Basketball is a paid profession. Just look how much money the NBA teams have. Fewer people see it as their future but many children still grow up wanting to the be next michael jordan..
I think did say something like "an occupation that individuals can reasonably think of as a career path".
A real profession is a self-supervising, self-educating specialty. The model of the professional is the accountant, an individual who, hypothetically, answers to both his supervisor and the strictures of independence imposed by his professional association. Even union carpenters, electrician and plumbers partially fit this description - a qualified contractor, for example, will should and sometimes actually will refuse work that involves not meeting the building code.
Many specialties in this society have lost their professionalism, have lost the independence that provides a lot of the value in their wages. This is ultimately degrades our social relations - it results in people caring about their bank accounts and not their personal achievements (the last bubbles were furthered by the degradation of accountants and real estate appraisers).
I suspect that this process is related to children who would rather be like the people they see on TV rather than being like their mothers and fathers.
Unfortunately, all this degradation seems to be a self-reinforcing process.
