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

Wish I had seen this before responding to you in the other thread. Bully on those two ideas.

My longtime suggestion for eliminating tanking is to create financial incentives to win. I don't have a specific proposal for doing it, but perhaps a big pile (or pool) of money would be created every year and the amount would be divided up based on the number of wins. If a team knew each win was worth $150,000/$250,000 (or whatever number), maybe this would encourage teams to compete all 82 games.

 

I hate the lack of guaranteed money in the NFL
Player gets maimed for life. . .they just cut them and keep moving.
Its horrendous. . . Players take all the physical risk
they should get some guarantees


I do beleive in a HARDER Cap is 80 mill
Franchise Tag
I like the No Exceptions etc.
I would keep the Vet Minimums though - I would want this higher
Keep vets from trying to RingWhore so much
If you going to pick up a RingWhore .. . make it cost another future player some $$$

Rocket River

 

Sounds good. I like it.
Basically . . instead of say . . You make 20 Million a year
change it to percentages. . . You make 25%
So . . .you can make 20 million or 10 Million . . .depends on how a team does.

problem is .. . 10% at the Lakers maybe more than 25% in Cleveland

But I like that it makes ever game WORTH something

Rocket River

 

How about the top non-playoff team gets the top pick in the draft. That makes tanking harder. It's like trying to get a 79 on a test. Obviously, that team will be good enough to make the playoffs the next year and so forth and so on.

 

I didn't mean it that way. The cap should be the same for all teams, just much tighter than it is now. It will then be on the teams to decide if they want to pay 2/3s of their salary cap to one player (and for the player to decide if they want money or legit teammates). LeBron wouldn't have joined Wade in Miami if another franchise had offered him $30 million/year.

The incentive to win idea doesn't increase a team's cap, just their end-of-year bottom line.

 

Lebron wanted to play with Wade and Bosh, and would of passed on the 30 mil, to play with Miami. As Lebron says "Its all about winning"

 

Injury insurance would take care of that.

Guaranteed contracts kill player incentives. It chokes out a team's ability to turn around once the management makes a mistake, and thereby, discouraging smart GMs from taking risk on pursuing high risk but high potential players.

 

Instead of tanking at the bottom, teams on the bubble of playoffs might just tank to avoid the playoffs.

On way to discourage tanking is give all teams without a max contract equal chances to win the lottery regardless of records and playoffs appearance.

 

Miami doesn't have a max contract, so you might want to change MAX to a set amount.
I like the idea of teams that don't make the playoff's having a equal chance for a top pick, which means teams wouldn't tank, and GM's and Owners wouldn't gut there teams out to tank, which means every team, would fight hard to get in the playoffs.
Even have the 8th seed in both conf's have a chance off a top 5 to 10 pick..

 

I don't think they should completely get rid of the guaranteed contracts. I think the contract should have a lot of incentives instead of giving them max money automatically every year. They should partially guarantee the contracts that way teams wont stuck with a under performing players with huge contracts.

So just say, if Carmelo is to sign a 3 yr/65 million deal. He should have a guaranteed contract of 70%. Rest of his 30% salary should be giiven only if he is meet his individual and team winnings. Also teams should only have 70% of those money should count against the salary cap, if he under performs. So the teams will have more flexibility. In a perfect world, this proposal may work but this is just my opinion and may not work in todays NBA with players unions are so strong.

 

Lets just have a fantasy draft NBA Live style.

 

They used to do this until 1990, and then they figured a weighted system was more fair. They then restructured the weights to the current system after the Magic got the No. 1 pick in consecutive seasons.

 

Some of these ideas are really good...

I especially like the idea of all teams who miss the playoffs given an equal opportunity to win the lotto. This removes the incentive to tank for below average (but not TERRIBLE) teams to tank and gives medicore teams an opportunity to turn their next season around with a high draft pick. Some might say that gives teams in contention for the 8th seed incentive to miss the pkayoffs but I cant see teams passing on the additional revenue from two home playoff games for a ~ 7% chance at drafting Blake Griffin.

