I was watching the Knicks season-opener against Miami last night, and instead of being awestruck by Shawn Marion’s inexplicable mohawk, I couldn’t help but think about Eddy Curry and Stephon Marbury and their enormously bloated contracts. There they both sat, on the bench for the entire night, and I can imagine that while they were doing so, the perpetual CHA-CHING sound that kept going through their collective heads managed to drown out most of the opening-night crowd. Eddy Curry is guaranteed $12 million dollars this year, as part of his 5-year, $60 million dollar contract that he signed in 2005. Stephon Marbury is set to make $23 million. Combined, they will rake in $35 million this year. For what?
For the duration of the first half, Eddy remained on the bench, in his warm-ups, his corn-rows freshly braided, all while Zach Randolph tried to keep up on fast breaks, daydreaming of a late-night trip to IHOP after the game. And so did Stephon. Malik Rose played 7 minutes. Even the first-round draft pick from Italy, Danilo Gallinari played 4 minutes. But Eddy and Steph remained on the bench. Combined, they both played 35 million minutes less than the amount of money they’re getting paid. 0.
So all of this aside, I was left to wonder what it would be like if our real world professions (and by “real world” I mean jobs where you don’t make $23 million dollars to sit on a folding chair for 3 hours a night. So essentially NBA players and CEO’s of large insurance firms are excluded) operated like the sports world.
Try to imagine a world where getting hired for a new job was like signing a professional sports contract. I imagine it would go something like this:
After graduating college, your new, high profile agent (who may or may not have bought your mother a new house and you a brand new BMW before you even got your degree) shops you around to different companies who are feverishly competing for you. You sit down with a number of different company presidents and vice presidents and CEO’s, but instead of them interviewing you, it’s you doing the interviewing. How productive can I be at this company? Are there other people around me that will enable me to perform at my highest level? Are we going to be ranked on the Fortune 500 this year? How much money am I looking at? Things like this.
After you’ve found the company that you and your high-profile agent agree is right for you (or is throwing the most money at you), the company subjects you to a gamut of drug tests and endurance tests. You think you can type 85 words a minute? Okay, let’s see it. Let’s see it when the office air-conditioning unit is broken and your desk chair doesn’t swivel. How well do you deal with adversity? Things like this.
Finally, you’re ready to sign the contract. Big money contract, right out of college. You’re a hot-shot. $500,000 guaranteed over 5 years. $60,000 signing bonus. You’re the talk of the office. For the first few weeks you’re tearing up the place. Handing in reports left and right, taking charge of the copy machine, getting new clients on-board by the busload, people are coming by your office just to watch you work. It’s fascinating.
But by mid-year you hit a slump. You start taking 2-hour lunches, you’ve fallen asleep on your keyboard more than once and the reports stop flowing like Cristal at the BET Awards after-party. Your co-workers think you’ve hit the wall. The rookie wall. But then you pick things up again, just in time for a late-year push. The Christmas party is a huge hit because you set it up, and got it catered by a nice sushi place a few blocks away. Rookie of the Year? Maybe. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
The next few years are much of the same thing. You’ve become a reliable, go-to guy. Congratulations. Other companies are waiting for your contract to expire so they can sign you as a free-agent. All of a sudden though, by Year 4, things start going downhill. You had a one-night stand with the quietly attractive blond two offices down from yours. Now it’s getting kind of awkward to be around the office. There’s rumors floating around that you may be traded. Realizing that you still have 2 years left on your contract and you can’t be fired, you start tanking reports left and right and calling out sick to sail your yacht around the harbor and do lines of coke off of a dolphin. Now every morning that you walk into the office you get dirty looks from all your co-workers. Nobody even talks to you anymore and the VP has called you into his office several times to tell you that he still believes in your potential.
Meanwhile you’re being implicated in a shooting at a Vegas strip-club and throwing drinks in a girl’s face. All the pundits on MSNBC are talking about you and now nobody wants to pick up your lame-duck contract after it expires.
Soon the fifth and final year of your contract rolls around. The talk around the office is whether or not the company VP is going to sign you to a contract extension or release into the free-agency market. Inside sources around the office seem to have exclusive information about what company is going to sign you after the year is over. But then once the year begins, you’re working like a man-possessed, averaging double-digits in reports-per-week and being a solid task manager. Soon they’re talking about you like you’re a new person. Some co-workers shrug it off and say, “It’s just because he’s in a contract year”, but others can’t stop talking about how you’ve become a real “game manager”. Almost like Brad Johnson. “He really knows how to manage a game” they’ll say. But sure enough you’re working your ass off, you want that next big contract. And when the end of the year comes, you’ll get it. You’ll get that big contract with a lot of zeros because you understand what it takes to succeed….
…..always perform your best in a contract year.
