Let’s start here: there shouldn’t be a draft, a rookie scale, maximum salaries, restricted free agency, or a salary cap. These things only exist because capitalists who have made outsize fortunes due to an economy that disproportionately rewards founders and financiers have colluded to create a system that restricts the movement of incoming labor and artificially deflates earnings. LeBron James got in on the ground floor of LeBron James Corp, so to speak, and Nike and Samsung have paid him what he’s owed but Dan Gilbert and Micky Arison have gotten a bargain, because it was and continues to be impossible for them not to do so. The NBA is an on-court meritocracy, but the rules that govern its player contracts are uneven and capriciously heap rewards on a few at the expense of the many while all but completely insulating the owners from risk.

That infamous rhetorical question Donald Sterling asked amid all that racist stuff he spewed—who makes the game?—has a different obvious answer than the one that flashed across his senile mind. Chris Paul and Blake Griffin and, to a lesser extent, J.J. Redick and Jamal Crawford make the game. The athletes are the biggest reason, by far, that anyone cares about the NBA. All owners do is facilitate the league’s existence through their ability to sign checks. That isn’t unimportant, but it’s not a skill. And besides, the checks are frequently not as large as they should be.

I bring this up because the NBA’s extension deadline just passed and this time of year, when the relatively paltry rookie deals of players drafted a few years ago are winding down, some steep raises get tossed out and not all of them seem entirely deserved. Are Steven Adams and Rudy Gobert worth $100 million? Probably. Gorgui Dieng might not live out the full life of his new four-year, $64 million extension in Minnesota, but that’s a tradeable contract if the Wolves want to pair Karl-Anthony Towns with a stretchier four in the future. You might argue that Cody Zeller is merely a sun-bleached scarecrow with a couple decent post moves, and I would agree with you, but $56 million is just about the going rate for moderately skilled sorghum guardian goliaths these days.

Then there’s Victor Oladipo. We’re always making insufficiently educated guesses as to whether these second contracts are good value or not and we’re even deeper into dark territory than usual considering the recent salary cap surge, but $84 million feels like a lot, doesn’t it? That’s $84 million for a combo guard with a shaky three-point stroke who’s going to play a primarily off-ball role alongside Russell Westbrook, $84 million for three mildly promising but far from definitive seasons in Orlando. Sam Presti must believe in Oladipo, and he wouldn’t have sent Serge Ibaka to the Magic if he hadn’t been intent on signing the 24-year-old long-term, but by nabbing Oladipo on the final year of his rookie contract, Presti has to pay Westbrook’s new backcourt-mate as if the trade has already worked out beautifully. Lavishing Adams with a lucrative deal was a no-brainer. Giving Oladipo yacht money could backfire. 

This is one of fandom’s peskiest conundrums: we like the players more than owners and executives, because we are not wealthy reptiles in marzipan human costumes, but our interests tend to align with management more often than with labor. If you have Thunder season tickets, you’re likely a whit uneasy about Oladipo’s payday, not because you don’t want to see him to be well-compensated for his talent and work, but because if he doesn’t find a new level in Oklahoma City, the post-Kevin Durant era is going to be pretty gloomy. If you had it your selfish way, you might put Oladipo on a wait-and-see deal, something the team could get out of in a year or two if he doesn’t click with Westbrook or fails to deliver on his stopper potential. But that’s not the reality the NBA has created. Instead of doing what he’d like to, Sam Presti has to trust his instincts and dole out a premium for a player who doesn’t yet stand up to the salary he’s being promised.

This is, you realize if your conscience can out-shout your id, how things should be all the time: the purse string-minders making calculated gambles and players reaping the benefits. After all, Oladipo didn’t choose to play in Orlando, where he was paired with the slightly redundant Elfrid Payton and flanked mostly by greenhorns and nobodies, and he plied his trade with the Magic under a contract with payment terms he didn’t negotiate. Perhaps if the draft didn’t exist and Oladipo had joined the Spurs out of Indiana, we would think better of him than we do now. Without the rookie scale, he would certainly be richer. Oladipo didn’t choose the Thunder either, and though he has happily signed an extension, if he had wanted to go elsewhere this summer, he would have had a hard time making that happen due to restricted free agency and the market would have been limited by available cap space rather than the rest of the league’s desire to sign him.

Oladipo’s young career has gone well, but the system that’s shepherded him to this point is unfair, agency-inhibiting, and doesn’t serve the majority of the league’s labor force. That $84 million that he may or may not live up to could clog the Thunder’s cap if he flops, which would be dispiriting for fans, but a chunk of that money will definitely come out of his peers’ pockets: top earners like LeBron and Steph as well as non-superstars who hit free agency at the wrong time or play for the wrong team through no fault of their own.

That second thing is irksome more on the level of principle than actual effect. We are talking about millionaires here; there’s no need to weep for them. But just the same, it’s no good that the NBA—whose business habits the broader culture pays a lot more attention to than that of, say, Verizon or AIG—controls labor movement to a severe degree and has an arbitrary and inequitable compensation model. This is all collectively bargained, sure, but who in those offseason boardroom battles holds more leverage: the athletes who are on the decline by age thirty or the owners who hold onto franchises for decades? 

Through one lens, Victor Oladipo may have just landed a contract that’s a bit richer than he deserves. Through another, he’s come out on top in a game that’s rigged against him. All that’s for sure, no matter how well or poorly he performs in Oklahoma City, is that many others won’t be so fortunate.