Instead of a draft why not hold a live auction for NBA prospects

[JohnnyNightrain]

I can't believe people are in here defending this idea as "not slavery" because the players are going to be paid a lot of money. Of course it's not slavery, as that's not legal. That's not the point; at all. The point is, you can't have a "live auction" of players, mostly black, being bid on by mostly white rich owners because the insensitive implications will, rightfully so, upset stakeholders. If you don't understand this, there is literally nothing to say. You will never understand it.

How about thinking about it in this way... Donating money to help impoverished neighborhoods is good, right? Well, if someone rolled a human-shaped pinata, hanging from a noose, but full of money, through a black neighborhood and told the kids to beat it open to collect the money, only a complete moron would think that was a good idea and only a complete moron would defend it by saying "It's not actually a person hanging and the neighborhood gets to keep the money."

[One Last Shot]

I see, I get the idea. Like Deep Web. People are getting auction there too and other stuff.

What if there are 29 Teams with Cap Space for 2 Max Contracts. It will become Free Agency as Teams courting the rookie or?

[spikeslovechild]

Prospects are athletes not livestock. If you want to grant them FA that is a separate conversation but what the OP suggested is disgusting.

[JonFromVA]

Base it on a team's cap space. A team can bid as high as they want to offer a contract to a player if they have the cap space. The only rule is that the contract length must be 4 years. The team that offers the most gets that player. You must own a draft pick in order to bid and win a player. If you want 2 players in the 1st round of the auction, you must own 2 1st round draft picks.

a) Veterans run the player union, and would oppose Rookies getting most of the cap - which they surely would.

b) When owner's protect themselves from their own foolishness, they prosper. They would not welcome this either. Being cap-strapped because you foolishly spent on the rookie auction, and then have no further way to improve? That would literally be a franchise killer.

[Nuntius]

So, you really don't see an issue with a professional sports league in America - a league in which roughly 75% of its players are black - having a "live auction" of its players? Really? It would, literally, be one of the biggest PR disasters in modern history. How this is lost on anyone, I do not know. Unless you, literally, have zero knowledge of American history, I don't know what to say.

Even if you ignore this whole race issue (which, let me be clear, is not something that should be ignored), it still wouldn't work. Can you imagine putting a player up in a podium and have someone going "here, here, we present this 6'8 athletic forward with a sweet-looking stroke, bidding starts at 800k, who wants to top it"? That, in itself, would be enough to create backlash. Human beings aren't commodities to be sold on an auction.

Make it about the draft picks instead of the players, brand it something other than an auction and then we can talk about the merits of the idea. I still wouldn't be a big fan of it but you can at least make an argument now.

It's nothing like slavery. Only at a very surface level does it look that way. The player is earning the value of the bid, not a slave master. The player is voluntarily signing a contract to play basketball for a few years in exchange for ungodly amounts of money. There is no forced labor. No poverty. No punishments. No race exclusion. (players can be white, owners can be black)

The optics only look bad because people are too lazy to actually think about it for one second.

I didn't say that it actually is like slavery. I said that that the optics of having a live auction about actual human beings are awful.

[SecondTake]

I can't believe people are in here defending this idea as "not slavery" because the players are going to be paid a lot of money. Of course it's not slavery, as that's not legal. That's not the point; at all. The point is, you can't have a "live auction" of players, mostly black, being bid on by mostly white rich owners because the insensitive implications will, rightfully so, upset stakeholders. If you don't understand this, there is literally nothing to say. You will never understand it.

How about thinking about it in this way... Donating money to help impoverished neighborhoods is good, right? Well, if someone rolled a human-shaped pinata, hanging from a noose, but full of money, through a black neighborhood and told the kids to beat it open to collect the money, only a complete moron would think that was a good idea and only a complete moron would defend it by saying "It's not actually a person hanging and the neighborhood gets to keep the money."

Dude, these pinata analogies make no sense. In one version the group that you're suggesting is being victimized by racism is the actually beneficiary of said 'racism' (they keep the money and there is zero harm, nor even any indication of harm to them) while in the other version they're the victims of actual, brutal racism (lynching)

Has our culture become so sensitive that we cant delineate between actual lynchings in the south and money filled pinatas anymore? Obviously we can't. The two aren't the same though - they're not even comparable.

[SecondTake]

Even if you ignore this whole race issue (which, let me be clear, is not something that should be ignored), it still wouldn't work. Can you imagine putting a player up in a podium and have someone going "here, here, we present this 6'8 athletic forward with a sweet-looking stroke, bidding starts at 800k, who wants to top it"? That, in itself, would be enough to create backlash. Human beings aren't commodities to be sold on an auction.

