it's 3:30 in the morning so this is not going to be very articulate or eloquent but -
it's interesting, to me, that we're observing two strains of (imo) bad player leadership happening at the same time
you have captains trying to get traded off their teams. teams that were built around them, that made them wealthy, teams and fanbases they made promises to and then flaked out on when it didn't go how they wanted - and instead of just owning that they want to play with their idiot friends because they think, rightly or wrongly, that they stand a better chance of victory, they're blaming the fans and the media that they made empty promises to. those teams and fanbases now have to rebuild their culture around someone else and pick up the pieces, because [insert player here] wanted the glory of being the captain but ultimately didn't want to do the work. and how do they not have trust issues. how do they have any confidence the next guy they try to build around isn't going to do it to them again.
you have a captain who's staying with his team, who isn't just looking to ship himself to a market where he thinks it might be easier to win even though there was some fairly significant speculation that he might do that and end up like the captains in #1. but he is, in some ways, also refusing to do the work of being a captain. he's taking no ownership over his own locker room culture; he's exporting that work to someone who we know is dangerous, who has shown no signs of willingness to change his behaviour or regret/remorse for his past. i do, actually, believe in giving people fresh chances to behave differently and work on themselves, but it's already clear there's been zero effort made in that direction. if you, as captain, believe that there are motivation or morale issues in your locker room, that's not something you can just dump on the head coach's desk and take no responsibility for yourself. and when this blows up - because i do think it will - that team and that fanbase will, once again, have to rebuild their culture and pick up the pieces. and they should feel betrayed when it happens.
yousharknotpass
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
germansingergirl
areudirty
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
