Social scientists, economists, philosophers, and others have claimed for many years that income inequality exacerbates crime and other social ills. This is why, they say, taxation, income redistribution, and other state-level corrective actions aren’t zero-sum, but critical for the common good. An equal society is a prosperous society, and an unequal society is a declining society.
How might this idea translate to the NBA? The NBA is a remarkably unequal “society” in that most of the money paid out in salaries is distributed to just a few players. In fact, you’ll discover soon enough that salary inequality across the league is most recently much higher than it used to be. But at the same time, salary inequality varies significantly from one team or “community” to the next.