@VailHawk
It is not an either or situation. It is a mostly situation.
Think about a Harvard/Yale/Princeton graduate and a KU graduate applying for a job with an investment banking house on Wall Street.
Wall Street investment banking houses, investment managjers, or whatever they are calling themselves these days, is ultimately about making 2% on the largest deals that can possibly be put together. Whether the deals make the every day world better or worse is immaterial. Deals are done to make 2%. If they enable implementation of a global communications infrastructure, or a network of privatized concentrations camps where persons are tortured 24/7 to develop mind control technologies and then incinerated to cover the liability to the firm for crimes against humanity, alas, might make little difference based on the historical actions of investment banks, banks and so on in war time activities. For every ten investment bankers that will do the former deal, one will do the latter, because 2% of a big enough number means the deal gets done. There ought to be a law against it, but the fact is the private oligarchs that own controlling interests in the most dominant investment banking houses, or else animate those investment banking houses with preferential information, investment capital, and public and private access to deals, of course also invest sufficiently in elected and appointed government officials so as to see to that such laws are not passed. Capice?
But I digress. Let's carry on with the investment banking profession as an analogue for professional basketball players, before talking more specifically about professional basketball players.
Investment banks apparently seek three things in a hire and the rank importance varies with the candidate and the firm's needs at any given time.
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A fast, educated, socially adept brain literate in the latest trading technologies and with at least a thimble of insight about what is going on in the economy from their college education (note: these sorts of minds are always in oversupply for the number of jobs available).
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Existing access to new business, which is NEVER in oversupply, because demand for taking 2% of high buck IPOs is effectively inelastic.
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A workaholic streak.
Most KU graduates in the top 5% are equivalent on number 1.
Most KU graduates in the top 5% are deficient on the second count, and so are shunted to regional investment banking firms to start, where they can build up the business access needed by smiling, dialing and defiling, to move to the big firms, or help their regional firms go global.
Workaholics come from all walks of life, but kids out of the upper classes have FU money, and the kids from KU without the FU money tend not to have the new business access built in, so the firms tend to hire the Ivy leaguers, but every once in awhile, they take a risk on the KU grad, if he, or his family, bring something new to the table.
So: some of both get hired, but mostly its the Ivy leaguers, and after the trial period, the kid that learns fastest and brings the most new business, regardless of his pedigree, gets kept and the other gets flushed, unless he is a relative of someone in the firm or someone important about to join the administration in Washington, DC. Its a numbers game. All professions are numbers games despite their talk about marketing expertise. They are a numbers game marketing access to making things rain, with expertise being minimum ante to play.
The new hire that gets flushed once again tends to depend on his professional network to get access to being rehired. When he relies on this access, his independence is then neutered for the rest of his career. He knows he is not valuable in and of himself. He is only valuable in how he can be used by those in his professional network. This most accept, because they know how to do nothing else at this point, other than wait for an inheritance, which can be an iffy thing in a highly competitive upper class family of 3 to 5 seeking to gain through inheritance the standard of living and social status for themselves and their children that their parents achieved. Thus, these professional networks are the foundations of employment regimes in most employment sectors I have ever been exposed to. Some in them are robust professionals wielding their networking resources. Others are neutered professionals letting themselves be exploited for the greater good of those above them. This regime is in part why dominatrices can make such a good living on Wall Street. But I digress again.
The Ivy leaguer has the more extensive network, so he tends to get rehired more often.
Overall there is a bias toward the Ivy league network in the investment banking sector, even though the sector prides itself on the bottom line--doing big deals, often, for 2% off the top.
It does not matter that a few at the top are ruthless geniuses from anywhere, nor does it matter that a few from the bottom find marginal niches and hang on in clever ways.
The bulk of investment bankers in the processes of making their nest eggs are quite fungible in IQ and workaholism and minimal ethics department and are mainly distinguishable as dominants and eunuchs, rain makers and domestiques. They all dress quite similarly, but there are little tell tale signs of who is who.
The bulk of the investment banking culture hews toward this bias of its traditional professional network with occasional sharp infusions/integrations of new networks, when an Investment banking house commences operations in a new country, or business sector, or what have you.
