Lockout Ideas

With the NFL player assiociation essentally “losing” in court, the NBA decided it was the best time to throw out a revised deal for the players assiociation. Perfect timing. What was included in this new deal? A 45 million dollar cap AND non-guarenteed contracts. Let me be the first to predict that deal will be declined. Anywho, this got me wondering, what do I want to see changed in the NBA? What are some of the things I want the NBA to do? So, I sat and picked the best 4 ideas of mine that the NBA should consider. Here you go:

Lower ( or limit) player contracts

–  Every season, we can agree there’s at least 5 to 10 terrible contracts signed. Well, I think the issue is the money tied into it. Let’s consider this: Drew Gooden signed a 5 year/32 million dollar contract this offseason with Milwaukee. Many considered this a terrible contract. If the deal was a 5 year 20 million dollar contract, we would have called it a solid role player signing. While we can’t control the overpayments made in free agency, we could change the highs and lows and then we go from there. I look at it like this:

Superstar: 12 million max
Starter: 7 million max
Role player: 5 million max
End of bench: 900k-1.3 million

Although I disagree with it, I think capping, or defining what a superstar contract is could help, or at least send down a trickle effect to other players and thier contracts. If LeBron James earns 12 million a season, then players like Nene or Hedo Turkoglu should earn anymore then 7 million.

Develop the idea of  the Franchise Tag

–  Blame LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwight Howard, Deron Williams and (eventually) Chris Paul for all this. The NBA needs a franchise tag. What confuses me about today is, most of these players were born in the 70’s and watched alot of basketball in the 80’s and early 90’s. When I think of the top group of players in the NBA at the time, not many superstars were dealt around those times. In fact, I can only players I can say were considered superstar and then traded were: Moses Malone (1986), Charles Barkely (1992) and Clyde Drexler (1995). Regardless, the NBA has changed to a more friendly atmoshpere and players are secretly becoming friends, making deals and picking where they wanna play. I think a franchise tag at least gives a team one more chance in dealing a star if need be.

The biggest question is: How to rule a franchise tag? Would the tag be a every year thing? Can you use a franchise tag on a player multiple times. If I was the NBA, I would make it a one and done use meaning, a player could be tagged once by a team. Similar to the NFL, I think the NBA should use the average of the top 5 players at the tagee’s position.

Change lottery rules

– This is more something I thought of. I’m tired of seeing the same NBA teams in the high lottery (picks 1-10). My idea? Let’s demerit teams for being in the lottery consecutive seasons. My example: the Minnesota Timberwolves have been the lottery for the past 5 seasons, I think you should lose pecentage points for being in the lottery. As much as we want to give a bad team a potential out, after multiple seasons, I think you should be penalized for being that terrible.

Advance and rebuild the NBDL

– The argument that “If you can go to war at age 18, you can go to the NBA at 18” annoys me. Comparing the NBA to war is crazy in itself, but I digress.  Many kids need money right away and some have basketball as their out and way to earn it. Brandon Jennings skipped over college and went overseas. Since then, guys like Jeremy Tyler and Jermaine Peterson went overseas to advance their careers, with little to no success. If your the NBA, I think it’s time to make the NBDL the alternative to college. Let’s face it: How many kids in college get kicked off the team, or suspended for low grades? How many kids are going to college simply because they have to?

This is my suggestion. The first thing is to expand the NBDL to 26 team, from the 14 teams currently. That opens up more jobs. To expand, why not place these teams in places that love basketball, but don’t have the NBA there? Expand to more places like Tennessee, South Carolina, Buffalo, or even Canada? I’m sure we can find 12 more areas to play basketball.

The second is create open events where players can come in and tryout for teams. Three or four open tryouts for all high school kids age 18 or older. Then, this gives the NBDL a chance to expand it’s market, as well as provides kids a solid alternative over high school and Europe.