Shock Defeat wrote: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.
There are no cons to this model compared to the current model
1. It eliminates tanking, teams would be looking to win because there is no incentive to be the worst team in the NBA.
2. It's a fairer process, why should 1 team be awarded a generational talent like Zion based on tanking and luck? At least here, the team that takes Zion will have to manage their salary AND be smart about it. Imagine spending all of their cap space on a talent that ends up busting. You have to weigh the risks and the rewards.
3. Good teams that make the Playoffs are further rewarded because they are not excluded from drafting elite talent, if they make the Playoffs but also have a ton of cap space, why should that be penalized?
4. It's fairer for the players, why should Zion get paid the rookie scale contract if he's already better than most NBA players? He should be paid his market value from year 1.
5. Draft picks are still valuable like I said, consider it the ticket to the draft. They can still be traded and be a part of deals.
6. It will even out the compensation for an NBA player throughout the life of his career. Right now the reason veterans get such loaded deals like the supermax is because for the first 4 years of their career they were getting paid way under market value. We won't have as many albatross contracts to players in their 30s.
I have thought of something similar before, but instead of a bid, it should be based on team's rankings (top team gets first pick, etc). However, there should be a separate cap for players on rookie contracts.
So this year, gsw can either choose to use the first pick and get hit by the first picks cap or they skip the first selection and let the 2nd place team choose. Second place team can either select or let third team choose, etc. Once the "first" pick is made (essentially the bidding process), then gsw will get a chance at selecting the second player (or skip again). until all 60 players are selected.
Although top teams get first pick, the last place teams should get a "higher" increase in cap, allowing them to be more risk seeking in their selections.
