Let's get something straight about Childress.

“Trust me, I like where I work, but if some company from overseas offered my three times ( assuming that Childress would have gotten something in the $4-6mil per range) what I am currently making and it would be tax free, not to mention pay for my transportation and housing needs, well you can be sure that I’ll be learning a new language…”

Except, Jesse, that this is a standing offer for almost any decent NBA player and almost none have done it. Why not? Well, competition means something. It’s why LeBron left Cleveland—not because of the money, but because he didn’t think he could win it all there.

1. In your job, Jesse, I’m going to hazard a guess that you do not face (as I also do not) a zero-sum success situation—that your job does not expect, much less require, you to shoot for being the very best in the world in a direct, head-to-head, one wins and all the rest are losers kind of way. in fact, for most of us that kind of competitive clarity is not even remotely possible. Athletes, however, are not only in that kind of world, but in a profession where that kind of clarity is the pinnacle. In fact, often the clarity of winning and losing is what separates the players who can achieve at this level: The amount of preparation, hard work, and practice required is clearly not for many people even when they have the athletic skills. Most don’t even get to the NBA; some, like Kwame Brown, might get to the league because they are good enough but not as good as they “could be” because they lack the competitive drive to constantly get better.

2. You and I can work overseas and come back and still be at the top of our game in our jobs, while many NBA players cannot take the risk of missing out on a title
chance when they are so rare. We get 25-40 years in a career, and they get 6-12.

3. If you’ve got any endorsements at all they might not be there when you get back.
Advertisers go these guys because they are visible.

4. If Olympiakos and the like were the only ones offering “set for life” money that would offset the injury risks and demanding competition, then we would likely see a lot more NBA players going over there. But the money is good here, and the competition—what they play for at least as much as money—is far, far, far better. Nowhere else can a player be the best in the world, or on the best team in the world. They are acculturated to want this and close enough to it to go for it even if it means slightly less money.

I will acknowledge that Josh Childress perhaps just wanted the experience of living overseas while he was young…and perhaps he wanted to be a LeBron-like celebrity over there. But there are a lot of reasons why the vast majority of NBA players do not take the money to do the same. Simply put, it is not worth it for whatever reason, and we have to draw from that that for most NBA players money is not the sole overriding factor in theses kinds of decisions

And we can’t make an easy parallel with what we would do in the same situation because we don’t work in the same kind of environment. It’s not “what anybody would do”—or more of them would do it.