I don’t care.

Cancel all the games.  Go home.  Stay home.  Shut up.

Hire car detailers to keep your collections clean.

Take helicopter rides to avoid traffic going across town.

Drink $2000 bottles of champagne.

Just be quiet while you do it.

Professional athletes are the most spoiled, pampered, insulated, uninformed, pompous, self-important, self-indulgent, and an egomaniacal group of individuals on the planet.

They are also the least self-aware due to leading their entire lives in an insular existence where their entourage hovers around them telling them how great they are, how smart they are, and how everyone wants to know what they are thinking.

I started writing this story when the NBA claimed that some teams were “canceling” the rest of the season.

I do have some sympathy for the plight of the athletes who have had to deal with the playing season in the bastardized form caused by COVID-19.  It’s not what they are accustomed to, and it’s not what fans are accustomed to.

But let’s call it for what it is — the owners needed games to be played, fans or no fans, so television/radio contracts would be honored and team owners would receive money for the broadcast rights they had sold.

The players’ interest was in the owners getting paid because that’s how the players get their playing contracts honored.  No games = no broadcast revenue = no salaries paid to players.

Now enter George Floyd, BLM, rioting, and Jacob Blake.  Suddenly games are “canceled” — not really — in “protest” of the injustices visited upon BIPOC by the police and the “systemically racist” criminal justice system.

Two days ago the Lakers and Clippers announced that the players had voted to end their seasons immediately.  Suddenly NBA Playoff games were “canceled” across the board.  Pressure seemed to build on Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League to follow suit.  NFL teams canceled training camp practices.

Fast-forward 24 hours and — Holy Cow — “Nevermind”.

The Lakers and Clippers players had — uhhhh, “Reconsidered.”

From ESPN:

The players met again on Thursday morning and voted in favor of resuming the playoffs, a source told Wojnarowski.

“To be fair, that vote wasn’t us saying, ‘We don’t want to play basketball,'” Clippers guard Landry Shamet, appearing on “The JJ Redick Podcast,” said of the initial poll Wednesday night. “It was just simply a poll of what we thought was best to do. That’s what came out of our team.”

“Obviously things were moving really fast,” Shamet added of how he didn’t feel confident when he went to bed on Wednesday night. “A lot of people had to step up and try to figure out the best thing for us to do. But one thing I think we didn’t fully take into account was how high emotions were, how tense the situation was and how this was really the first time we as a whole as players have been able to sit and process and think about, talk about and have really good dialogue in the bubble about all this.”

Let me translate from “Woke-ese” into simple layman’s English:

“It was pointed out to us that if we didn’t finish the playoff games scheduled, the NBA and owners would miss out on revenue, and we would not get paid for games we didn’t play.  So we decided to play.”

Suddenly, no games have been “canceled” at all.  They were just “postponed”, and the players didn’t really need to protest by taking a dramatic stand.  The really justed needed the chance to “figure out the best thing for us to do”, because of “how high emotions were”, and because it was the “first time we as a whole as players were able to sit and process and think about”  — the fact they wouldn’t get paid.

Lack of court time on TV also impacts the value of endorsement deals.  King James needs to be on TV in his Lakers’ uniform for all those endorsement deals in China to pay off as provided for in his contracts.

Embarrassments like this this have to be scrubbed away by game highlights.

Yeah, nice prop.  You clearly have internalized the teachings of Malcom X through a long and careful study of his book.

The real test of “wokeness” among professional athletes will come with the start of the NFL season — if there is a start of the NFL season.  NFL players get paid their annual contract amount in 16 installments — one for each game played.

Missed games = missed paychecks.

For some, each check is 7 figures.  For almost all, each check is at least 6 figures.

Because of the nature of the game and the nature of the schedule, “postponing” games to “virtue signal” your “social justice” bona fides isn’t an option.   Once that check is lost, it’s lost forever.

NFL owners are just like NBA owners.   A big source of revenue is the TV rights package.  No games on TV means no revenue from the rights package, and that means no money to pay the players.

So, cancel the games if you truly think it’s necessary to play that role on TV.   But quit with the fake theatrics.  You’re not that interesting when you’re not playing.

And that goes for broadcasters too.  If your career ambition in life was to become the best in the world at describing others running, jumping, swinging, throwing, shooting, catching, etc., then keep your “social justice” pontifications to yourselves as well.  You’ve spent your life reporting on “entertainment.”  I have no faith that you have anything serious to offer about how the real world works.

Generally, you’re not that interesting even when you are describing others playing sports.  I prefer to turn the volume off and watch without the chattering from the likes of you.