Frontman Rabil in a league of his own
The ‘LeBron of Lax’ bolsters fledgling Premier league as NLL stalls amid messy labour dispute
Paul Rabil must be smirking when he thinks about the National Lacrosse League these days.
Rabil is the sport’s next generation thinker, a star player who became a social media wizard and now has the wherewithal and the connections to be the frontman for a new pro field circuit.
Sports Illustrated wrote about the fledgling Premier Lacrosse League in its recent Future Issue and compared Rabil to LeBron James, tagging the 32-year-old from Gaithersburg, Maryland as the LeBron of Lax.
The PLL, bolstered by Rabil’s 77,000 followers on Twitter and 159,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, is slated to begin with six teams in June, running in direct competition with Major League Lacrosse, the long-standing pro field circuit.
Rabil at one time played in winter box lacrosse’s NLL with the Washington Stealth, who went on to become the Vancouver Stealth when they moved from Everett to the Langley Events Centre and are now known as the Vancouver Warriors, after the Vancouver Canucks purchased the team in the off-season and rebranded it.
The NLL is supposed to be playing exhibition games with its 11 teams right now in preparation for regular-season contests early next month, including a Dec. 8 home debut at Rogers Arena for the Warriors.
That’s all on hold, though. The owners and players of the box lacrosse loop can’t agree on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement and the NLL head office announced Thursday it has “no choice except to cancel the first two weekends of the 2018-19 season.”
Even if they come to an agreement in the next two minutes, it’s a punch in the gut.
Lower Mainland lacrosse fans have been dreaming that the Canucks would take on a team dating back to the Van- couver Ravens’ era, who folded in 2004 after three cash-strapped seasons. That finally happened.
The league added deeppocketed owners with its two expansion teams. Billionaire Joseph Tsai heads up the San Diego Seals, while the Philadelphia Wings are under the Philadelphia Flyers’ umbrella.
Commissioner Nick Sakiewicz has repeatedly talked about wanting to have 30 teams one day.
And now we get this. The NLL has gone from, “Things have never been better,” to, “Things can’t get much worse,” in warp speed. It shouldn’t be this difficult.
The entry-level salary in the NLL in 2018 was US$10,208. The maximum veteran salary was $30,132. Practice roster players were getting $1,000 for the season. We’re not playing with big numbers here.
If you believe what’s being distributed on social media, the fighting is over salaries and things like what percentage of expansion fees and lacrosse-related revenue that the players deserve.
All that circles us back to Rabil.
The PLL season runs opposite to the NLL. Fair enough. The promises of expansion still mean that the NLL is going to need to convert American field lacrosse players into box guys. It’s a tricky transition, but it’s doable for some and the player that Sakiewicz likes to bring up as the best example is Toronto Rock forward Tom Schreiber.
The 26-year-old from East Meadow, N.Y., is also one of the first guys who Rabil signed for the PLL.
The six teams will barnstorm around the U.S., playing in various locales. Before you think that sounds shaky, consider that venture capitalists Raine Group, Chernin Group, CAA and Blum Capital have promised backing and the PLL has signed a deal with NBC that will see a pair of games on its main network and 17 broadcast by the NBC Sports Network.
The NLL has a streaming agreement with Bleacher Live Report.
In the Sports Illustrated article about the PLL, there also were promises of minimum salaries of $25,000, equity in the league on a vesting schedule and health care for players.
It is a different season than the NLL, but what if Rabil gets the PLL going to the point that players don’t need to play in the winter to make a living? Or what if the PLL doesn’t want them to, out of fear they might get injured?
You’ve heard NLL people whisper that behind the scenes in the past in regards to their guys suiting up in the summertime Western Lacrosse Association, the B.C. boxla league.
The “what ifs?” for the NLL were enticing not that long ago. They aren’t right now.