Carmelo Anthony and Deron Williams: Free Agency, Fans, Feudalism, Folly and Fate

Maybe it's the Gatorade song, I don't know, but "sometimes I dream." I try and put myself in a player's mind, see things through his eyes while the game is going on. It's a different thing, being on the court and seeing a game on TV. The players see the game differently than we do. For us, the whole thing takes place in "third person" narrative. For them, it takes place in first person. 

Putting aside the obvious jokes about the athlete who refers to himself in the third person, even such "divas" are actually living their own lives. It's even more difficult to imagine that, but they actually really live lives too.

Deron Williams really found out he was getting traded this morning while he watched the report on TV in the training room. Picture yourself, with your family and all, who have lived in Salt Lake City for a number of years. 

You've got a wife and children. You have a home. You have a circle of friends. Sure you're in the training room right now. You're at work. Maybe you're thinking about what you're going to to do when you get home tonight since you don't have a game. Maybe you'll just stay in and play with the kids. Maybe you'll take the family out for dinner. Maybe you'll just watch "American Idol" like 30 million other Americans. 

Then, as the thoughts are going on in your head and the TV is going on as some sort of usual ambient buzz, you start realizing they're talking about you, but it still takes a moment to register. It's not just talking about highlights, the talk is you're getting traded.

TRADED!

Flash to How to Rob a Bank, " It's called "exploding noema." It's a theory of psychoanalysis that describes the exact startling moment when the brain can't reconcile the difference between what should be and what actually is. Everything in your life just changed, and you had nothing to do with it. 

Two hours later, you're on a bus, headed for a plane, flying to New Jersey and your life just got yanked out from under you. Don't get me wrong, I"m not trying to soft sell the life of an NBA player. I'm just pointing out to Deron Williams this isn't "the biggest story of the news day." It's not a basis for debate. It's his actual, real life. 

Whether you're talking about Matt Barnes, Carmelo Anthony or even (gasp) LeBron James, the tough thing to bear in mind is they are actual human beings. They aren't fictional characters, and they aren't "larger than life." They are just people who got blessed with a little height and athletic ability. As a result we, the fans, make them up to be larger than life. 

They may be larger than our lives in some sense. Their bank accounts are bigger, and their houses are bigger. They live at a standard most of us don't live and drive nicer cars. But that doesn't mean they have a different kind of love for their families or friends. They still have dreams. I mean literal dreams, like the kind when you sleep. 

Perhaps you think I'm belaboring a point, or else, maybe you're wondering where I'm headed, but I want to underscore this point. Basketball players are people too. We can try and redefine that in a lot of ways, call them "athletes" or "players" or even "public figures." All of those things are true, but none of those things change the one simple fact that they are actually people. 

This is an important thing to keep in mind when we talk about issues like "free agency" and "forcing trades." We can get riled up with players "taking their talents" to somewhere else or where they chose to go. We can get worked up about a lack of "loyalty." We can debate all we want about what they "should have done." 

The thing is though, for them, it's their actual lives with their friends, their wives, their children, their girlfriends, their hopes, their ambitions, their houses and all those wonderful things we get to have and live without the micro-scrutiny of a million bloggers and writers and commenters and talking heads debating on a day-to-day basis.

When I was 10 years old and lived in North Dakota, I for whatever reason determined that I did not want to be a Twins fan. I had my AM radio on that I quite literally built myself, and I was listening to the scores for the baseball game. I'd recently "discovered" the game, as my dad wasn't a fan so he never got me into it. 

Now, the problem was that I didn't have a favorite team. So I just told myself, the next team they name on the radio is my favorite team. The next thing they said on the radio was the St. Louis Cardinals lost to...and that's how the Cards became my favorite team. 

They were the bottom of the majors then; it was 1977. Not too long later, they traded for this young shortstop by the name of Ozzie Smith. I was a Cards fan when they got Jack Clark, when they beat the Brewers in the 1982 World Series, when Ozzie hit his game-winning home run in the 1985 NLCS, when they sucked, when they signed Big Mac and when they won the 2006 World Series against the Tigers.

