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Super-size me
Posted: Thursday November 05, 1998 10:37 AM
Sports Illustrated staff writer David Fleming posts the
Fleming File each Tuesday on
CNN/SI. While the millionaire players whine endlessly about lost
wages and the NBA owners throw around salary-cap figures,
Larry
Bird clauses and whacked-out percentages the typical fan could
care little about, I believe I have come up with a number
that pretty much sums up the whole ridiculous mess that is
the NBA
lockout: $84.
Yep, eighty-four bucks.
Do you find that hard to swallow? Tell me about it.
Originally, I thought I might throw up if I had to endure
any more lockout nonsense from the NBA. Then
I went ahead and threw up
anyway.
Let me explain. You see, $84 is the amount of money each
player in the NBA gets—above and beyond the tens of
millions of dollars these guys receive as contractual
compensation for playing a child's game—for daily
expenses incurred while on the road
during the season. That's right. Talk about chump change. As if
these guys couldn't afford to feed
themselves.
O.K., that's 29 teams with 12 men per team on the road for,
let's say, 75 days during the season—a grand total of
$2,192,400. Why not just lop that amount off the current
salary-cap maximum and,
voila!, lockout terminated. After all, when you look at
Charles
Barkley you have to think,
It might not hurt him to go on a hunger
strike. Eighty-four bucks a day? And remember, many team meals
are provided free. Good god,
Muggsy
Bogues and the entire cast of
Ally
McBeal could eat for a year on a week's per diem in the NBA. To
put that gluttonous figure into perspective, with that kind
of money the NBA could buy more than two million fast-food
tacos, which, of course, brings me to this week's
adventure.
Could an average person, eating at average restaurants,
really consume $84 worth of food in one day? At first I
thought, No problem.
Derrick
Coleman must spend a thou on room-service breakfast alone. But to
be fair, I deducted $25 for cab fare and the assortment of
sundry items a typical NBA player might need to buy on the
road, stuff like
Defense for
Dummies and
Calvin Murphy's Guide to Free-Throw
Shooting and a map to the local strip clubs.
I wanted to get out to a fast pace so I really loaded up on
breakfast at my local diner: orange juice, French toast,
eggs, fancy-shmancy coffee, the works. Total: $6.27. It was
9:30 a.m. I was stuffed like a turkey and still $52.73 away
from my goal. I
knew drastic measures had to be taken. So, on the way home,
in the name of journalistic integrity and dedication, I
stopped by a fast-food taco
joint.
Let me pause here to say that should you be dumb enough to
try this experiment on your own, do not attempt to mix
French toast, Colombian coffee and Mexican pizza before 11
a.m. With $47.74 left to go, these three foods staged a
kind of border skirmish
in my stomach and—hmm, how to put this
gently—emptied the playing field and put me on the,
uh, bench the rest of the morning. Is that stupid little
chihuahua in the ads
and in the taco
meat?
Anyway, a few hours later, still geeked up on caffeine and
MSG, I realized I had to suck it up. Does
Dennis
Rodman just quit when he gets a run in his stockings? Does
Scottie
Pippen just quit and sit on the bench when it's crunch time in
the playoffs? Uh, well, bad example. But still, I was not
about to give up without a fight.
When in doubt, go with your strength. I got back on my feet
with a super-sized Big Mac, a double cheeseburger and a
sundae at McDonald's. (My hefty friends suggested in order
to avoid embarrassment I should order two drinks so it
would look like the
food was for two people). Now I was only $41.29, a jump shot,
some serious sneaker lifts and a colonoscopy away from a
place on an NBA
roster.
For a late dinner I chose one of those ubiquitous
TGI-Max-n-Ruby-Applefridays. Thanks to a rather large bar
tab, a half-eaten steak, a generous gratuity and a large
swirl cone from Dairy Queen, I was down to $8.89.
The NBA was just a tiny snack away. Unfortunately, I could
not have eaten another bite even if
Latrell
Sprewell massaged my neck to help the food go down. Technically,
though, the 10 bucks I spent on Pepto-Bismol and
fruit-flavored Tums at the Gas-n-Go on the way home put me
safely over the
edge.
Spanning the strange and wonderful world of sports, the Flem File has visited
a nudist colony, investigated nasal strips, tried out for the Olympic bobsled
team and endured injury and humiliation at the NFL Experience. What, or who,
should we riff on next week? If you've got a suggestion, a comment or a
question, don't just sit there, bring it on! Click here to send an e-mail to
Flem, or address it yourself: flemfile@aol.com.
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