Off the pitch and now on it

Top players this weekend will be tired many having played three internationals over the international break.

After Being crowned most valuable player in the just concluded National Basketball Association season for the LA Lakers, Lebron James, the American basketball star, said that he was happy to have won the title for the “franchise”. To label the LA Lakers as franchise is not wrong, per se. The American Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word in its website as “a team and its operating organization [sic] having [the right of membership in a professional sports league]”. But the word, according to the same source also means “the right or license granted to an individual or a group to market a company’s goods or services in a particular territory”. The second meaning is, of course, better known. For example, Nepali companies Himalayan Java Coffee and Syanko Katti Rolls have franchises all over Kathmandu.