Like the ending to X-Men: The Last Stand when many mutants received the serum to cure them of their genotypic difference, the 2011 NBA Lockout has transformed NBA Goliaths into everyday people just like their fans. Well, this probably transformation probably won’t be complete until they burn through their millions of dollars in NBA salaries saved up.
The lockout is affecting the Warriors differently and some are making more pedestrian summer plans than others. Depending on pay grade, different Warriors are taking their time figuring out when they’re going to play basketball next. Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that power forward David Lee is planning on hitting up beaches galore, point guard Stephen Curry is enrolling at Davidson to finish his degree, and swingman Reggie Williams, the least financially secure of the three mentioned, is looking abroad for basketball opportunities.
Playing in Europe is not as easy as it sounds as many teams don’t have the financial flexibility to signs players and teams are not willing to restructure their game plans around an American superstar’s talents. In Simmons’ article, the pressures and anxieties of not having a paycheck, indefinitely, makes these players vocation of basketball seem almost as irrelevant if not relics of the U.S. economy like car manufacturing. As much as basketball players say and desire a “normal” life like us, it is hard to deny that they are celebrities. Their height doesn’t help either in blending in. Can we expect some of these Warriors to be working retail, like Landry Fields jokingly did to begin the season?