How to improve the NBA product

by Jeffersap on Nov 19, 2010 4:59 PM MST

Let me begin by saying I am not a fan of David Stern. His latest rule change giving referees authority roughly equal to an SS prison guard is ridiculous.

Referees can literally sway games. Suppose it's game 7 of the Western Conference finals. Lakers vs. Blazers. Blazers down by 2. The Dread Pirate Roberts hits a 3 pointer, .1 second left. Blazers win.

But wait! Matthews has a smile on his face. He does a fist pump. You hear a whistle blow. That's a tech. Tsk tsk, emotion in sports is not a good thing. Now Matthews is upset! He shakes his head. A second tech is called and Matthews ejected. NBA darling Kobe Bryant is awarded the two free shots and Lakers go on to the title round.

Now would a ref throw a game that much? Maybe not. We'll ask Donaghy. I know I'll take flak for this ridiculous scenario, I'll get called a Kobe hater. It's not about Kobe--I just used this as an example.

My point is that refs can literally tilt games like this if they were so inclined.

Do we want that?

Here's a few other beefs I have with the NBA.

1. All star voting system

I just played Wii Sports and my Millsap mii was on my team. In only 3 minutes he had 24 points, 2 blocks, a steal and 2 assists. If he were to play 30 minutes thats' 240 points, 20 blocks, 10 steals and 20 assists.

All Star? Yes. Better than Jordan? YES!!! Wilt who?

In all seriousness though, it's a joke that guys like Chalmers are getting nominated over guys like Millsap. What's worse, is NBA.com says to vote for your FAVORITE--not the BEST--players. They are upfront that it is a popularity contest.

Simple solution. Chose the candidates the week of Thanksgiving. In the world of modern technology it should not be terribly difficult to get ballots out, especially since I suspect most voting is done over the internet or texting.

Now, there are a lot of PFs who deserve to be in the vote in the West. Griffin. Gasol. Odom. Lee (in a normal year when he's not injured) Beasley. Aldridge. Love. Green. Scola. Duncan. Randolph. West. Dirk. And yes, Paul Millsap. Not everyone can be an all star--but at least recognize players who are playing well.

That's a change that needs to be made.

2. Separate Conference seeding

Now, I suspect this will be my most unpopular idea. In short, it bothers me that the difference last year between 2nd seed in the west and 8th seed was only a handful of games, where in the east teams barely making .500 are in the playoffs.

Make it a 16 team pool. If there are more West teams than east, or vice versa, so be it. I'm willing to bet the number 9 west seed could take down last years' 8 eastern seed.

Now I realize this isn't traditional, but it would make the playoffs more competitive.

3. Los Angeles Clippers

These poor guys live in the shadow of the Lakers. Let them have their own city. San Diego for instance. Seattle. Kentucky is a big basketball state with no pro team. Kansas City. The big city in New Mexico that I can't spell without looking up. Or my personal choice, Las Vegas.

Give this team a chance to have it's own arena, it's own fanbase, undiluted by Lakers fans.

Just my opinion.

4. Salary cap

In the NBA there are small market teams, like the Jazz, and large market teams, like the Lakers. Small market teams often have troubles keeping up with the spending of the larger teams. Last year the Laker's spent 90 million plus on their players, well above the cap and what other teams can pay. Here are a couple options.

a. Hard cap NFL style. I love that the small town Green Bay can field as competitive of a team as big town New York.

b. Hard cap with pay scale

Each team has a cap of 79 million, usable in the following way: 1 player earning 12 mil, 1 11 mil, 1 10 mil, and so on until the 12th get $1 million a year. Two roster spots with $500,00 salary is available. So the Jazz may give the 12 mil spot to D Will, 11 to Millsap, 10 to Jefferson and so on. Two exceptions are available. The first is a Bird's right type. You may, once every 5 years, IF you are re-signing your own player, convert an 11 million slot to a 12 million slot (2 12 million slots now) So teams will have to be selective on who they give it to every 5 years, but it would somewhat help with retaining players. The second is, if due to injury another player needs to be signed, a 3rd 500,000 spot opens up. Teams can also put a franchise tag on two players requiring them to be paid the 12 mil slot. So, in this year's free agent class, Toronto and Cleveland could've put that tag on Bosh and James, and MIami could not have gotten both of them to sign. They are still free to sign with any club that has the 12 million option still open.

Are there flaws to this idea? Many. In fact, it's a borderline dumb idea. I just threw an idea out there to illustrate that there are different salary cap options that would level the playing field. People much smarter than me can surely come up with a more equitable way for teams to spend on player salaries.

I love basketball. I love the NBA. These are just a few ways of making it a little better.

