That's an interesting point, in that outside of the sports and entertainment world, the people who do earn millions of dollars are 99% extremely hardworking people. Not that sports/ entertainment people aren't, but in a sense if you're born 7 foot tall with great athleticism you're a whole lot closer to being paid in the multiple millions of dollars a year than the average joe. Or another example - tons of guys in the NBA who only started playing in high school, and in less than 5 years they are in the league earning millions, whereas most "normal" humans would have to work pretty hard for their long careers and wouldn't even sniff that kind of money.
And coupled with that then, is a very natural (and I'd say justifiable) expectation that basketball professionals act as such. That they'd treat their game seriously, just as you would expect anybody earning millions in their job to treat their's. Nobody likes a bum. If someone consistently performs poorly at work, they get fired or they don't get promoted etc. They sure as heck don't have people saying "be patient, he needs time to develop, it's ok that he has other interests outside of work" etc. We're expected to do our jobs well. It's perfectly fine not to, but don't expect to be rewarded for it. You wanna paint, sure! You don't wanna do what coach asks - props to you! But then let's not give the man a large paycheck after all that or pretend that he has a clean slate the moment he sings the right tune. In this situation, let's be extra wary that this is a contract year. Spencer Hawes played pretty well his contract year!
