The NBA has been abuzz with news of "blockbuster" trades before the trade deadline on February 21. Pao Gasol going to the Lakers. Shaquille O'Neal going to Phoenix. And the impending trade of Jason Kidd to Dallas. Being a Utah Jazz fan, the trade that matters most for me is the acquisition of Kyle Korver for Gordan Giricek.
All this activity seems to be a good demonstration of what Marx said many, many years ago. In capitalism, everything is commodified and an essential capitalist commodity is labor power. Just like any other commodity labor power has value (expressed in the NBA in terms of how many players of what quality plus draft picks is equivalent to the desired player) and can be traded.
Kyle Korver seems to say it best in this quote from the Salt Lake Tribune (http://www.sltrib.com/jazz/ci_8247368) "You know what?'' Korver said. "The NBA is great for a lot of reasons. Location and stability in those ways is not one of them. You can get traded at any time. Your team can just move, apparently. There's a lot of great things about playing professional basketball. Knowing where you're going to be tomorrow is not one of them. That's just the nature of the business."
Yes, Mr. Korver, it is the nature of that business, a business which shows, more than most (because how many other companies trade their workers?) that in capitalism, labor is a commodity.
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