almost to death. A 20-year-old basketball star doesnt need to feel that he is a king to be a leader. What kind of role model is he setting to other youngsters that want to follow in the same footsteps?The salaries of athletes are extremely high for the effort that they put through. For example, basketball, baseball, and hockey athletes only compete for about 6-8 months a year. Then they have the whole summer off. The highest paid athlete was Michael Jordan (Spiegel 220). He was paid as a free agent 33 million dollars for a single season (Spiegel 220)! This salary is an outrageous amount but who really deserves it? Maybe Michael does, but in the future some no names might get this. Athletes practice maybe no more than 3-4 hours per day. That is half of what an average person works in a day. In the NBA, they only play 82 games a season. So, Michael Jordan was getting paid about .4 million dollars a game. Also, it was calculated from his average that he made about 20,000 dollars for every shot he took. Each game they play is for a total of 48 minutes. After that they travel to the next game. The athletes are getting paid whatever they ask for and they really dont deserve it (Kindred 63). Maybe if they showed that it takes a lot of conditioning and a lot of practice, rather than going on vacations to Hawaii, they might catch a few more eyes looking at them.One of the biggest issues that raise the salaries of the players are the endorsements and advertisements that promote their contributions. It was reported that Michael Jordan made 100 million dollars (profit) last year (Spiegel 220). That means he made almost 70 million dollars from other sources being clothing firm, advertisements, restaurant, and awards. The owners also are paying the athletes from the sponsors that pay them to advertise their company. Owners only get profit from this deal. Corporations are paying athletes millions to advertise their product, beca...
