NBA Rich Boys: Grow Up [J. Mark English]

Imagine your at work and you make a mistake on say a...TPS report. When you confronted by the higher ups do you get to stand up and complain and take off your shirt and wine like a baby? If you had this reaction chances are you'll either be disciplined or possibly fired.

This is common logic, and for some reason it fails to work in the NBA, or in the NFL for that matter. If you score a touchdown, just put the ball on the ground and move on. Why not save your celebration for the ultimate prize...The Super Bowl.

If you get called for a foul in a basketball game, take it like a man, not like a little boy. The refs are only doing their job, why make it more difficult for them?

Greg Couch of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote a recent article which states clearly my point:

Admittedly, I'm not an expert on this stuff. But I'm looking up the Wagner Act from the Depression. I've read The Jungle, visited the old stockyards. And a quick look at an Employee Relations Law Journal says the Fair Labor Standards Act was for the plight of the ''low-wage, long-working-hour industrial workers, who are helpless victims of their own bargaining weakness.''

So when thinking about unfair labor practices, the visions are of meat-packing plants, coal mines, steelworkers forming unions for safe working conditions, legitimate hours, fair pay.

But I guess there's no reason it couldn't be for multimillionaires who are treated like kings, too. If you haven't heard, Billy Hunter, chief of the NBA players union, has threatened to ''bring an unfair labor practice action, or something'' against the league if the players' working conditions aren't improved.

The issue is the NBA's new crackdown on player whining. Players aren't worried about losing fingers or working too many hours, but instead these rich guys want some of your government tax dollars to preserve their right to whine at officials after fouls are called against them. Really.

Know this: Basketball players are the world's biggest whiners, and not just in the adult world.

But this season, when officials call a foul on a player, if that player complains about it or laughs or raises his arms in dismay or any of those other annoying, whining habits, then the player also will be called for a technical foul. Technicals are up 100 percent. And players are also fined for these technicals, $1,000 apiece for the first several violations.

The players union is outraged!

''They've already taken the fun out of the game with these rules and now this no-tolerance law,'' Pistons forward Rasheed Wallace, who had four technicals in his first four games, told reporters. ''It definitely wears down on your psyche. It's almost to the point where I'm like, ''Well, I don't want to go too hard because I'm going to get psyched up and get a tech.'''

Oh, boohoo. Wallace said he believes they put the rule in specifically because of him.

Do a Nexis search on recent news articles and search ''unfair labor practices.'' You'll see stuff about 450 janitors in Houston walking the streets in protest, pushing mop buckets and garbage barrels on wheels.

Once there was a time when players, from a much different generation reacted differently. When presidential candidate Bob Dole gave his convention speech he spoke of the generations of the past vs. the generations of today:

Let me be the bridge to an America than only the unknowing call myth. Let me be the bridge to a time of tranquility, faith and confidence in action.

Amen Senator Dole. Perhaps when a player can play with certitude instead of foolish recklessness, then the ratings for the NBA will start to go up again. The NBA ratings have been going steadily down in surburban American ever since Michael Jordan exited the stage. Perhaps these players can learn from the greats like Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Julius Erving, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Patrick Ewing, and yes, Michael Jordan. These players were men, not little boys. Its about time someone became the bridge to the past and played with "tranquility, faith, and confidence in action"...in a silent, and dignified matter.