Towards an Ethical Trade Deadline
The NBA trade deadline passed earlier this month. It didn’t have all the fanfare of last year, when big stars like Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant were moved in dramatic fashion. But it was a pretty active deadline, with lots of pieces on the move. Which once again had me thinking about the ethics of trades. Because when players like Irving and Durant and Damian Lillard, who was dealt this offseason, get traded, it is often because they’ve demanded it. But most players don’t have that kind of power, and this year’s deadline was a reminder of that.
When non-stars get traded, there can be more conflicting emotions. Guys grow attached to their teams, their cities, their teammates, only to be tossed in as a throwaway to balance the cap implications.
Still, as a sports fan, I love the trade deadline and want to preserve it. But if we believe in empowering workers, how can we abide a system where players can just be uprooted on the whims of a GM? Well, the first thing to do is make no-trade clauses standard, and not just something reserved for superstars, so that nobody can be sent to play anywhere without their consent. This would make trades way harder to do — but not impossible. You’d likely just have to grant more incentives or compensation to traded players.
But the other issue is — wait for it — owners. Because of the way all (well, almost all) our pro sports leagues are set up, with each team owned the fiefdom of its own separate billionaire douchebag, getting traded from one team to another means not only that you have to move to a new city and play with new teammates and for a different coach — it means you also have a new boss.
This is more consequential than it might seem at first. Different owners run their teams very differently. They invest different amounts in their facilities, have different commitments to winning championships, and treat their players with varying levels of dignity. It’s easy to scoff at these concerns, but most of us would treat any attempt to force us to work for someone we didn’t want to work for as a major infringement on our liberty. Freedom of association is supposed to matter, and your boss has a major impact on your life. A specific trade might mean that suddenly you have to get a new haircut, or that now you’re playing for a noted racist or sex pest.
And consent only gets us so far out of this predicament. It’s certainly a good idea to get a player’s permission before trading him, but players are in no position to judge a boss they’ve never worked for or a team they’ve never played for. Someone on a team in last place might gladly accept a trade to a contender and not realize what he’s in for….
The only way out, as usual, is to limit the power of owners over the lives of their employees. Some of this can be done through the collective bargaining process. In the NBA and other sports leagues, the unions have negotiated certain standards, like days off and minimum acceptable facilities. But the persistence of things like the Yankee grooming policy shows just how much power people are comfortable giving to the boss, even in places with workforces as rich and comparatively powerful as pro athletes.
Most employees don’t have to worry about being traded, but so long as we accept this kind of employer control over our lives, we are ceding a level of power to bosses that will inevitably be abused. In other words, if they can force Carlos Rodón to shave, then what hope do the rest of us have?