Opinion | The Monstars have taken over: welcome to the players’ age of professional sports
- The 1996 movie ‘Space Jam’, an often overlooked but brilliant sports film, predicted a sea change when it comes to players and team owners
- Now powerful personal brands, athletes have figured out they hold all the cards, not their billionaire owners
During the 1996 movie Space Jam, Mr Swackhammer, the villainous owner of Moron Mountain, an intergalactic amusement park, compiles a basketball team by stealing the talent of five well known NBA players.
They take on the Looney Tunes and Michael Jordan, losing in thrilling fashion by one point. Word is Space Jam 2 is filming starring LeBron James, but I wonder if the story of Mr Swackhammer, voiced brilliantly by Danny DeVito in the original, and his makeshift team of superstars might need an update for the modern era?
Chances are this time around Swackhammer will have a tough time getting five NBA stars to put on one jersey. I bet his shooting guard will be looking for a max-level contract that will force Swackhammer to trade another to free up sufficient cap space, while his power forward wants out of his recently signed contract via a trade to go play with a friend on another team. Meanwhile, his centre will be waiting for a free agency decision concerning another star before committing to Swackhammer’s team in hopes of inking a better contract.
Known as the Monstars, a team led and controlled by people like Swackhammer is no more. The dawn of the players’ age across multiple leagues has descended upon us like an all-consuming spacecraft, ushering in a new era of professional athletics. Kawhi Leonard’s NBA off-season, in which trips to Home Depot became news, has shown us where the power lies: within the hands of marquee talent who have become brands in and of themselves, clad with entourages, personal logos, fashion lines, marketing strategies and more social media followers than a boatload of Instagram models.
Gone are the days where tyrannical owners could wield power over players, and basketball is just the start: the soccer world’s billionaire club runners have encountered similar issues. Neymar does not like playing in Messi’s shadow, so he demands a trade to PSG. Neymar does not like playing for PSG, so demands a trade back to Barcelona. Antoine Griezmann finds he has outgrown the halls of Atletico Madrid, so he gets Barcelona to pay his €120 million buyout clause so he can go feed passes to Messi.
Russell Westbrook, recently abandoned by Paul George, got traded lickety-split to go play with buddy James Harden in Houston, all because George wanted to play with Leonard, who, at the pinnacle of his basketball worth and fresh off a championship and MVP trophy with the Toronto Raptors, wanted to carve out a new story on a new team closer to his hometown and family.