Over the past few weeks, I've been banging pots and pans over at The Sporting News trying to tell any NHL fan that would listen that the nascent Kontinental Hockey League may post a legitimate threat to the NHL on a whole host of levels. But over and over again I keep reading the same thing in response: That the threat of the KHL is being overplayed and that serious hockey players would never bolt the NHL and lose a chance to play for the Stanley Cup even in exchange for banking a bigger paycheck in Europe.

Now, over in the NBA, the Atlanta Hawks are learning the hard way that's not the case anymore in basketball, as shooting guard/small forward Josh Childress turned down an offer from the Hawks to sign a 3-year, $20 million contract with Olympiakos of Greece. The news comes only a few weeks after one of the nation's top basketball recruits, Brandon Jennings, passed on playing for Lute Olson at the University of Arizona to sign a one-year deal with Virtus Roma of the Euroleague.

As FanHouse's own Tom Ziller just wrote:

To say this signing is a major coup for Olympiakos and the Euroleague is a massive, massive understatement. Childress, a 25-year-old stud just entering his prime, reported turned down a five-year, $33 million contract from Atlanta this summer. Are things in the Hawks franchise that bad? (Probably.) Is the Greek offer that much better? (Probably.) Did anyone ever think a signing like this could happen so soon? (Definitely not.)

That's right folks, there was a time when a signing like this one would be considered "unthinkable" in the basketball world. Yet here we are, watching a North American athlete in his prime leave the U.S. for a monster contract on the European mainland.

Now, can somebody, anybody, make a convincing argument as to why a hockey player might be immune to a similar offer from a major European hockey club? At a minimum, the price of athletic talent is set to be driven through the roof in both basketball and hockey thanks to increased demand from overseas. And as Ziller himself points out, Childress, while hardly a household name, is a solid NBA player who isn't easily replaceable.

So keep whistling past the graveyard if you must. Then again, if you play your cards right, there may just be a job waiting for you at General Motors. Something tells me they appreciate that sort of thinking in Detroit.