The same as it once was – a wealth of common sense

I am currently reading two books about different eras that have some themes that we are dealing with in today’s world.

The breaks of the game David Halberstam is generally considered one of the best sports books ever written.¹

Halberstam described the Portland trail blazers in the NBA season 1979-80.

People talk about how money and greed have now infected professional sports, but it was interesting to hear that this was even the case 45 years ago:

The increasing preoccupation with money was upset, it did so great in a team. It doesn’t matter how much money a player earned, and no matter how much more it was than he ever expected, there would always be someone else, play somewhere, of less power that deserved more. Some former players believed that the identity of a player was now tied in his salary.

So it was only logical that when players thought of their salaries and they compared to the salaries of other Americans, they did not think of athletic salaries in the past and present, nor of salaries of steel worker, but of the salaries paid to other entertainers film stars, television stars. Very quickly the commercial standards had reached the players themselves and the standards were always for larger and bigger money.

Where once it had only been Madison Avenue, who had seen the commercial possibilities of the game, and the owners who had seen the chance to earn bigger money, the new money was now seeping to the level of the players, and they were also greedy of what every other player made in the competition.

Gewism is always present when there are large sums of money involved. Of course they were not only the players, but also the owners:

Those who are responsible for maintaining the quality of the game – the owners – were suddenly overcome by an unparalleled attack of greed, who distorted and diluted the game, so that it was artistic, even because it was still apparently on commercial revival. It was suddenly no longer a product in harmony with itself. The social consequences of that moment of greed were what everyone, in the competition and leaks, coaches, television – executives – struggled with now, to no great success and with increasing mutual bitterness.

Nowadays Load Management is a big problem with so many players who save themselves for the play -offs and decrease nights. That also happened then:

Given no-cut contracts, too many games and a schedule that is designed to exhaust even the most physically fit young men in America, many players responded to Automatic Pilot, which only came alive in the play-off games.

Halberstam spoke about how this mentality extended beyond the NBA:

What had happened to basketball was typical of too much happened in the new American schedule of things: there was more, but it was less.

Sounds known.

The salaries were then in the low six digits. Bill Walton van de Blazers was one of the few players who earn a million dollars per season.

The Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Thunder will earn more than $ 70 million a year with his New record contract.

All that money does not necessarily make the players happier. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver I talked about this a few years ago:

We live in a time of fear. I think it is a direct consequence of social media. Many players are unhappy.

Because of the lens from retrospect, the 1990s feel the last really happy decade we have had. No social media. A thriving economy. A flourishing stock market. Nobody really gave or spoke about politics in their daily lives. The music was fantastic. It was perhaps the best film decade ever.

Brian Raftery wrote his book Best film year ever Around 1999. It was interesting to be reminded of how much fear there was even:

Although the nineties were later revised by some as a sort of 90-paradise, the period was in fact characterized by social and political tumult: beating Rodney King, the battle for Anita Hill and terrorist attacks such as the bombing in Oklahoma City. By the time 1999 arrived, it felt like everything could happen. “People forget how much fear there was,” Norton says. “It was the fear that Gen-X maturity came in, and it really had collateral. It is expressed in Magnolia, it is expressed in Fight Club, and it is expressed in being John Malkovich: that fear of entering a world that seemed a bit more an more efferter.”²

Time Magazine wrote a cover story about Gen X in 1990 and De Lede feels like it could be more or less written today:

They have difficulty making decisions. They prefer to walk in the Himalayas than climb a business ladder. They have few heroes, no folk songs, no style to name their own. They crave entertainment, but their attention span is as short as a zap of a TV -guide plate. They hate yuppies, hippies and drugs. They postpone marriage because they are afraid of divorce. They grin on Range Rovers, Rolexes and Red suspenders. What they are dear are family life, local activism, national parks, penny loafers and mountain bikes. They only have a blurry feeling of their own identity, but a monumental preoccupation with all the problems that the previous generation will leave for them to solve.

This is the generation of people in their twenties, those 48 million young Americans aged 18 to 29 who fall between the famous baby boomers and the tree line of children who produce the baby boomers.

I think this was before Gen X was the forgotten generation.

Everything is more strengthened in the information age, but it is nice to know that every generation is almost worried about the same things.

It is a transition ritual.

Continue reading:
The Joneses are not so happy

¹When I started, I had a hard time putting it down. It is very well done.

²You also had office space, American beauty, falling and reality snacks in the 90s.