Make it about the draft picks instead of the players, brand it something other than an auction and then we can talk about the merits of the idea. I still wouldn't be a big fan of it but you can at least make an argument now.

It's nothing like slavery. Only at a very surface level does it look that way. The player is earning the value of the bid, not a slave master. The player is voluntarily signing a contract to play basketball for a few years in exchange for ungodly amounts of money. There is no forced labor. No poverty. No punishments. No race exclusion. (players can be white, owners can be black)

The optics only look bad because people are too lazy to actually think about it for one second.

I didn't say that it actually is like slavery. I said that that the optics of having a live auction about actual human beings are awful.

The 5 second optics of it are bad. As soon as you take a moment to consider if there's any difference between slavery like human auctions and what was suggested by the OP it's really not an issue anymore. Having 'poor optics' shouldn't be an excuse not to do something, they should be the reason for dialogue and explaining why those optics are a false equivalency.

[Ismality]

Sorry if this was addressed - I didn't read the whole thread.

The last team to hold a "pick" can effectively bid $1 for a 4-year contract. Or if the last few teams that hold "picks" don't have cap space to bid then there's no way to establish an order for their "picks/bids" because they'd all be forced to bid $1 or zero. Just my initial thoughts. I might be wrong or it's already been addressed.

[Lalouie]

Watch on YouTube

[JohnnyNightrain]

I can't believe people are in here defending this idea as "not slavery" because the players are going to be paid a lot of money. Of course it's not slavery, as that's not legal. That's not the point; at all. The point is, you can't have a "live auction" of players, mostly black, being bid on by mostly white rich owners because the insensitive implications will, rightfully so, upset stakeholders. If you don't understand this, there is literally nothing to say. You will never understand it.

How about thinking about it in this way... Donating money to help impoverished neighborhoods is good, right? Well, if someone rolled a human-shaped pinata, hanging from a noose, but full of money, through a black neighborhood and told the kids to beat it open to collect the money, only a complete moron would think that was a good idea and only a complete moron would defend it by saying "It's not actually a person hanging and the neighborhood gets to keep the money."

Dude, these pinata analogies make no sense. In one version the group that you're suggesting is being victimized by racism is the actually beneficiary of said 'racism' (they keep the money and there is zero harm, nor even any indication of harm to them) while in the other version they're the victims of actual, brutal racism (lynching)

Has our culture become so sensitive that we cant delineate between actual lynchings in the south and money filled pinatas anymore? Obviously we can't. The two aren't the same though - they're not even comparable.

Well, that went way, way over your head. Also, you're explanation makes, literally, zero sense. We're not nitpicking details or arguing semantics. Regardless of outcome, both scenarios are insensitive based on America's history. Don't do it. Very simple.

[Nuntius]

It's nothing like slavery. Only at a very surface level does it look that way. The player is earning the value of the bid, not a slave master. The player is voluntarily signing a contract to play basketball for a few years in exchange for ungodly amounts of money. There is no forced labor. No poverty. No punishments. No race exclusion. (players can be white, owners can be black)

The optics only look bad because people are too lazy to actually think about it for one second.

I didn't say that it actually is like slavery. I said that that the optics of having a live auction about actual human beings are awful.

The 5 second optics of it are bad. As soon as you take a moment to consider if there's any difference between slavery like human auctions and what was suggested by the OP it's really not an issue anymore. Having 'poor optics' shouldn't be an excuse not to do something, they should be the reason for dialogue and explaining why those optics are a false equivalency.

They aren't a false equivalency, though. The optics aren't bad because they remind people of slavery. They are bad because you cannot hold a live auction about actual human beings. You can't treat people like commodities.

For OP's idea to work, you should change it up and make the "auction" (if you want to call it that, I think that a different name would be better from a PR standpoint) about draft picks and not about the actual players. We could then discuss the idea and its merits. Personally, I consider it an awful idea even if you make those changes but a discussion could be had then.

[pillwenney]

The funny thing is, aside from the historical implications (which would prevent this immediately), it's really not less moral than drafting players to team's they aren't choosing.

But yeah, this is icky.

[jlokine]

if you think front offices are terrible for paying chris paul and andrew wiggins ridiculous contracts.. wait till a player auction on unproven players coming out of college... teams could end up with $10M busts... plus not everyone in the draft ends up playing in the nba... so you are forced to pay a player that doesnt even end up suiting up for you?

[eastyanggu]

Often when we try to solve one problem, we create others. Reading through this thread, I think it is clear that this would be another example of that.

[Stillwater]

unfortunately there is no reasonable solution to tanking, I mean other than treadmill teams potentially losing their pick due to protections tanking late, most teams that tank were not winning much of anything anyway and so the problem in itself isn't that bad.
Not enough so that something like this would become the new way of getting prospects

[SecondTake]

I didn't say that it actually is like slavery. I said that that the optics of having a live auction about actual human beings are awful.

