And then, 1.8 percent later \u2026 we\u2019re back!<\/a><\/p>\nNo one begrudges the Mavs\u2019 luck in getting Cooper Flagg, but they didn\u2019t do anything to earn the right to sign Flagg. His NBA rights were just awarded to them. That has repercussions for the rest of the league, because the Mavericks had just been in the finals a year earlier. To be sure, Don\u010di\u0107 was the key reason why, but he wasn\u2019t the only reason. Meanwhile, much worse-off teams that could have used Flagg\u2019s arrival to give hope and pump needed revenue into their teams sat, slack-jawed, knowing they would have to tank all over again the following season.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not saying Dallas shouldn\u2019t have a wildly promising young player like Flagg around which to rebuild, or that the Spurs shouldn\u2019t enjoy the spoils of Victor Wembanyama\u2019s incredible talent. I\u2019m saying they and all the league\u2019s other teams should have to actually work to get them, just like Flagg and other lottery picks worked their whole lives to become good enough to get into the best basketball league in the world.<\/p>\n
College football and basketball have National Signing Day every year, and Power 4 schools get a lot of blue-chippers, but so do lots of other programs. Everyone doesn\u2019t go play football at UCLA or Miami because of their location, or hoop only at North Carolina or Duke because of their history.<\/p>\n
If a college or international player eligible to come into the NBA could choose from among all 30 teams, those 30 teams would have to earn their labor.<\/p>\n
Ownership would have to have a proven track record for hiring competent people at all levels of the org chart, to not balk at paying their stars, to be willing to go into the luxury tax when the team is a true championship contender, to pay the freight for state-of-the-art practice facilities and infrastructure at team arenas that maximizes both player wellness and safety.<\/p>\n
And perhaps most importantly: owners would have to show they have relationships with the game\u2019s biggest, most powerful agents and agencies, and with the shoe companies, so that the Nikes and New Balances of the world feel comfortable with their newest stars in that city.<\/p>\n
Management would have to show it can consistently put together good teams, year after year, and that it can identify good coaching and development staffs that make players better. Coaches would have to prove they know what they\u2019re doing, that they can hold both players and themselves accountable, that they can work with the skill sets of every player to get the most out of them.<\/p>\n
In other words, put up or shut up, Jazz and Wizards and Nets. But the same would apply to the Lakers and Clippers and Bulls and 76ers and Knicks.<\/p>\n
Yes, it would be harder for some markets to attract great players. Maybe Charlotte and Utah and Toronto would lose out on some guys. Yes, Nike and Under Armour might want some of their big names in New York or L.A.<\/p>\n
But again, and I don\u2019t know why this doesn\u2019t sink in, there are 450 players in the NBA, a number than includes a few dozen players playing on two-way contracts. With 53-man rosters, there are 1,696 active roster spots in the NFL. There are between 780 (using the current limit of 26 players allowed per team between April and August) and 1,200 (if you use 40-man rosters) players on Major League Baseball rosters every year.<\/p>\n
The relative scarcity of NBA roster spots, along with the crushing second apron of the salary cap, means it would be impossible for any one team to hoard all the good young talent, just as it\u2019s impossible for any one team to acquire or keep all the league\u2019s veteran superstars. The Dodgers can spend the rest of baseball into oblivion because MLB doesn\u2019t have a salary cap, only a competitive balance tax, and because baseball doesn\u2019t have a salary floor. That\u2019s why the Dodgers can have a projected 2026 payroll, including the CBT, of $410.7 million, while the Miami Marlins\u2019 projected \u201926 payroll is $83.1 million.<\/p>\n
They are, essentially, playing two different sports.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, in the NBA, with a cap and a floor and a first and second apron, Oklahoma City has a superstar. Indiana has a superstar. Milwaukee has a superstar. Minnesota has a superstar. Cleveland has a superstar. San Antonio has a superstar. Detroit has a superstar. Some were taken in drafts, others were acquired via trades. But they all have them, and most have kept them for several years, through good seasons and bad ones. And most importantly: when those superstars are healthy, almost all of those teams are competitive.<\/p>\n
Any one of those stars could have demanded a trade to a top-three market. None have. Some might, some day. But there\u2019s not a yearly exodus of top talent from the league\u2019s smaller markets to its bigger ones.<\/p>\n
Also: I promise you that the top NBA player agencies do not want all of their top guys going to the same place, where they\u2019d have to fight one another for minutes and shots. If there was no draft this year, Darryn Peterson and A.J. Dybantsa and Cameron Boozer would not all wind up on the Celtics, because the Celtics already have two superstars in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who are rightly paid at the top of the market, and great role players like Derrick White and Payton Pritchard. Maybe Dybantsa would be interested in Boston because he\u2019s from nearby Brockton. But maybe not. A lot of guys don\u2019t like coming back home to play in the Association, for numerous reasons.<\/p>\n
Silver faced multiple questions Saturday about tanking and its growing, calcifying impact on more and more of his teams. To be sure, the projected strength of this draft class is the chief catalyst for so many teams opting to go paws up with so much of the regular season remaining. Whatever the reason, having almost a third of the league not trying to win is beyond an anchor on the NBA, way post corrosive.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy sense is, talking to GMs and coaches around the league, that there\u2019s probably even more parity than is reflected in our records,\u201d Silver said. \u201cThat goes to the incentive issue. It\u2019s not clear to me, for example, that the 30th-performing team is that much measurably worse than the 22nd-performing team, particularly if you have incentive to perform poorly to get a better draft pick.\u201d<\/p>\n
True, perhaps. But context matters. The Pacers would not be tanking this year if Tyrese Haliburton hadn\u2019t ruptured his Achilles\u2019 in Game 7 of the finals last June, which means they probably would have spent into the luxury tax to keep center Myles Turner.<\/a> Assuming no further catastrophic injuries this season, they\u2019d likely be back near the top of the standings in the East, and they wouldn\u2019t have moved Bennedict Mathurin to the Clippers for Ivica Zubac \u2013 who wouldn\u2019t have been a target if Turner was still on the team.<\/p>\nSo, there\u2019s no guarantee of outcome, only one of opportunity. Nor is there any single proposal to repair the broken lottery system that will make everyone happy. But we\u2019re at the point where radical solutions might be the only thing left to try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INGLEWOOD, Calif. \u2013 Full speed ahead, NBA. The draft is no longer sacrosanct. Commissioner Adam Silver\u2019s news conference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,6,12,2294],"class_list":{"0":"post-606177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-draft","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-nba-draft","11":"tag-opinion"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116080108416160468","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}