[Hoopsworld] Players' Proposal for Parity: Change the Draft

That's a HORRIBLE proposal - all it does is provide massive incentive for teams to tank...not just when they realize they're unlikely to make the playoffs but when they realize they aren't going to have a good seed in the playoffs.

Who in the world would want to be locked out of the first round (with those in it selecting twice) just to be swept by the Heat in the first round? You'll literally have the lower seeds in a dogfight to get OUT of the playoffs.

Without POWERFUL disincentive to balance it out, this would make February, March, and April a trainwreck every year with phantom injuries and starting lineups of NBDL guys.

 

Thats a silly proposal in that getting draft picks and retaining them are two entirely different things.

The proposal might have some merit coupled with a hard cap though.

 

This also.

 

That is a horrible proposal, not only for the tanking that has already been discussed, but how in the world would you trade draft picks. You can have my 2014 1st round pick, but if I make the playoffs you are just SOL.

 

You want parity?

KILL the S&T
Severely reduce the MLE (once every two years, if not three)

Basically hack most of the salary cap exceptions that provide the loopholes for teams like LA to create a $90M payroll.

If the only way to draw a superstar is to sign him outright, teams have to be below the cap.

Maybe go extreme and expand on the 125% rule to also limit transactions to 300% of total contract length value (moving a big expiring for a longterm max deal).

Put in universal contract incentive clauses (All-NBA, MVP, Finals MVP, DPOY, etc) that make the true franchise guys higher than the max (Dwight Howard, for one).

 

Get rid of trades. Sign a bad deal, get stuck with a bad deal.

 

Pretty good thoughts. I particularly like the idea of forbidding expirings for long term deals.

 

This doesnt fix anything. It creates a sutuation where teams wont put their best product on the floor fighting NOT to make the playoffs. Those teams in the middle and lower end simply get stuck in a perpetual circle of suckitude - they become farm teams for the big boys.


They need a franchise tag much like the NFL.

 

...that would just lead to the bottom 14 teams in essence becoming farm teams for the major franchises. The parity issues the league is having has nothing to do with the draft and everything to do with player movement. Besides, fans support championship contending teams and putting good young players who can't yet win it all on teams across the league isn't going to help those franchises if the players bolt for bigger markets like Boston/LA before their original teams can reap the benefits.

...but if we wanted to change it up to make the draft interesting, here is an idea based on auction style FF drafting: every team in the league gets a point total at the end of the season. The team with the worst record gets the most points, the team with the second worst gets the next most points and so on. The teams are then required to turn in their draft card before draft day ranking their players and how much they would wager of their available points to draft that player. Then on draft day the NBA reveals which player went for the most points and the draft proceeds on descending draft point value(the #17 pick with 36 points is Player x).

A few wrinkles to the system - if you place a player on your draft card, you have to make a guaranteed rookie contract offer on that player. If for instance Sacramento has 180 points to spend, and they offer 170 for player A and 50 for player B, if someone outbids them on player A, they have to offer a contract to player B. Sacramento would then have 130 points they could use the following draft year.

Here is why this would be a good system for teams - the worst teams would still have a lot more draft clout but this system also doesn't force over the cap teams to draft first rounders that they don't technically want(the infamous stashed overseas draft pick). This helps the players union who in essence lose out on members when teams try to avoid participating in the draft. Basically this allows teams to choose if they want to play in the draft. There would also be a little strategy here as well. Let's say the Rockets got 100 points. They could offer 100 points for all the top lotto targets they know will garner interest but after that they could let's say offer 50 points for one player and 40 for another - creating two draft picks for themselves and reserving 10 points for next year's draft.

...there would also be this added element for saving those points. If LA didn't want to draft for 4 years, they could sit on their meager point earnings and make a splash four years later. Teams would have to account for that in their planning. The only thing the NBA would publish is how many remaining points a team has and how many they earned for the current year based on record. The points could be traded too.

I think it would be kind of fun. Let's say Cleveland finishes with the worst record this year, gets like 200 points from that and finds a team willing to offer them 120 draft points for Jamison and Mo Williams. Then they would be in the conversation of possibly drafting two franchise quality players to make them instantly relevant again....or the middle franchises could find that franchise talent by sitting on a few year's draft points to become relevant so you don't have that "stuck in the middle" problem with teams not quite good enough to contend and not quite bad enough to get top picks.

 

Instead of 16 teams making the playoffs, they should have 12 teams. 6 in each conference. That would improve the 'sucky' teams by increasing the lottery.

 

The best way to fix the NBA is to get rid of guaranteed contracts. This way a player has to live up to his contract or risk being fired. I hate the guaranteed money, these guys make alot of jack.

 

seeds 1 and 2 get a bye. 1st round is 2 vs 6, 4 vs 5.. seed 1 plays winner 4-5, or 6.. seed 2 plays 3 or 4-5...

 

i mean 1st round is 3 vs 6...

 

...just because there are more teams called lotto teams, doesn't mean they are going to actually get better talent. What does it matter if a first round 8 seed loser gets called a "lotto" team if the place they pick from is no different and the talent pool isn't increased. The only advantage is traditional 8th seed type teams would have a less than 1% chance of making it up the lotto food chain to the top 3.

 

You can also decrease the percentage that the worse teams can get of acquiring the top pick. I don't know... just a suggestion.

 

Why in the world would teams be tanking more because of mid 1st round talent? That is so nonsensical that I can't believe that people agreed with it.

Oh, I won't tank for John Wall but damn you mean I can get Larry Sanders...well f the season.

 

The teams making first round exits wouldnt be getting a first rounder at all under this scenario .... They'd be picking after the lottery teams had picked TWICE.


Whats the point of making the playoffs only to be eliminated in the first round then being on the outside looking in on the draft .... picking no better than 28th overall ? Gate recipts from two extra home games ? ..... Ugh.

This along with a franchise player tag like the NFL would really make things interesting. The players would have a foot in the real world - But guaranteed contracts arent going away , I just cant see the players union ever agreeing to something like this.

 

That's the dumbest proposal I've heard. The problem for small market teams aren't that they can't get good draft picks. It's that today's players want to play with their buddies at glamorous locations once their contracts are up.

When I saw the thread title and before I read the post, I thought the idea would be for crappy teams to draft star players from good teams. That would have been something! :grin:

 

Quickest way to turn around crummy teams is to have a salary structure similar to the NFL so that bad contracts can't hurt a team for 4 or so years. But eliminating the cap on max contracts, implementing a hard salary cap and doing away with guaranteed contracts would be a hard, if not impossible, pill to swallow for the players.