Every fan has their own set of what they consider to be the peak points of the sports calendar. One of mine, the NBA Draft, takes place this Thursday, and I couldn’t be more excited. The Association’s annual draft holds a unique place in my heart because it’s my league of choice, but I’ve always been drawn to the spectacle and intrigue of any draft regardless of the sport.

The 2017 crucible of Trumpian virtue signaling and overly convoluted officiating that still managed to fall short in the season’s most pivotal moments finally broke my die-hard NFL fandom, but the one thing that remains the hardest to ween myself from is the league’s April draft. Every spring, I would spend hours poring over YouTube footage of 1st and 7th round prospects alike, scrutinizing sure-things and eager to find out which teams would change their fortunes by drafting those I granted sleeper status. This year, I had no idea who college football’s best prospects were, but the idea of hope springing eternal pulled me right back in. I heard that Pick is in chime and that was that.

Leading up to this year’s 2019 NBA Draft, I’ve dedicated my faux-scout YouTube scouring to this year’s top basketball prospects. I’ve racked my mind ranking each player’s ability to immediately impact a franchise. I dissected them using all the familiar metrics: their height, wingspan, athleticism, court awareness. I researched prominent draft guides, diligently noting the authors’ misgivings about a player’s motor or mental maturity—as if either he or I had the ability to guard an NBA starter or shoulder the weight of a franchise’s future aspirations.

I claim no nobility here; this is a revelation that happened way too late for me. After theorizing so much about the contributions these players could make in the NBA, I began to lose sight of them as human beings. They became products with expected deliverables, like a car battery or a new TV. Zion Williamson is the warden of basketball’s future for New Orleans and the entire globe. Ja Morant is going to immediately replace Mike Conley’s contribution and standing in Memphis. These are known. Cam Reddish didn’t wow me. Late-lottery teams shouldn’t take the bait; he’s fool’s gold. Never once asking myself if I could ever wow Cam Reddish.

“Great take,” he would say to me as he took off from the free-throw line.

Losing sight of each player’s massive human achievement of becoming a prospect in a professional sports draft, I took tacit ownership over them, appraising their skill set and deciding which team would benefit most from their contribution. The idea of ownership is being examined more in the sports world, specifically in the NBA following repeated calls to abolish the title from one of the game’s most prominent stars, Warriors forward Draymond Green. In 2017, Green said to reporters, “…When you look at the word 'owner,' it really dates back to slavery. The word 'owner,' 'master'—it dates back to slavery. ... We just took the words and we continued to put it to use."

Instead of Green’s comment driving a larger, thornier discussion about the friction created by the inherently transactional relationship between athletes and expectant fans, much of the reporting and discourse around this issue focuses on tallying which organization heads are changing their titles and using that as some demarcation for a league’s social progress. This would be fine if there was a larger conversation happening amongst various franchise owners across the four major leagues, but many owners remain indignantly defiant of the idea that their wealth and stature would ever make them more inclined to treat their employees more like assets than people, even when their words indirectly suggest just that.

Responding to Green’s comments, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said, “He [Green] owes the NBA an apology. I think he does, because to try to create some connotation that owning equity in a company that you busted your ass for is the equivalent of ownership in terms of people, that’s just wrong.” There is an irony in Cuban fervently asserting that he would never claim ownership of any employee while also feeling empowered enough to demand an employee’s remorse if they express an opinion he disagrees with.

With skyrocketing team values, it’s hard to hard to empathize too much with Cuban or other team owners, but Cuban is speaking to an inherently American, entrepreneurial ideal, which is that the ultimate reason for pursuing wealth is to flaunt and take ownership of it. Business owners, large and small, are bound by the pride they have in growing and sustaining their enterprises. Appearing alongside Draymond Green on an episode of HBO’s The Shop, Snoop Dogg listened to Green make his case against the ownership tag and simply responded, “I own my own shit. I like that word. Fuck that.”

To Snoop, a mogul and iconoclast for over two decades, the historical connotation of ownership doesn’t outweigh what it actually is: a testament to his effort and sacrifice to reach a particular level of wealth and influence. Cuban is saying the same thing, but it’s not just an argument for billionaires. Ask anyone with a doctorate if they strongly prefer to be called a doctor. Ask any person working in a field for more than a decade if they consider themselves an expert in it. People want to be recognized for their achievements, and support for the owner title is just a microcosm of that human impulse.

The difference is that Cuban and other team owners, particularly in the NBA and NFL, are enjoying exploding team values due to lucrative TV deals built from their employee’s labor. Cuban and others like him may argue, not unreasonably, that they reinvested a substantial portion of that surging revenue into state-of-the-art facilities, world-class medical care, and, in the case of the NBA, a recent raise in the pay expectations of everyone from supermax players to minimum-level free agents.

There is a case to be made, but some owners have proven that investment in their employees, their fanbase, and even afflicted communities is not always in good faith. In fact, some owners act philanthropically only to cover up when they accidentally expose their ugly feeling of dominion they have over others. Houston Texans owner Bob McNair has always stuck in my craw for being this type of owner. Most know and revile him for saying, “We can’t have the inmates running the prison,” in response to players kneeling during the national anthem, but he saved his most putrid reaction for after his comments had gone through the media cycle. Nearly a year after the fact, McNair completely withdrew his initial apology, saying that he was completely misunderstood and, really, under-appreciated for all of his philanthropic work.

