Money for nothing

Because, this morning, the Blob felt like channeling a little Dire Straits. You are welcome.

Which, presumably, the Dallas Mavericks will soon be telling Harrison Barnes, when he thanks them for this. No guarantee he'll sign with the Mavs, of course, but $95 mill is a pretty sweet deal. On the other hand, there may be sweeter deals out there thanks to an NBA free agent market flush with new TV cash that teams are being compelled to spend.

That's because there's not only a salary cap in the NBA, there's a salary floor, and it just got raised through the roof by the new TV deal. And so we have the Lakers handing Cavs bench jockey Timofey Mozgov $64 mill over four years, even though he played all of 25 minutes in the Finals and has career averages of  6.9 points and 5.0 rebounds.

What's significant about the Harrison Barnes offer, then, is not the absurdity of the  numbers but the absurdity of all the network talking poodles yapping about how he was killing his chances in free agency by playing horribly in the Finals. Well, maybe in any other year, but not in this year. Even crashing failures are cashing in this year, which is spurring reactions ranging from knee-slapping amusement to spluttering outrage.

The Blob definitely falls  in the former camp, finding nothing but simple free enterprise at work here. Does Timofey Mozgov deserve $64 million? I don't know, does the CEO of a major corporation deserve double-figure millions for driving his or her company off a cliff? That happens a lot in this country. But we're going to begrudge a basketball player his payday?

Not a chance. This is simply the market paying what the market will bear, just as it always has. Of course it's ludicrous, but so is paying the CEO of Wal-Mart $2,7000 an hour.

Deserve?

To quote Clint Eastwood at the end of "The Unforgiven": Deserve's got nothin' to do with it.