The NBA's pursuing a vote on NBA Draft Lottery reform before the start of season

Good post. I would add one more thing to this.

4) each team should be allowed to franchise tag one player, same as they do in the NFL. The franchise tagged player cannot leave in free agency but will get paid the maximum contract allowed by the league.

 

I don't agree with that. In the NFL it becomes cost prohibitive, like Kirk Cousins this year. Cousins will not do it again next year. You can't restrict movement in the NBA completely for any one individual player. What if that player is stuck on a very poorly run team and they are a top 5 player. Perhaps if the NBA would do something like the NFL and put players on single year deals and they escalate in salary quickly.

As another person posted perhaps make the max a higher ratio to the cap. You have to do something where the best players want to spread out to more teams.

 

The argument that you can't allow a poorly-run team to hold a great player down is hogwash. There aren't any teams that are inept.
The grizzlies, the hawks and the spurs are the top 3 teams with consecutive playoff berths. Not one of them can attract a top free agent.
The rockets, heat, Lakers, celtics, gs aren't great teams BECAUSE they are better at running their franchise.
In fact, cleveland might be considered by some as one of the worst run franchises, and yet they got 2 consecutive #1picks and a championship.
When you draft the Greek freak and dcousins who were not considered slam dunk overall talents only to see them leave to a bigger market, or force a trade once they get good: don't pat yourself on the back and say what a great franchise you are for "assembling" your great team. It has little to do with that.

 

You make a fair point in that the Spurs (above all else), Grizzlies and Hawks have done a good job overall in running their teams despite being in small markets. We can probably add Oklahoma City and Utah to that list and Milwaukee hasn't been bad in recent years either. But then there is Orlando. Terribly ran. Sacramento. Just terrible. Minnesota seems to have turned the corner but they had many, many, many years of just being terribly ran. Detroit is poorly ran with SVG pulling double duty as coach and GM. Charlotte? I forget Charlotte exists. And can you imagine what San Antonio or Memphis would do if they added a player of the caliber of Anthony Davis? Because just look what New Orleans has done with him. Hell, for that matter, look what they did with Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson!

And in all your talk about how the big markets get all the prime free agents you avoided acknowledging that BY FAR the biggest market is NY and both of their teams have been ran terribly. The Knicks have sucked basically since James Dolan became owner and the Nets, as of VERY recently, seem to finally be moving in the right direction but have been horrible because they made a series of very short-sighted and unfathomably bad decisions when Prokhorov took control of the team. The Knicks and the Nets should be two of the most highly sought after free agent destinations, but they're not and they're not because THEY ARE INEPT. What about the Clippers in LA being terribly ran for decades pre-Blake and CP3. They were a farm system for the league for those years. Philadelphia is also a very large market. They haven't been relevant since they traded Iverson. Can't recall the last big name free agent that went to Philly.

Honestly, Houston hasn't had much more success in free agency than San Antonio. We lured Dwight. They lured LeMarcus. I guess this season Chris Paul wanted to join us but that's because we have Harden who is easily a top 5 player and arguably a top 3 player. If it were about the size of the market he'd have been trying to join the Knicks or Nets or just staying put in LA which is a much bigger market than Houston.

The truth is to say "there aren't any teams that are inept" is the actual hogwash. They exist in markets both big and small. I agree that smaller market teams are at a huge disadvantage. It's why I am so in awe of what San Antonio has accomplished. And I'm all for making an effort to allow smaller market teams to be more competitive, but pretending there aren't inept teams is just silly.

 

You can make a point that recently Brooklyn has been bad, but historically they have been good. My point is that you can't look at it in a vacuum.
If any one of those teams had a chance to get LeBron James they would.
Teams make bad deals, it doesn't mean their franchise is terrible.

 

Let the best team not to make the playoffs have the best odds at first pick. No more tanking for first pick.

 

Needs more parity.

This warriors team is r****ded.

 

Here are the problems:

1. It is a lot more difficult for small market teams to retain top talents they drafted.

2. It is a lot easier to get a superstar if you already have one.

To combine the two problems: It is a lot easier for large market teams to get or retain a FA superstar when he enters his prime (usually at the end of his second contract) and then it is A LOT easier for those same teams to attract MORE superstars because they already have at least one in his prime.

Who actually drafted those superstars in the first place is relatively irrelevant to these problems.

 

The other problem is the moment Paul George said he was "hell bent on joining the Lakers," Pacers lost all leverage. That's what kills a small market team -- a disgruntled superstar mentally clocking out 2 years before free agency. The NBA should have stepped in and done something about it. This is a player still under contract. At the very least ban him from ever joining the Lakers.

 

Historically they have been bad too. With the exception of the Jason Kidd led Nets, they've basically been bad my entire life.

And yeah, man. If the Pelicans get Anthony Davis and 5 years into his dominant career still suck, it might just be that they're a poorly run franchise. How good would the Grizzlies be with Anthony Davis to build around? Ask the same questions about what would happen if Anthony Davis went to the Knicks or the Hornets. Are you confident they'd be good? I'm not because their franchises suck.

 

The difference between the Knicks and the Hornets is that there are still players who want to go to the Knicks even when they suck. Ask Carmelo Anthony. No superstar would want to go to and stay at New Orleans or Memphis if they aren't a successful well-run team like the Spurs.

