Alleged NBA Draft Proposal

[Nanogeek]

The idea of having the worst 15 teams pick 1-15 and then 16-30 in the first round would be an interesting twist towards helping struggling teams get back on their feet. I'd argue going even further and doing something like the worst 5 teams picking 1-5 and then 6-10 with the next 10 teams picking 11-20 and 21-30.

[killbuckner]

This is pretty clearly just the players union calling BS on the owners who are claiming all they want is parity. The owners claim they want parity when really they just want the players to get less money, this is a way to get parity without the players taking less money.

[Nanogeek]

I don't think by implementing this change you magically have parity no more so than the current draft which rewards losing teams creates parity. The proposal would help mitigate a lack of parity but it wouldn't create parity.

[killbuckner]

There would be more parity than there currently is which is the only point. The Players are just giving the owners options to increase parity that doesn't take money out of the pockets of players. I don't think its a proposal that the players actually intend to have happen- its just calling BS on the owners who say all they want is parity. There is no doubt that this would increase parity but in the end thats really not what the owners care about.

[DBoys]

The fact that the owners' want to reduce player payroll doesn't mean that competitive balance is not a goal as well. One isn't necessarily a subset of the other.

The owners' proposals for competitive balance have been painted by the players in financial terms, but there is nothing inherently financial in them. For example, if the league contracts to spend $2.1B a year on player payroll, it doesn't cost the players a cent if that also means each of the 30 teams has a $70M player payroll under a hard cap system, rather than allowing one team to have $100M in player talent and another $40M.

This draft proposal strikes me as something being floated by the players, but having no real likelihood of being implemented.

[d-train]

The fact that the owners' want to reduce player payroll doesn't mean that competitive balance is not a goal as well. One isn't necessarily a subset of the other.

The owners' proposals for competitive balance have been painted by the players in financial terms, but there is nothing inherently financial in them. For example, if the league contracts to spend $2.1B a year on player payroll, it doesn't cost the players a cent if that also means each of the 30 teams has a $70M player payroll under a hard cap system, rather than allowing one team to have $100M in player talent and another $40M.

The owners don't care anything about competitive balance.

Every team having the same salary is anticompetitive and costs the best players a ton of money. The best teams have the best players and the salaries of the best teams should be substantially higher than the salaries of teams with untalented players.

The NBA competes for talent. And, it competes by offering the most talented players higher salaries. The competitive balance you seek is to remove that competition from the NBA.

The owners can achieve competitive balance between teams anytime they want by simply dividing TV revenues evenly. That would give owners roughly the same amount of money to spend on players.

[eslr]

Anything that rewards tanking = suck

[d-train]

Anything that rewards tanking = suck

Tanking is encouraged in the NBA because of the advantaged drafting position teams get for losing. And, the rookie scale contracts that force rookies to play for substantially below market salaries on contracts slanted heavily in favor of teams.

The bad news is nothing that encourages NBA teams to tank is likely to change.