NBA: Will the new anti-tampering rules prove to be effective?

New rules

The new anti-tampering rules are essentially a beefing up of the old with a few new additions. Larger individual and team fines will be levied for those who are found to have been in violation of the rules. New rules include suspension of executives, a requirement for teams to keep all communications with free agents for a year and random audits of up to five teams among other things. You can check out the entire breakdown here.

For me though, it’s not the content of the revised and new rules that are going to be the problem, it’s enforcement. For instance, remember all those Boeings that were crashing not too long ago? Part of what allowed that to happen is that the FAA doesn’t have the man-power to properly do their job so they were trusting Boeing to police themselves.

I immediately see similar issues with some of the new anti-tampering rules. Specifically record retention, certification and mandatory reporting. These rules would be absolutely key to the ability to levy fines, issue suspensions, and void contracts. But it’s up to the teams themselves to retain records, certify that they didn’t engage in tampering and report requests for benefits that would circumvent the NBA’s salary cap policies.

But how is that even going to work? It seems to me to be putting an awful lot of faith in a group of people, the majority of whom engaged in practices that made these new rules necessary in the first place.

Like seriously, can you see James Dolan calling up Adam Silver in July of 2020 and saying, “Listen, Adam. The Knicks have just been so bad for so long we decided we needed to really go after Andre Igoudala and Gordon Hayward. We started talking to them in January, we’ve promised to purchase their homes in New York and a few other things. They agreed to come play for us in March. Oh, and here are the transcripts of all of our communications. I’m really really sorry.”

Okay, yes, I’m exaggerating for effect, but you see the problem, no? Whether or not these rules are going to be followed has nothing to do with the possible consequences and everything to do with an honor code since the responsibility for reporting violations rests with the teams themselves. How would Silver even know what communications were kept and destroyed? And if a team really wants to sign a specific player and their agent asked for perks, why wouldn’t a team executive just be careful to keep it to themselves?

In the digital age that we live in, there’s no doubt that it can be easier to be caught doing things you’re not supposed to. But by the same token, as long as interactions are removed from the digital space, it’s impossible to prove they happened at all.

Pics or it didn’t happen, am I right?

Do I have a better solution? No, definitely not. It’s a big issue, it’s complicated and nuanced. I completely agree that there needs to be a balance between players’ right to make the best decision for themselves, and upholding their responsibility to the contracts they signed. This free agency season definitely represented an indicator that the player-empowerment movement has a dangerous potential to get out of hand in a way that would ultimately damage the league.

Just as ‘Pogo’ Joe Caldwell’s story showed that protections needed to be in place for the players it’s obvious that something had to be done to protect the interests of the teams.

The question is, will these measures be effective in doing so? For my part, I don’t think the new rules will be the meaningful solution that the league needs. Instead, I think it represents a knee-jerk reaction to the events of the summer. Maybe it will keep negotiations on the straight and narrow for a period of time. Ultimately, though, I think the vote on Friday is just the beginning of what will be, by necessity, a much longer, much more complicated conversation.

And personally, I’m not convinced that it’s a conversation that can ever come to a reasonable conclusion. I think that players are more aware than ever of the power they wield and are willing to throw their weight around. Because of that, this is really just a tug-of-war wherein, for the time being, the teams have gained a little ground; ground that will only be given up and regained over and over again.