It is not impossible to run a successful franchise in a small market. People always point to San Antonio. But it sure is a heck of a lot more difficult.

Morey is right about the well-run/poor-run franchises. But he does not tell the difference between the degree of difficulty. It's like some folks can say, a woman can be successful in the male-dominant corporate world if she is good enough. Heck yeah. But HOW MUCH more does she need to be better than the men to be successful?

 

Superteams play a factor in the creation of NBA inequality, but even more than this. The NBA has been pushing a globalized game mentality, and yet they put teams in some of the least global cities on the planet. Seriously, lets all ask ourselves why Oklahoma and Memphis have NBA teams? Quality of life and access to global markets is a big deal for NBA players. They are all building brands, global cities build brands. They want on-court success but they also want a life beyond basketball after their career is over. They also want to be near people who they feel are their peers, not playing in cities in the country that are crumbling in economic despair.

Here is the MSA (the number to the right in thousands) of each market. Notice how OKC, Memphis and New Orleans are all under 1.8 million people.

1-2 New York Knicks / Brooklyn Nets 19995
3-4 Los Angeles Lakers / Los Angeles Clippers 17054
5 Chicago Bulls 9474
6 Toronto Raptors 7566
7 Philadelphia 76ers 7468
8 Dallas Mavericks 7090
9 Golden State Warriors 6750
10 Houston Rockets 6579
11 Boston Celtics 6448
12 Atlanta Hawks 6032
13 Washington Wizards 5982
14 Detroit Pistons 4938
15 Minnesota Timberwolves 4667
16 Phoenix Suns 4545
17 Cleveland Cavaliers 4053
18 Denver Nuggets 3921
19 Miami Heat 3842
20 Orlando Magic 3592
21 Charlotte Hornets 3462
22 Sacramento Kings 3400
23 Portland Trailblazers 3010
24 Indiana Pacers 2642
25 Utah Jazz 2505
26 Milwaukee Bucks 2255
27 San Antonio Spurs 2193
28 Oklahoma City Thunder 1737
29 Memphis Grizzlies 1604
30 New Orleans Pelicans 1559


Quality of life is a big deal. The league stole the Sonics away from Seattle, and the entire greater Seattle area has led the country in population growth and wealth since they left.

Vancouver is consistently ranked as one of the best places to live in the entire world, and the NBA moved their team after a short 5 years to Memphis (of all places) one of the poorest cities over 1 million people in America.

I mean really tomorrow the NBA should move Memphis and New Orleans to Seattle and Vancouver. Those two moves alone would add so much value to the league and cause less

Memphis has the 4th highest crime rate of the 550 largest cities in America. Its property market is absolute dog s**t. It has a 26% poverty rate. It does not belong in the NBA. Neither does New Orleans. Those cities have zero growth, they are dying cities in America and the local population can't sustain in the hard years.

Beyond Seattle & Vancouver, (which would create a great coastal rivalry of Portland-Seattle-Vancouver), NBA should look into a team in Mexico City.

 

Didn't the Grizzlies move because no players want to play there? Remember Steve Francis?

 

If you think I'm arguing that large market teams don't have a huge advantage, you're wildly mistaken. The whole point of my posts were that What had claimed there were no inept franchises anymore. I was arguing against that. There are very clearly some completely inept organizations and the Knicks are toward the top of that list.

 

what are yalls thoughts on all 14 picks being drawn for and not just the first 3...instead of team at #14 having a chance to get picks 1,2,3,14, they could have a chance at getting any pick

 

Sorry I wasn't trying to argue with you. I was just hitting off one of your comments making my rant about big market and small market.

I have been hating the Lakers for decades because they see the rest of the league as their farm system. I also hate the fact that teams that already have at least one superstar in his prime can get other superstars much easier than those who don't have one. These are factors that create super teams, which is much more detrimental to the competition than the draft issues.

Seattle/OKC sucked for years and drafted three superstars. Now they only have one. Is it because they are poorly run? Maybe, but doubt that it was the only reason. It has a lot to do with being in a small market.

 

So here is my legitimate question: so what if a team is losing because it is just bad and could not secure any good free agents due to the bigger markets taking them all. How is that team supposed to improve when they also aren't getting the top draft picks.
And more to the point, teams that are on the fringe of the playoffs now decide it's better to get a lottery ticket, than trying to beat the warriors in a game that means a first round exit in the playoffs.
You haven't stopped tanking, you have increased the amount of teams that would want to tank.
The truly bad teams are going to lose no matter what the lottery odds are, as losing more still increases the lottery balls a team gets.

 

You should listen to Morey's podcast counter-argument to this, posted in the GARM, yesterday. He's right, imo.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...ts-gm-talks-nba-draft-reform-tanking-and-more

 

I looked up his arguement that essentially says that tanking teams avoid free agents to ensure ineptitude.
My contention is that if a tanking team had a real avenue to difference-making free agents, literally every team would take that route 90% of the time over tanking. The only exception being if LeBron was coming out.
Take Brookyn as an example. Before they became the poster child for a terrible franchise, they literally trade there future to acquire the big 3.
And in fact, even if you have a free agent opportunity, most of the time you are avoiding free agents to help your cap situation so that you can go after free agents.
Morey, while being provocative, is talking out his ass.