After reading the below headline on ESPN I cringed. I strongly question the thoughtfulness of NBA players when they say they want to be in a "big market."

Brandon Jennings, the Milwaukee Bucks' leading scorer, told ESPN.com Thursday he will strongly consider leaving Milwaukee for one of the league's larger markets once his rookie contract ends.

"I am going to keep my options open, knowing that the time is coming up,'' Jennings said in an email interview. "I'm doing my homework on big-market teams.''

Do they fully understand what that means or are they just gravitating to the latest trend of saying you want to play in a "big market"? It's like the fake eyeglasses trend...

I'm going to start calling fake eyeglasses, "big markets." Did you see the pair of big markets Rondo was wearing in his post game interview last night?

Okay digression over.

Back to the point.Below are the top 10 media markets as well as how many NBA titles each has won in the last 10 years.

1. New York: 0

2. Los Angeles: 5

3. Chicago: 0

4. Philadelphia: 0

5. Dallas-Fort Worth: 1

6. San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose: 0

7. Boston: 1

8. Atlanta: 0

9. Washington, D.C: 0

10. Houston:0

The fact that seven out of ten NBA finals have been won by one of these cities would seem to support this preference but the Lakers have drastically skewed this trend.

My overall point is this. Players like Brandon Jennings and Dwight Howard already have multimillion dollar endorsement deals and will sign multimillion dollar contracts because cost of living does not factor into NBA salaries, it's an equity based compensation structure.

Therefore, I'm still not convinced that the appeal of the "big market" is correlated to increased income or success. This frustrates me because this innacurate concept causes an undue burden on mid market franchises to retain their players.

Of course, the contrary argument is that big market teams have more capacity to spend over the cap and afford a luxury tax. Ask the Knicks how successful that model has been.

Ultimately, if you play in Milwaukee, Orlando, OKC, or San Antonio you will still have an ample opportunity to make a king's ransom in endorsement deals along with your robust salary.

If your real interest is having celebrities in the stands and marrying a Kardashian, maybe the "big market" is for you. But that's about celebrity and attention, not earnings or success.

But to argue that an all star caliber player is limited in endorsement,earnings, or winning potential because they don't play in New York, Chicago or LA is simply innacurate. It is also damaging to the competitive integrity of the league and deliberately crippling to MOST NBA franchises.