A spokesperson claimed that the McNair family made $500 million in contributions, most notably paying for the funerals of those slain during the 2015 shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The family also credited itself for not publicly disclosing the donations originally, but they ultimately did so the whole effort, while deeply appreciated by the grieving families, still comes across like empty virtue signaling from an image-conscious McNair estate.

If that indictment sounds too harsh, consider McNair’s reasoning for backtracking his apology. When asked why he didn’t deem the comment worthy of an apology, McNair said, “In business, it’s a common expression. But the general public doesn’t understand it, perhaps.” ‘General public’ is dripping with disdain here. McNair’s words make it clear that he doesn’t equate himself with the general public he’d otherwise pat himself on the back for donating money to.

How could you ever understand my world or my expressions when you don’t live with my financial stakes?

It’s impossible for those as wealthy as McNair to not view their markedly better quality of life as the byproduct of their inherent superiority as a human being. Money has a way of deluding those with it, and we see that proven time and time again in the sports world. In the past, we saw it with former Clippers owner Donald Sterling, then more recently with Knicks owner James Dolan banning a heckler demanding that he sell the team because of the widespread belief that Dolan’s management cratered the franchise. For those like Cuban and Snoop, the owner title is a badge of personal achievement, but others use it to justify their subjugation and abuse of players, fans, and organization personnel.

That’s the exact reason why the Carolina Panthers now have new ownership. Prior to selling the team, former owner Jerry Richardson paid a $2.75 million fine—the largest ever imposed by the NFL—for multiple instances of sexual harassment and making racial comments to players and team staff. According to the collective accounts of his former employees, Richardson once asked franchise quarterback Cam Newton after drafting him, “Did you get crazy after the draft and go out and get any tattoos or piercings? Do I have to check you for anything?” It’s clear that, at best, Newton was just an asset to Richardson, but is it possible for anyone to not have that mindset if they’re the type of person that insists to be referred to as an owner?

One could argue that McNair and Richardson are relics from a regrettable, bygone era that will, in due time, be inevitably removed from their positions by the winds of progress. Since buying the Panthers from Richardson, new owner David Tepper has demonstrated a more player-conscious tact than his predecessor, expressing his support for player protest and expression, saying that the kneeling controversy was, “the biggest pile of bull-dingy ever.” Tepper added that he considered the players protesting to be, “the most patriotic people and the best people.” You can find varying levels of equity between players and executive leadership across every franchise and every major league, so it doesn’t really help to assess how corrosive or empowering an ownership title can be on a team-by-team basis. Instead, we should look at how these toxic feelings of player ownership permeate into the fanbases, especially amongst the die-hards who’ve proudly supported teams through triumphant wins and excruciating losses.

With the recent embrace of legalized sports gambling in many states and each league growing its own media apparatus to market themselves as 12-month sports, the emotional and financial stakes for fans are going to increase exponentially with each passing season. With that degree of personal and monetary investment, many fans risk falling into the same mindset of these disgraced owners.

It’s a large reason why I stopped playing fantasy football. For years, I would lay down $125 that could’ve been better spent any number of ways to participate in a 12-team fantasy league. Every draft would take well over 3 hours as we selected our 15-man IDP rosters. What’s IDP? Congratulations for not knowing! It stands for Individual Defensive Players, meaning you would draft a full defensive roster as opposed to choosing one team defense. Not only did I need to have in-depth knowledge of each team’s defensive starters and their output, but also their substitutes in case of any injuries. It’s a level of granular fandom that I don’t miss, and it was agonizing when I almost always failed to predict the best permutation of 15 players.

As my sizeable buy-in and chances to win my league slipped away, I directed my entitled frustration to the players. I vented about Keenan Allen’s inability to stay on the field even though he was my best shot to make up my point deficit during the afternoon games. I questioned Trent Richardson’s right to ever step on a football field ever again because he couldn’t give me one touchdown in several starts. I hoped for countless quarterbacks to suffer punishing, multi-sack games to get my defensive score up. I resented players for getting injured and holding out despite them merely safeguarding their futures in a league not known for taking care of its retirees outside of legacy players and league ambassadors.

Even though I’ve never met any of these men, I was so deeply invested in their performance that I felt they were beholden to me. You see the same delusion in every league’s fanbase, especially when players make decisions that don’t align with fan and media expectation. When KD joined the Warriors, he was considered by many to be a coward that needed Steph and Klay to win a championship, but when he exited this year’s Western Conference Semifinals with a reported calf injury, the expectation shifted to him making a heroic Finals comeback to pull Golden State’s three-peat from the brink and solidify himself on the Mount Rushmore of basketball greatness. That expectation may seem benign, but that type of pressuring narrative is enough to make someone like Durant or Klay feel obligated to “tough out” injuries that should be handled very cautiously.

They do it to embody the player that we tell them they are, and when they fall short, we forget them, look to the new draft prospects to see who can match their physicality and production, or even worse, cheer for their downfall. There are many ways to exert ownership over an individual beyond a multi-million-dollar contract. Ancient, white, out-of-touch team owners embody the unease that many, like Draymond Green, have with ownership mentality, but fans have to realize their own tacit culpability in the increased commoditization of athletes.

With greater player autonomy and mobility increasing the NBA’s popularity and marketability as a year-round sport, there’s a good chance we’ll see player-executive equity increase across the four major leagues. We may even one day see the complete abolition of the owner title but banning a single word won’t end player dehumanization if we don’t remember that the greatness of sports lies in following each player and team’s journey, not in them fulfilling our quotas or securing our payouts.