Also, I think that contracts should remain fully guaranteed but the MAX length for any contract should be 3 years, preserving Bird rights for players. I dont like the idea of partially guaranteed contracts based on health or performance because a guy can get traded from an average team to a contender and go from being a starter to a role player. Obviously, his stats will take a hit. Similarly, a guy can recover from an injury only to have a team hold him out of games or limit his pt just to avoid paying him the full value of his contact.

As for as the MLE and LLE, the MLE should definitely be every other year with the LLE available every year.

Lastly, luxury taxes collected by the leauge should not be redistributed to ALL teams below the cap. It should ONLY be distributed to teams that lost money for that given year. And the amount of money eligible to be received should only be enough to break even.

Im definitely against a Franchise Tag for teams to use on players because if a player plays out the length of his contract, no team should be able to 'force' him stay with his team for an extra year. Even if they are offering to pay him the MAX. Rather, in an effort to incentivize top players to resign with their teams, the 10% increases allowed for resigned contracts should NOT count against the cap. This will allow the home team additonal cap room to sign other players and give the star player some help.

Truth be told, I really dont care WHAT The new CBA looks like as long as we dont lose any games to a labor dispute. That '99 season was BRUTAL.

 

...problem with that idea is some team trying to maximize their money would intentionally operate at a loss if they knew they would be close. Teams on the edge would exploit it if those were the rules.

 

NFL-like Franchise tag. That will do it. Small market teams will be able to keep their franchise player.

 

If the players union proposed this seriously, then I have questions regarding their IQ. Not just the proposal itself, but why they even care about parity.

The best methods for parity comes from the destruction of the NBA middle class. One where superstars take up 50+% of the cap and everyone else get scraps. But the players union would never go for that. They want ways to circumvent the cap so teams can spend grossly over the limit on guaranteed contracts.

 

The Jeff Van Gundy idea:

ALL TEAMS have EQUAL CHANCE in the lottery. Non-playoff teams AND playoff teams.

No chance at tanking whatsoever.

 

While I don't think this is the best tool to address parity with, I don't think the idea is so terrible. I don't think playoff teams will often tank for the pick; I think that is underestimating the value teams place on a playoff berth. The difference between the best lotto team and worst playoff team is picking 14th and 28th vs. picking 29th and 45th. The picks are worse, but the chance that a 14th pick is going to turn your franchise around is pretty slim. So I think teams that can make the playoffs will usually want to.

However, I'd propose a tweak (which is probably more thinking than this whole line of inquiry is worth) because I think there's a bigger incentive to lose big among the real lotto teams. Going first and picking #1 and #15 is pretty nice. So, I'd invert the lotto team order for the second pass. So, it'd go #1/#28, 2/27, 3/26, and so on. The best lotto team picks #14 and #15 -- just what on-the-cusp teams usually need, a couple of solid role-players. And, there isn't as large a benefit to pick 13/16 over 14/15, so you wouldn't be as interested in gaming the draft order.

That opens a bigger discrepancy between the best lotto and the worst playoff teams: 14/15 vs 29/45. Likewise inverting this order makes that gap larger still, 14/15 vs 29/60. Besides that, the best teams in the league don't need parity with the teams at the bottom of the playoff bracket. So, instead I'd have each playoff team picking twice in a row. So, the worst team picks 16/17, then the next 18/19, etc. So, there's little incentive to just miss the playoffs and the bottom seeds in the playoffs get some palpable help. The very top teams get basically no help in the draft.

 

Silly proposal just thrown out there to stop talk about a Franchise tag. Which is gaining alot of steam now. Franchise tage longer rookie contracts, or some sort of bird rights rewroking to give the original team alot of money rights over the player is the only way. The only way to hit up a player is through money incentives or loopholes like Franchise tags.