Quote:
Originally Posted by rudel.dietrich
...Modern athletes lead good lives and are well taken care of but are people.
Several in recent years have opened up about mental health issues that have affected them and those are always the stories that make me step back and realize that these are normal human beings that just happen to have top 0.1% athletic talent...
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In the book "Soccernomics" there is an extended discussion of how many football (soccer) teams, modern in every other way, completely blow it when it comes to bringing in new players and making it possible for them to be successful. They just assume that paying a guy a lot of money is enough, and that he should just arrive and "get on with it." Players get bounced around from one country to another, sometimes arriving at their new team with no idea of where they should live, how to get a driver's license, where to buy groceries, etc.
The teams don't consider how the wife/girlfriend will fit in to a new community, how the children will take it, etc. Of course, if the wife/girlfriend/children are not happy, how can the player be expected to perform at the level the team and the fans expect?
The discussion in the book applied mainly to the big European teams. I don't know what, if any, policies MLS has on how to deal with the human aspect of trades.
I think many, if not most, NBA teams have staff whose job it is to get the families of traded or newly signed players settled in.
And I'm very happy to see the NBA paying more attention these days to mental health issues among its players. I know our own Kevin Love has been very open about his struggles, as have other players. I was surprised, to be honest, that they have received so much support from their teammates and from the league.