I've been a Cards fan for 32 years now, longer than most of the team has lived, including (possibly) Albert Pujols. I've screamed at TVs for him, I've seen him play at Wrigley, I've cheered for him at risk of my very life (well not quite) and I've followed his career since he was a rookie. I've written articles about him and defended him against irresponsible steroid accusations, and I can tell you, I am a big fan of Albert Pujols. 

But make no mistake about it. Albert Pujols doesn't have the slightest clue who I am. I might be part of that nameless, faceless amorphous blob of "fans" that surround him and who he thanks when he receives any and all of his various awards, but he owes me nothing. His life is his to live. My having cheered for him does not obligate him to me. He's got every right to leave if he chooses to do so. 

When we talk about "loyalty" to cities and teams and fans, we need to keep in mind these aren't actual things to be loyal to. These are amorphous ideals that aren't actually substantive. Yes, Salt Lake City is a real city, and there are real fans of the Jazz there, but in the abstract "loyalty" sense, there is no "thing", i.e. nothing to be loyal too. 

If you stop to think about it, players work in an almost feudal society where they aren't allowed to make their own decisions about where they live or who they work for. For seven years, a team can keep a player if it so chooses to do it. If the basketball player wants to make his living playing basketball in the USA, and has the ability to do it, he still has to play for whomever calls his name on draft day for seven years. 

If that team chooses to trade him, he might find out one morning while working out. For all the havoc reaped upon LeBron for not calling his former owner when he wasn't even under contract anymore before announcing his decision, little is mentioned of the "loyalty" shown to Deron Williams in not even letting him know they traded him. Of course they don't live like serfs, but the terminology is ironic, "owner." 

After they've completed that seven-year period, they are "free" agents. They get to join the world of capitalism. They get to shop their wares on the open market.  When "fans" get themselves worked up about these things, they should keep in mind they are actually not doing anything morally wrong. They don't "owe" anything.

What they need to be loyal to is themselves. Sorry to quote LeBron here, but when he says, "I have to do what's best for me and my family" he's not saying something that any other person can't say without being condemned for it.

Players aren't being "selfish" if they want to make more money or play where they grew up. Nor are they obligated to consider the ramifications for their present locality if they leave. Chris Paul is not obligated to the city of New Orleans, Derrick Rose to Chicago or LeBron James to Cleveland for that matter. The fault of those heartbreaks doesn't lie with the players, it lies with the fans. 

We as fans need to understand where to draw the line between basketball and humanity. We as fans need to recognize that simply cheering for a player who happened to be drafted by your favorite team doesn't obligate him to show you "loyalty" and decide to live his life in the locale of your choosing. 

Certainly the recent trends are troubling for the future of the NBA, and I'm not claiming to have the answers for it either. That doesn't mean that I accept that somehow the players are at fault either though. It's too easy to sit back in my recliner, type on my laptop and take potshots and players who will never read my article. Nor does it mean I think the players need to find the solution, or forgo their free agent rights too appease the fans. 

If ESPN wrote me today though and said, "Kelly, we'd like to pay you $14 million a year to come and write for us," I wouldn't be considering my "loyalty" to Bleacher Report.

We ask them to make choices we wouldn't make. We ask players to make decisions and choices for us when they don't even know us. We ask them to prioritize our fandom ahead of their lives. We ask them to set aside their ambitions to satisfy ours. 

Whether players take less money so a star can sign and win a ring, like Wade. Whether they're the player who takes less money for a shot at a ring like Carlos Boozer. Whether they just want to go home and play and hey, maybe win a ring while they're there like Carmelo Anthony. Even if they just happen to land in the perfect situation and play their entire careers in one uniform like Kobe Bryant, it's all the same. They are living their lives, and that's just something we can't do, no matter how hard we might try.