Professional Sports - NBA Players are Greedy - Essay Example

haritable causes or other community-focused tactics to show their support for ethics and social integrity, the root of their motivations is greed and it can be supported with solid evidence. “NBA players are much in demand by groupies, partiers and wife wannabes” (Bender and Jackson, 2000, p.28). Because there is a high social demand for basketball, these games are televised and broadcast both nationally and internationally in an environment with much spectacle and bright, flashing lights.

This type of environment appeals to the social personality type who likes the thrill of ongoing excitement, making the NBA player the obvious object of these complicated emotions. Basically, the thrill of the sports broadcast and the theatrics of the arena provide fanatics with the idea that they should be chasing potential relationships or parties with these players. At the psychological level, greed does not necessarily have to involve financial desire, greed can include the need for the spotlight and to be surrounded by attractive young women.

The message, at the social and marketing level, keeps getting reinforced that basketball players deserve celebrity status. NBA players begin to believe this and begin defining themselves and their future ambitions by the smoke and mirrors of sports broadcasting and marketing. This sets an initial seed of greed into aspiring basketball players who believe that when exposed as a high-performing player, they will have their own dedicated group of followers, fanatics, and relationship-minded con artists.

NBA players are so greedy that they even are willing for forfeit education just to have this money and social spotlight. One professional in higher education offers that an ambition to be an NBA player is “a recipe for disaster” and “instead of athletic ability serving as a means to a valuable end (education), the hoop dream has become the goal itself” (Graves, 2004, p.10). Students who believe that they are going to become the