Play the Field or Play for Keeps?

With the National Basketball Association season winding down and free agent trading time gearing up, I’m considering my options. Should I play the field or play for keeps? Stick with Handsome Hubby or …?

Don’t get me wrong. I really love HH. He’s pretty perfect. Using basketball terms, he shoots from three-point range and scores quite often. He dunks like a pro, rarely gets into foul trouble, and is an all-round great sport. And to throw in a baseball term, he rounds the bases like an All-Star – if you catch my drift.

“The problem?” you ask.

Money, Money, Money

Actually, there are three. The first, salary. I mean HH is a pretty good salary earner. We don’t lack for anything. But that said a girl can always yearn for more. Golden State Warrior and six-time NBA All-Star Steph Curry is pulling down $37,457,154 just this year. Next year he’s on tap to earn $40 million+. And that doesn’t include endorsements. Be still my pounding gold-digger heart!

With that kind of mega-bucks, I could see myself doing a whole lot of traveling abroad and most joyfully of all, buying a modest (to Hell with modest – opulent as all get-out) pied a terre in my hometown NYC overlooking Central Park.

Nicknames Galore

Problem Number Two: nicknames. Handsome Hubby is a cute nickname. I picked it and I like it. But what else is there?

Steph Curry, on the other hand, has multiple nicknames and they are great. Baby-Faced Assassin, Chef Curry, The Human Torch, and my personal favorite, Threezus in honor of all those amazing three-point shots he makes.

Now, I’m not into role-playing or anything kinky, mind you, but a variety of nicknames might just do the trick to spice up our 32-year-old marriage.

Closet Space Contretemps

Issue Number Three: Clothing. HH is a bit of clothes horse. As a result, we jockey for closet space and I am constantly running back and forth to the dry cleaners with his suits and ties. Now I understand that off-the-court, sports guys like to dress up, but their uniforms don’t take up much space and the team has staff to handle the care of that gear. So, aside from their gigantic and multiple kicks (sneakers to you non-cool, non-sports types), I’m convince that basketball players are less closet-invasive than my currently-under-contract main squeeze.

Play the Field Pluses

Plus, if I trade in HH for a younger, a-hum sportier model, I’ll have guaranteed access to great seats at basketball games, won’t have to mingle with the riff-raff (like me) to get in, to say nothing about VIPs getting better hot dogs than we mere mortals in the nose bleed seats. So, those are all real advantages if I play the free agent negotiations game right.

But on Second Thought …

But before I rush into things, I should consider the risks. As an older and wiser woman, I know there are always downsides, right?

First, aside from this sudden, late-life love of the Warriors, I really don’t like sports. And truth be told, most of the fun of Warriors-watching is doing so with HH.

Second, if I went the free-agent route, I really would have to schlepp to all the games and actually learn all the sports terms. For example, just the other night, some player got fouled for “double dribbling.” I asked HH what that means. He thought the answer was “obvious” and asked if I was kidding. If sweet HH is so dismissive, what would KD (Kevin Durant) say if I asked such an “obvious” question?

And that raises another concern. Would KD even hear me? After all, he’s really tall and I’m, well, not. I’d constantly have to shout and jump up to get any of these gigantically tall basketball players to hear me. The likely result? I’d probably spend a huge portion of their fortunes in chiropractic bills to get my neck adjusted from cranking my head up to see them and all that jumping up and down trying to be heard.

Less Cougar, More Hippopotamus

And then, of course, there’s the age difference. I understand when older women chase after younger men they’re called cougars, but in my pathetic physical condition, I think we need to identify a slower moving, less sleek, and more wrinkled member of the animal kingdom. A turtle? Slow plus jowls. Elephant? Slow plus wrinkles? Hippo? Chubby, grumpy, probably also wrinkled. Closer. You get the picture. And, well, the picture isn’t pretty.

So, all things considered, perhaps I should re-think this idea of putting HH on a waiver. While it’s true, he lacks a guaranteed four-year  contract to earn $166.5 million with the Golden State Warriors, he is an all-round good deed do-gooder who has built a brilliant international career making the world more energy efficient and he’s been hailed as one of the 10 most influential people shaping energy policy in the past 25 years .

Stick with the Home Team

True that doesn’t get me the big bling and private jets to faraway exotic locales with fancy cocktails complete with pineapple wedges and paper umbrellas. But I do receive unconditional love, constant cuddles, and endless laughter.

Perhaps instead of complaining, I should count my blessings. Perhaps I should be grateful that HH doesn’t check out some sweet young taunt NBA cheerleading honey who not only can walk up a flight of stairs without huffing and puffing, but can do the splits and cartwheels without blinking her false-eyelashed eyes – or require reading glasses to open a bottle of prescription medication!

Yep, instead of debating my free agent options, I better thank my lucky stars, that I’ve got HH on a “till death do us part” non-free agency marital vow/contract and cherish him now and every day!