But these afflictions, dreary though they were, did not disturb the game as much as when Sonny Vaccaro, the legendary “sneaker pimp,” convinced Nike in 1984 to use all of the $500,000 it had budgeted for several rising stars to sign Michael Jordan, a junior guard from the University of North Carolina, to an endorsement deal that would include his own brand of sneakers— the Air Jordans. He was the first of a new breed of ballers to become advertising juggernauts, offering the promise that you, too, could flash superhuman capabilities if only you bought the right kicks. From the mid-’80s on, the “next Jordan” would be sought relentlessly not only by coaches but also by marketers, and a player’s business acumen would come to matter as much as his offhand dribble—hence, LeBron James’s announced intention of becoming the first billion-dollar athlete.

Elite players increasingly viewed their college stints as advertisements for themselves. That ethos has insinuated itself even into the lower levels of so-called amateur basketball. I remember watching current Phoenix Suns point guard Sebastian Telfair as a ninth-grader on Coney Island making an ad for And 1 sneakers, which he was doing for free. He was flattered that the company wanted him, and he trusted that his participation would be good for the Telfair brand. “Make it more ‘street,’” the director kept demanding of the sweet-faced, baffled kid just out of middle school. Nearby, his high school coach ranted about And 1 needing to do more for “the community.” It took a long time for me to figure how tiny a community he meant.

But it isn’t just the athletes and their handlers who want to get paid. It’s the colleges, the coaches, the families, the NCAA, the networks, the advertisers. Everybody has their hands out, with money passing back and forth like crumpled bills at a crack bazaar. They all have their reasons, as they always do. Money changes everything, and big money changes everything most of all.

IF THERE’S ONE GUY in particular who’s a genius at appealing to the new generation of players, it’s the University of Kentucky’s John Calipari. And to prove it, he has got the 2012 NCAA title and four consecutive top-rate recruiting classes to his name, with a fifth a near certainty. “It’s a different time and age,” Calipari has admitted. “If a coach is a jerk, [players] are texting each other, ‘My coach is a jerk, he doesn’t care about me.’” Calipari is so careful with the feelings of his 18-year-olds because he knows that the lines of authority have crossed, with players and their families conferring power on the coach, paralleling a larger societal shift from away from the “daddy as dictator” model of child-raising to the “daddy as buddy” model. Few top players these days would be masochistic enough to sign up for the Marine boot camp that Bobby Knight once ran.