I never understand why people like you hate athletes for making money so much.

There are like 500 NBA quality guys in the world. Are you one of the 500 best in the world at anything?

Sure, only account for games with your mathematics. That’s fair. Never mind the fact that these athletes work at their skill year round. They can’t get out of shape. They can’t do dangerous things that might result in injury. They can’t coast by on their past accomplishments because someone younger and hungrier is right behind them.

Oh, and of course, their career has a max timespan of 20 years if they’re one of the incredibly fortunate ones. A knee injury (Grant Hill), a fluke health problem (Chris Bosh), and freak accidents can take their livelihood away from them. There is no ADA compliance for athletes.

And if you look at the 2016–2017 NBA contracts, you’ll see that there are 27 players making $20+ million, and they are the cream of the crop. The top 5% in the world. But there are also 87 players making less than $1 million. And they’re in that top 400–500 players in the world bracket just by being there.

The average salary is $5.88 million, which is exaggerated by the few huge contracts. The actual median salary is just $3.24 million.

If you were in the top 500 of your field, wouldn’t you feel as though you deserved at least $3.24 million for a year of work? Not 80 days of work, but a full year. Including 50+ nights spent in hotel rooms away from your family and friends.

E.L. James, who wrote “50 Shades of Grey” made $95 million in 2013, and she can’t even write! Be mad at her! Not people who are actually good at what they do.