The last time Sidney Crosby signed an 8.7-million-buck-a-year deal, it was a headline with a question mark at the end of it.
If you needed one guy for one game, he still might be the player most coaches would choose. Without him, Pittsburgh has no chance and, worse, no glamour. Instead, Crosby took a figurative knee. It’s not the money so much as the term. What veteran star with leverage signs a two-year deal? The easy part is finding a guy who plays like Crosby. ‘Easy’ in the sense that when someone comes along who is this talented, spotting them does not a take a lifetime of training. Then the job is angling your franchise so that it has a decent chance to draft that guy and build around him.
But the athlete you want on your team is the guy who doesn’t think like everyone else. He wants money, yes, but he wants winning and legacy more. He has the ability to imagine himself 30 years into the future. What will matter then?