don't know what a harlot is, I'll allow you to surf the Internet in order to find it.

Found it? Good, because it makes my job a whole lot easier since I don't have to use the common term for these types of workers.

The office harlot is either the most beloved by some or the most hated. You have no idea how they were able to obtain the position they had, until you came into contact with them and caught the scent of regret, latex (if you're lucky) and tanned skin. My apologies for the horrible mental image you just received, but it's key for you, the reader, to find this person so that you may not become the next victim of the office harlot.

It seems fun at first, but you'll regret it once she either goes Fatal Attraction on you or just leaves a displeasing mark on your nether regions for the rest of your life. The office harlot is a harlot for the reason that she's passed around by many employees (teams, in this case) and made it that far in life strictly because of their ability to do what anyone else do.

As far as I know, there are no NBA players like this. We can only hope, at least.

To define the office harlot in the NBA, you could either look at a player that's been on a whole bunch of teams in their career or a player that's been on an NBA roster for too long and leaves you bewildered as to how they got there.

In that second definition of the NBA's office harlot, I speak of guys like Luke Walton, Brian Scalabrine and Brian Cardinal. You don't really know why they're in the league and how they got there in the first place, yet you also have the thought of how they could still be on an NBA roster making as much money as they do.

The other definition is of a player that's been passed around from team to team. They've never found a niche on many teams, yet they're continually found on a brand new NBA roster every year. I'm talking about a guy like Drew Gooden, who has been on nine teams since joining the league in 2002, or Earl Boykins, who has played with 11 teams since 1998.

Water Cooler Breaks

Work sucks. Unless your job is professional athlete or musician, or Sofia Vergara's personal masseuse, the chances are that you don't like your job.

We don't want to do it. About 99 percent of the American population doesn't want to wake up at 8:00 a.m. to go to an establishment where they perform various tasks for eight hours or more per day. And then coming home at 6:00 p.m. if you're lucky depending on traffic? You don't even have time for yourself since you'll eat dinner and veg out for the rest of the day.

That's why the water cooler is the greatest place in the workplace. Eight hours of hardly doing mundane work for a paycheck that's probably not even close to as much as you deserve leads you to finding safe havens in the workplace to escape the cruel tyranny and the harsh reality that you're stuck doing this for the next few decades.

When you're at the water cooler, you have time to either reflect to yourself or spend time chatting with a fellow employee who also shares the same philosophy that your pride and dignity were stripped away when taking the job. The job is a pain, but at least you have the water cooler to spend as much time as you want.

After all, who's going to fault you for being extremely thirsty? By the way, no one is ever thirsty at a water cooler at work. Your mind just leads you to believe your thirsty so you can do something worthwhile instead of staring at a computer screen for five hours and realizing that your brain was still in bed.

NBA players get all kinds of breaks. When you're not in the game, you get to sit on the bench in a comfy warm-up suit while basically getting paid over $1 million to literally sit and watch a basketball game. When you're actually in the game, there are still so many breaks when you figure in all of the timeout's from the coaches and officials as well as the constant fouls being called.

These guys could set up a picnic if they wanted to. They earned it by working extremely hard and showcasing far more ambition and perseverance than any of us and still have to work hard just to maintain a spot in the rotation and on an NBA roster.

However, there are certain players who take breaks to an astronomical level. Take Stephon Marbury and Eddy Curry for instance. Marbury's complaining and selfishness and Curry's injuries and overall attitude enabled the New York Knicks organization to bench them for what seemed like the latter part of the 2000's.

When the Knicks were in their awful stage of being a franchise, seeing Marbury and Curry in suits at the end of the bench was the lasting image that will forever be grained into the memories of every New Yorker that was forced to sit and watch as Marbury complained and Curry ate his way of robbing the Knicks out of millions.

In the 2007-'08 season, Marbury played in only 24 games with the Knicks. Curry picked up the pace by playing in 10 games over the next two seasons.

Asking for Raises

Every worker in America, and the world for that matter, could use a raise in their paycheck.

Nobody makes enough. From the steel worker in Pittsburgh to the farmer in middle America, nobody gets nearly enough money that they truly deserve. For the work we do and the sacrifices we make as workers attempting to feed ourselves and our family, there should always be more than enough room to throw in an extra few dollars.

Not all companies are generous, sadly enough. That's why police officers, firemen and teachers continue to get underpaid even though they deserve just as much as any other skilled worker. They might not have the mindset to build bridges or send a man to the moon, but they do the work that's needed that allows us to complete everything we do today.

But I'm not here to get preachy. I'm here to discuss a time that we will encounter in our work lives where we come to the sudden realization that we need and deserve more money. After all, that work we do five days a week isn't easy and we take pride in the fact that we do the job to our utmost potential.

Depending on the person you're asking, a raise could be in order. You deserved it. You worked long and hard enough to earn the extra bucks and you can now look forward to either saving that money or blowing it on those Charlotte Bobcats tickets you wanted so badly.

Professional athletes and musicians don't deserve raises. In fact, they don't deserve to make the money they're currently taking in. It's in the entertainment industry, where there is too much money being put in, and they make an exuberant amount of money because of it.

Let's not blame them. They're just playing the game and the consumer correctly. Even though we could go without sports, TV shows or music for the rest of our life, it certainly makes life a lot more enjoyable when you have those distractions and outlets to rely on.

Which explains why Latrell Sprewell was claiming that $21 million "wasn't enough to feed his family." It's bad enough that the guy is in the league after choking an NBA head coach, but now asking for more than $21 million as a role player? This was in 2005 and Sprewell's career was hardly reminiscent of that when he played in Golden State.

He didn't deserve it then and he doesn't deserve it now. No raise for you, Mr. Sprewell.

Doing "Work"

This is the greatest part of work. It's a tradition that our fathers carried and their fathers as well. Since the idea of creating an establishment where many individuals could come together and complete some tasks for the betterment of society, there have always been employees who attempt to work without working.

I don't speak of myself, of course. But every other person that has done work or gone to school has acted like they were doing work before. In school, we used to write scribbles on our notebooks to imitate that we were actually writing notes, and at work, we constantly find ourselves scavenging the Internet for a new outlet of entertainment.

What happens if you're not doing either of those? You're working and that's counter-productive against your lifestyle of preferring to do nothing. When you're at work, don't you always set a goal of doing as little as possible and finding out how long you can get away with it. This can last for years. You could go into work every day for a year and possibly have done an entire week's worth of work in that span.

Sorry, but I don't see anybody who's doing work at all times when actually at work. Even with breaks, trips to the restroom and the fabled water cooler moments, you'll always find yourself wondering about John Friel's latest analysis piece and when it will come out or that one news article you meant to read a few months ago.

Any type of distraction or time waster will be utilized in the workplace. This applies to everything, including the NBA where there is a plethora of players that put on the facade of actually playing to their fullest potential.

However, the bad things are that they get away with it and will forever continue to get away with it.

Think about a player like Baron Davis. A two-time All-Star who has made over $100 million, yet hasn't made it any further than the second round of the playoffs. It doesn't have to do with his team, either. Davis didn't make it that far because he doesn't care enough to make it that far. Winning isn't always in the cards for Davis.

Instead, he'll completely disrupt the rhythm of the offense, play lazy defense and hardly commit to playing for an entire game, unless he's actually motivated.

Davis isn't the only one, however. He has plenty of other lazy friends in guys like Andray Blatche, Stephen Jackson and Vince Carter. All players with the potential to be great, yet would rather not live up to it and completely disappoint instead.