He looked around. He saw how other players switched teams to get what they wanted; a new city to play in, a new manager to play for, new teammates to play with, and usually, (although this didn’t matter to him, since he was the highest paid player in the league) more money to play for. It didn’t matter for them, and as long as there was no violation of their contracts, no one much cared; it’s part of the game. Fans know that players change teams. They might be sad when a favorite player leaves, but they don’t stay sad for long; they just find a new favorite player.
What he didn’t realize was that he wasn’t like the other players. He was one of the best, some would say the best. But what made him even more important, what made his situation different from others, is that his team had become him. His team wasn’t just a hollow shell that he was drafted into, and could leave to find another. His team is the town he was born and raised in. The team of the people he grew up around. Not just a franchise. It was something more akin to a family than a company.. And betraying your family is much different from betraying the company you work for.
The lines are murky. Because although a team is kind of a company, it’s also kind of a part of the town. A team is just “kind of” a company because it has fans. Because no matter how poorly the company does, there will still be customers (fans). Why? Because that team represents the town where they reside. It is a source of pride for its residents. However, those fans who live and die for their team sometimes forget that it’s just a company, and can disappear. In fact, “teams” in the sense of the players who compose a group that plays other groups of players, are ephemeral, brought together only by the name on their shirts, the stadium they play in, and the families who have watched them for years (although these things change as well). Players have shelf lives. A player’s career can end in any game. Even if they stay at the same team for their whole career, they have only played in a fraction of the “teams” (groups of players) that have represented the “team”(name on the jersey). So whether a player plays on a team for one game or ten years, for the fans of the next generation, he will just be a highlight reel and a history lesson.
Where does that leave our King? It leaves him baffled and his fans incensed because no one clearly marked the lines for them. Who do the fans cheer for? The team or the players that make it? Who do the players play for? For their team (which is ephemeral), for the money (which fluctuates based on the market), for the fans (who can be fickle), or for themselves.
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