All comments are the opinion of the commenter and not necessarily that of SLC Dunk or SB Nation.

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Comments

1. All Star voting it is what it is. I agree that they shouldn’t put out ballots until december and they should limit the number of players per team. Each teams players should submit who they want nominated say 3players per team your NBAPU rep sends them in.
2. Leave the seedings the way they are. It costs to much to travel coast to coast in earlier rounds.You would also need more days inbetween some games for travel. I think the conference that wins the AS game should have home court like in MLB. GIves validity to a pointless game and avoids the right conference is weaker than the left.
3. Laker fans are everywhere and I wish they weren’t.
4. Hard cap is the only way to even it up. Or only allow a set amount of salary to play on the court at the same time.

by neds on Nov 26, 2010 7:02 PM MST reply actions

on #2

I’m not sure it would necessarily make the playoffs more competitive. The only team that would make it in that had been left out was 42-40 Houston, knocking out a 41-41 Chicago team. The fact that Chicago made the playoffs last year over the Rockets was hardly egregious. They were only 1 game worse! Not only that, but the Bulls were much more competitive vs. Cleveland in round 1 than I could ever have hoped the Rockets would’ve been against the Lakers. The eastern conference drop off didn’t really occur, at least based on W-L records, until spots 9 and 10. The seeding would’ve been very different, but I think people also forget that the Cav’s and the Magic had better records than anyone out west. Here’s roughly how the match-ups would’ve gone (I didn’t figure out all the tiebreakers, with which there would need to be new criteria anyway, so a couple may be slightly off):

1 CLE vs 16 HOU – a laugher. Another downside of this setup is that you lose rivalries. In this case, you get the Rockets vs the Cav’s instead of the Bulls-Cav’s that was actually quite compelling. Our loss.
8 UTA vs 9 BOS – This one’s interesting, but again we’d miss out on a rivalry, as instead we got Jazz-Nuggets.

2 ORL vs 15 CHA – meh.
7 ATL vs 14 MIL – revenge of the meh.

3 LAL vs 13 MIA – LAL-OKC was better.
6 DEN vs 10 POR – interesting, but no better than Jazz-Nuggets.

4 DAL vs 12 OKC – Hey, maybe OKC gets out of round 1! Score one for the eighth best team in the west! What do we give up? A killer OKC-LAL series and a near-classic DAL-SAS? Oh.
5 PHO vs 11 SAS – It’s match-ups like this that make you want to change things. Great rivalry. No way this matchup could ever happen under the old setup. Wait a second. What’s that? Oh right, it did.

So, in short, no, I don’t think pooled seeding makes things more competitive, and it renders the finals less interesting because the teams have been playing competition that was far more comparable than what you had before. You end up missing out on the mystery you get by not knowing as well how the eastern playoff teams stack up against the west. Given last years 7 game finals series, I think the east did better than we on this side of the NBA nation would’ve expected. All this, of course, in order to move the Rockets in over the Bulls and give the lower seeded west teams more winnable match-ups.

In the words of Mr. Horse: “No, sir, I don’t like it.”

Another thing about this setup: it makes it completely unfair that you play more games against conference foes than against the other conference at the end of the year. Since wins and losses are basically the same no matter who they come against, seeding would be more screwed up than ever by the comparative strength of the bottom of the conference. At least the records effect on seeding now within each conference is more or less apples to apples (I know, sometimes you only get 3 games against certain non-division teams, but that’s pretty negligible), let’s not do away with that.

I also don’t like the idea of validating the AS game by making it affect seeding. There are usually no more than 5 players in that game that end up being affected at all by it. The rivalries in the League don’t tend to be east-west, they tend to be about who you normally play, and often due to geography. It still wouldn’t help the AS game get any more competitive, for the most part. What’s the best case scenario? Kobe decides the west needs home court for the finals and takes it upon himself to ensure that, leading to other players effectively being frozen out? Pinning this on a game each team maybe had one practice to prepare for? No, thank you.

The All-Star game is really less a game than a ceremony, and the other events associated with it both past and present (old-timers game, shooting stars, skills, dunk, and three-point competition, concerts) only reinforce this. If the NBA intended for it to be competitive like a regular season game, players would get paid like it were, which helps somewhat to mitigate the risk of injury they take on with this 83rd game. Really, though, the best way to accomplish this would be to play on the players’ sense of pride ala the NHL (the NBA should follow the NHL’s lead? Weird, inorite?) and have the top 2 vote getters as team captains who pick their teams from the a pool of the top 22 players, 8 others chosen by fans and 14 by coaches. This would make it both more competitive and more spectacular. It wins no matter what you’re looking for out of an all-star game.

Math is money and money is math

by EATING on Nov 27, 2010 10:45 AM MST reply actions