The max player contract is 5 years. Trading Draft consideration (Daryl...) beyond that into the future is wacky. The GM that makes the trade most likely will never be around to be accountable for it and it simply encourages teams and cash-strapped owners (Tillman) to cash in on veterans/create superteams underwritten by artificially cheap future rookie contracts. It's up there with tanking for Process as a competitive ill. Trades are fun, people like trades, because they involve trading players, not nebulous derivative instruments of contingent value, like swap rights for prospects currently in middle school.
The other way to stop this is to cap the number of other team draft assets a team can hold - the reverse Stepien rule. Supporting a team tanking is bad enough. Supporting another team tanking is even worse. The only thing we have to look forward to as Rockets fans now is the status of Kevin Durant s Achilles. That's ****ed up.
I was thinking about this in the shower last night. These types of trades (4/5 FRPs + swaps) are new to the NBA. I was thinking that they will either be outlawed or one of them - hopefully the deal we just did! - ends up being so bad for the team that traded the picks, that no team ever does this again.
The Nets did this (minus the swaps) with Boston when they got Garnett and Pierce, right? It tanked their franchise while setting up Boston with endless top tier picks. If they were going to ban it, I'd think that would have been the impetus. The other thing that's wrong with NBA contracts/trades is that crappy players with overvalued but expiring contracts have somehow become a valuable asset. That somehow needs to change as well. The idea that teams WANT to take on overpaid players' short-term contracts is messed up.
Yeah the Nets did 3 firsts and 1 swap (I had to look it up). And that is a good point. Maybe you are right. Still, 3 FRPs and 1 swap isn't as bad as 4 FRPs and 4 swaps. So maybe this could serve as the breaking point.
The funny thing is I feel like that already happened with Brooklyn in 2013. (edit) Major beat me to it!
That was the first, seems like it has exploded since then though with teams continuosly going all-in and not just creating haves and have nots, but teams whose future value continuously outweighs the value of their present roster (OKC, Houston now,). Like it's one thing to tank and then build with better players gradually, it's another thing to continuously cash out your present resources for the promise of future gains (granted I know Harden had a huge part in this). The other thing is that the derivative instruments of swap rights invented/popularized by Daryl now give teams even more chances to do this to avid the Stepien rule You can imagine pretty horrible futures of a cash-strapped Rockets bascially doing this into infinity - instead of the Late lotto/low playoff seed "mediocrity treadmill" that Daryl warned about, you basically continuously lever any rising stars into more and more future pick assets (while keeping payroll low for any potential franchise bidder). And like you say, it creates a market for crap palyers on big expirings - not for cap room to sign free agents, as it used to be, but to fill out minimum salary obligations while your real assets are tied up in 14 year old AAU players.
Anyone happen to know what the most valuable swap has been? They always seem to be pretty underwhelming from my memory.
If a GM wants to mortgage his team's future then I say let him. If his owner gives him the green light then that's an issue up top that needs to be fixed and not necessarily at the GM level. I'm sure if Brooklyn can win just one ring with KD and Harden they wouldn't care about those picks/swaps they had to give up. Hell, I think ownership would be happy (privately) just getting to the Finals.
What do you mean by derivative of a swap right? I don't think those exist in NBA trades unless you are referring to something else.
In individual cases it' doesn't seem objectionable, but on current trajectory, there's a chance it's going to proliferate the NBA underclass of teams that, like I said, are continously holding most of their player-value in draft picks and contingencies than on the court. Season ticket holders, fans etc of those teams are Charlie Brown and the owner GM's are Lucyitn their footballs years into the future.
Silver might put more restrictions on trading future draft picks like the current restriction preventing teams from trading consecutive picks but I don't think banning will happen. In the end is the fan getting screwed? Possibly but the few instances where an abundant amount of picks/swaps have changed hands in the past 3-4 years have occurred at two different extremes. On one end you have a team mortgaging their future because they feel that, by doing so to acquire player A, they can get to the Finals and maybe win a championship (the Bucks, the Nets). On the other end you have a team throwing away picks simply because the owner demanded the move to be made for whatever reason (the Rockets with CP3). If we removed the asinine CP3 deal, the other two instances are defensible and I think the fans of those teams would also agree. If we were to move all of the picks we received in the Harden deal and got back a Jayson Tatum or a Luka I don't think anyone on here would be mad.
A limit on trading picks in the future is currently an arbitrary number of 7 years. @SamFisher is merely proposing reducing that arbitrary number. what about limit how far in the future you can trade a pick to the remaining length of the player's contract who is being traded? haha
That would be an interesting wrinkle to throw in there for sure. I'd be interested to see how GMs would work around that kind of "restriction". It'd definitely separate the meh GMs from the elite ones.
the loop hole to that is of course, you collect low-dollar, longterm contract bench players to throw into the deal, and claim the picks were for him. So, you always have a bench player on a 5yr contract to throw into any deal. The Union would love that
I think you can harden that loop-hole in certain ways. You can limit the number of re-assignments a player's contract can be involved in that includes a pick as compensation. You could add a clause saying any pick(s) beyond X-yrs must be for a contract that the team actually signed (wasn't previous traded to them -- The OG Team Clause). Maybe reward supermax trades by giving those contracts an extra yr beyond remaining years, just because blockbusters are fun.) just spit balling
They would actually welcome this. When things reach a stable state everybody copies everyone and guess what: the Lakers, Warriors, Celtics, other glamour franchises have the best teams. Lakers didn't assemble their team, LeBron did . You change the rules every so often and there's opportunity to get lucky if you're the first to move (the Spurs getting the best European players on the cheap, eg, Rockets able to acquire generational talent in Harden w/o tanking due to monastic devotion to flexibility)