Now, with this analog of the investment banking profession in hand, let us consider your assumption that the best players play in the NBA.
Professional basketball is a "profession." It's members are produced by "schools." The schools are segmented by "shoe brands." According to my hypothesis, these produce "professional networks" that are reinforcing to supply NBA teams that are also segmented at least partially by shoe brands.
Now keep in mind here that I am hypothesizing, and not asserting how things actually are. I don't know how they actually are. I am a fan. I have never worked for an NBA franchise in any capacity. I am just trying to outline what appears to me would be a probable logical professional network dynamic operating to some degree or another in the NBA. The NBA is very unusual in many ways and so not highly comparable to other professions in certain ways. It has a formal draft that investment banking lacks. You might say investment banking has an informal auction of slots to the applicant promising to give the biggest most profitable part of himself to the investment banking "league." Investment banking is very collusive and highly concentrated in ownership at the top of the business sector of investment banking--the NBA, if you will of investment banking. And so on. We can learn some things from the analogy and not others. Capice?
At any given time, there are sharply more NBA bodies with NBA skills than there are NBA job slots. There are a few elite NBA players, what are commonly called franchise players. Such players may come from any school, any shoe brand, any planet, or any universe. They may come from an elite basketball program or any old major or mid major. But the rest of the NBA job slots are staffed by highly fungible athletes, whose main differentiating characteristics are their varying salary loads to the teams and their professional networks. and their appeal to their franchise players. Contrary to popular belief, the NBA is a people business. Being able to play at competitive standard for the role available and possessing an NBA body is ante. Just ask Nick Collison. What decides who is on a roster, and who is not for non franchise player roles relates to which fungible player meets the franchise player's agenda. Each franchise player is not only a human being with subjective personal preferences, but a "professional" in a professional network with professional network preferences. He looks at fungible teammate through both lenses and filters whom he prefers accordingly. Same with management, but they pay much more attention to budgetary stuff, and to keeping round elbows regarding professional networks. Management has to think about not just this player, but the steady stream of players they will need. They need to think about keeping a good working relationship with the professional network that meets their needs most.
If the only way to adequately fill a non-franchise player slot on an NBA team dominated by Shoe Brand A were to be to hire a player from Shoe Brand B, then the player from Shoe Brand B would be hired. But he might well be the first to be traded/released and replaced to make room for a Shoe Brand A player subsequently. This is what I meant by this not being an either or situation, but rather a mostly situation.
Though I have no way of knowing this, it is also reasonable to hypothesize about the NBA that there are certain Nike dominated franchises, certain adidas dominated franchises, and certain franchises that have found a niche catering intentionally to a mix of both. By dominated, I do not mean that Nike runs the franchise. The owners run the franchise. I mean that the roster tends to be dominated by Nike players, and so the Nike player professional network's needs are part of the reconciliations going on in choices among players to be added and subtracted in pursuit of the best team the owner can put on the floor given his pocketbook.
Hypothetically speaking, Nike would likely favor the Nike dominated franchises, would it not?
Likewise, adidas would favor the adidas dominated franchises.
And Nike and adidas would look on the combo franchises as useful in managing the occasional excesses (slop factor) and shortfalls that occur in all demand and supply situations in the short term.
This sort of regime would essentially raise the entry costs of a competitor to Nike and adidas trying to enter the game and by default, give them a bit of a say in who they are willing to lower the entry costs for and who they are not.
For hypothetical example, the combo franchises might even absorb an occasional third shoe brand, say, one like Under Armour, should regime dynamics make adding a third oligopolist make sense, in order to discourage some monster outside player from trying to come in and throw its weight around in an effort at regime change from outside. It is called using a third minor member of the oligopoly to take up oxygen at the margin.
Now I could go on a great length about this, but I think this outlines that the NBA is not solely about the best player players. That is a lot of it. But their are things like professional networks, not just players unions, underlying who is in the opportunity set to even begin to be considered as playing the best.
At least that's my hypothesis.
Rock Chalk!
