Xatticus wrote:KingRobb02 wrote:Xatticus wrote:
The NBA draft is structured such that the teams in most need of talent have significantly enhanced odds of acquiring the best young players entering the league. I'm not sure how you can portray that as anything other than an effort to maintain parity. This only makes sense if you interpret this as a function of 30 franchises operating in the best interest of the league as a whole. The league (and everyone in it) benefits from generating as much interest in its product as possible. The draft wouldn't be a legal endeavor if not for the anti-trust exemptions the league holds for operating as a single economic enterprise. These activities would otherwise be anti-competitive or collusive.
I'm not a proponent of the way that professional sports are run in this country (I despise it actually), but it is necessary to understand the role that the draft serves (as well as free agency, trades, and contract types). Both the NBA and the NBPA have larger concerns than how much freedom their new employees/members have in choosing where they work (as does any corporation). Their goal is to grow the product and to enhance their ability to generate revenue for the league as a whole.
If a player wants more freedom in where they play, they are free to offer their services anywhere else on the planet outside of the NBA/NBDL. There is nothing anywhere that stipulates that professional basketball players have to play in the NBA, and there are many alternatives to the NBA. Almost every player capable of playing in the NBA does because of the economic benefits of doing so. Those economic benefits are reaped by the specific practices in question.
It's not a real effort to maintain parity that's why. In reality, even the best rookies are usually around a C+ at most. There's a reason that only two #1 overall picks have won titles as the best player for the team that drafted them in the past 30 years. Looking at this year's draft, who has been the best rookie? A 24 year old 2nd rounder. Is he helping to shore up a struggling franchise? No. He's playing big minutes for a playoff team. If you want to be honest about the what's best for the NBA, it is to do what is best for it's players. That means putting them in position to grow and succeed long term. Is anyone enjoying the Russell, Smart, Ingram trio in LA? No. Is LA having those three 5 star recruits helping to increase parity? Not at all. Okay you might think they are young. How about a guy like Anthony Davis. There is no denying he is a star. This is year 5 for him. How long before he wins his first playoff game?
If you want to see what an NBA with parity looks like, go back to the 70s. Do you know why Magic and Larry had to "save" the NBA by playing on super teams? Because parity was uninteresting. Back in those days, you could have an NBA Finals where a 47 win team beat a 44 win team and no one would watch. Interest in basketball comes from having stars in the spotlight. You do this by putting them in a position to succeed and that usually means better players on better teams.
I think that's true to some extent. Where I'd disagree though, is that the alternative would only exacerbate inequality. Bird and Magic are often credited with saving the league, but they didn't really. They just elevated what was still something of a fringe sport at the time. Both were stars from the moment they entered the league via the draft. Bill Russell's Celtics were far more dominant than those iterations of the Celtics and Lakers, but he certainly wasn't the impetus for the rise of the NBA.
The game has certainly changed though. I think the technical quality is vastly superior to what it was years ago, which has pushed back the development time required to excel at the NBA level, but it's also more commonplace for the game's biggest stars to team up via free agency. We are also seeing the league revolutionized by analytics, which is giving a clearer indication of what skills actually result in wins. This has made the path from the bottom to the top that much tougher to climb, but eliminating the draft would make this a nearly impossible task for most franchises.
We both know there are other reasons Oscar, Bill, Wilt, and Elgin weren't embraced by America as stars.