The 5 second optics of it are bad. As soon as you take a moment to consider if there's any difference between slavery like human auctions and what was suggested by the OP it's really not an issue anymore. Having 'poor optics' shouldn't be an excuse not to do something, they should be the reason for dialogue and explaining why those optics are a false equivalency.

They aren't a false equivalency, though. The optics aren't bad because they remind people of slavery. They are bad because you cannot hold a live auction about actual human beings. You can't treat people like commodities.

For OP's idea to work, you should change it up and make the "auction" (if you want to call it that, I think that a different name would be better from a PR standpoint) about draft picks and not about the actual players. We could then discuss the idea and its merits. Personally, I consider it an awful idea even if you make those changes but a discussion could be had then.

They're not 'buying' players though - they're buying the right to their first professional NBA contracts. The result is the exact same. These guys are going to end up with a contract with one of 30 NBA teams. The way they get there is different, and that difference is just that their first contract is being bid on.

[SecondTake]

I can't believe people are in here defending this idea as "not slavery" because the players are going to be paid a lot of money. Of course it's not slavery, as that's not legal. That's not the point; at all. The point is, you can't have a "live auction" of players, mostly black, being bid on by mostly white rich owners because the insensitive implications will, rightfully so, upset stakeholders. If you don't understand this, there is literally nothing to say. You will never understand it.

How about thinking about it in this way... Donating money to help impoverished neighborhoods is good, right? Well, if someone rolled a human-shaped pinata, hanging from a noose, but full of money, through a black neighborhood and told the kids to beat it open to collect the money, only a complete moron would think that was a good idea and only a complete moron would defend it by saying "It's not actually a person hanging and the neighborhood gets to keep the money."

Dude, these pinata analogies make no sense. In one version the group that you're suggesting is being victimized by racism is the actually beneficiary of said 'racism' (they keep the money and there is zero harm, nor even any indication of harm to them) while in the other version they're the victims of actual, brutal racism (lynching)

Has our culture become so sensitive that we cant delineate between actual lynchings in the south and money filled pinatas anymore? Obviously we can't. The two aren't the same though - they're not even comparable.

Well, that went way, way over your head. Also, you're explanation makes, literally, zero sense. We're not nitpicking details or arguing semantics. Regardless of outcome, both scenarios are insensitive based on America's history. Don't do it. Very simple.

You said regardless of outcome - but you can't disregard outcome. The outcome of lynchings is horrific. The outcome of a money dumping pinata is a 180. The outcome of selling people is slavery. The outcome of bidding millions of dollars on NBA contracts is that a players dream of playing in the NBA comes true while making a fortune.

Details matter.

[JohnnyNightrain]

Dude, these pinata analogies make no sense. In one version the group that you're suggesting is being victimized by racism is the actually beneficiary of said 'racism' (they keep the money and there is zero harm, nor even any indication of harm to them) while in the other version they're the victims of actual, brutal racism (lynching)

Has our culture become so sensitive that we cant delineate between actual lynchings in the south and money filled pinatas anymore? Obviously we can't. The two aren't the same though - they're not even comparable.

Well, that went way, way over your head. Also, you're explanation makes, literally, zero sense. We're not nitpicking details or arguing semantics. Regardless of outcome, both scenarios are insensitive based on America's history. Don't do it. Very simple.

You said regardless of outcome - but you can't disregard outcome. The outcome of lynchings is horrific. The outcome of a money dumping pinata is a 180. The outcome of selling people is slavery. The outcome of bidding millions of dollars on NBA contracts is that a players dream of playing in the NBA comes true while making a fortune.

Details matter.

This isn't a debate. As an expert, I am telling you that an organization absolutely can't do anything that is so blatantly insensitive and tone deaf. You can't "live auction" black people off on a stage. End of story.

[SecondTake]

Well, that went way, way over your head. Also, you're explanation makes, literally, zero sense. We're not nitpicking details or arguing semantics. Regardless of outcome, both scenarios are insensitive based on America's history. Don't do it. Very simple.

You said regardless of outcome - but you can't disregard outcome. The outcome of lynchings is horrific. The outcome of a money dumping pinata is a 180. The outcome of selling people is slavery. The outcome of bidding millions of dollars on NBA contracts is that a players dream of playing in the NBA comes true while making a fortune.

Details matter.

This isn't a debate. As an expert, I am telling you that an organization absolutely can't do anything that is so blatantly insensitive and tone deaf. You can't "live auction" black people off on a stage. End of story.

Expert at what? Social outrage? Is Kevin love black btw?

[metalinguss]

Looks like somebody just saw 'Get Out'.