Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant is never shy about speaking his mind, and the five-time NBA champion expanded on a tweet he sent out last week about the new lucrative television deal for the NBA. Bryant said NBA owners are "overpaid."
In the tweet, Bryant lamented the fact that the NBA encourages players to take less money to join winning teams with a chance to win an NBA championship in the collective bargaining agreement while the NBA made a lot of money off of its new television deal.
Bryant took it a step further by saying the NBA's owners are overpaid, though he also said the players are too.
"[Players] are overpaid, but so are the owners," Bryant said, according to ESPN, "and you have to fight for what your market value is."
He added: "Listen, business is business. I think people get that confused very easily in understanding that players should take substantially less than their market value in order to win championships."
Bryant shared his opinion on Twitter after the NBA announced a record-breaking nine-year television deal with ESPN and Turner Broadcasting that was reportedly worth $24 billion.
"Players are "encouraged" per new CBA to take less to win or risk being called selfish [and] ungrateful while nbatv deal goes UP by a BILLION #biz," Bryant, who signed a two-year extension with the Lakers reportedly worth $48 million, tweeted.
Bryant expanded on his thoughts on Tuesday.
"It's very easy to look at the elite players around the league and talk about the amount of money that they get paid and compare that with the average [player]," Bryant said. "But we don't look at what the owners get paid and how much revenue they generate off the backs of these players."
Bryant also said that the NBA's new television deal increased by $1 billion over its last one and added that he's interested in how the players will be compensated for it in the new CBA when it is negotiated in 2017.
Bryant forecasted that the NBA powers that be will try to "lock us out", referring to the players when the new deal is negotiated in three years.
Bryant did heap praise on the Lakers for rewarding his loyalty and success by keeping him around and inking him to a new two-year deal.
"I'm the luckiest basketball player in the league, because I'm very fortunate to be with an organization that takes care of its players, rewards its players and has a long history of doing that," he said.
The Lakers play host to the Houston Rockets on Oct. 28 at Staples Center to kick off their regular season. They will look to bounce back from a 2013-14 campaign that saw them finish the season with a 27-55 record, worst in franchise history, and miss the playoffs for the first time since 2005.
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