Bronco Billy said:
Trying unsuccessfully to help your understanding, apparently.
I agree you've been unsuccessful but mostly because you're veering so far off topic.
I'm not arguing that the poor players deserve more money than they get or that brown was mistreated. I don't care what he gets. I just hate the argument that players who hold out or demand trades are the bad guys.
The owners could permanently end all holdouts and trade demands by giving the players the right to terminate their contracts the way the teams can. They'll obviously never allow that, right?
So what do they allow? Hold outs. All those rules that say how many games you can miss and have it count as a year, and how much they can fine you, and so on - that stuff didn't appear in the CBA magically or by accident. That's what the league agreed on for a remedy for someone who wants to end a bad contract.
You can't blame the players for using the remedy in the CBA. It's the only remedy they have.
If the team doesn't want their player to hold out or demand a trade, structure a contract in a way that doesn't reward it. The steelers gave him a bundle of money up front, what did they expect would happen when they got to the cheap years if he kept performing at an elite level?
They could also have extended him. The steelers went back to him and asked him to convert salary to bonus for cap purposes, because it helped the team. But when they watched him perform as the best receiver in the nfl while his remaining years were on the cheap, they didn't offer him a raise. Which is fine, and probably a good business decision. But the consequence of that decision is an increased risk of pushback.
Holdouts and trade demands are part of the rules the owners agreed to and a preventable consequence of teams holding firm on team friendly deals and not giving raises to their best players, in the same way that cuts are part of the rules the players agreed to.
It's absurd to get mad at a player for not accepting 12 million less than his market value because it would have appealed to your sensibilities. Be mad at the owners for not giving him any other avenue to get paid, or the team for not doing what they needed to do to keep him. Be mad at him for refusing to negotiate with the steelers or for airing his dirty laundry or demanding a trade instead of holding out. That's all valid. But getting mad at him for "breaking his contract"? No. He did exactly what his contract allows.
