The Associations gift is also its curse; it's the professional sports league that relies the most on individual talent. This makes the NBA far more marketable than the helmeted goons of the NFL & NHL and workmanlike tedium of Major League Baseball. This is not just a marketing ploy, or the fact that we get to see these guys up close in HD and courtside. Basketball is ultimately a game that one or two guys can dominate. And at any given time in the NBA, there are at most 12 of those guys, while 16 teams make the playoffs. That means that if you're one of the dozen superstars, it basically doesn't matter where you play, you'll be in the tournament. So why the hell would you stay in Cleveland?
The prospect of nuclear winter was in fact a good one for the league - everyone sitting on their hands while college football and the Boston Red Sox search for redemption dominated Sportscenter would have showed the NBA how little its regular season is missed. Sure, come April we would have felt a little emptiness, but by then we've got the Masters, the NFL draft, MLB opening day and the Final Four. Yes, we all would have missed the playoffs; we would not have missed a mid-January Nets-Bobcats game. There are far too many meaningless games played in the NBA regular season, meaningless in two ways: first, lacking playoff implications; and second, lacking star power. Rather than going back to the same old song, and having to petulantly block the Chris Paul trade to avoid the rise of another "super team" (I thought the Lake show already was a super team?), we should have had a nice long reconstructionist timeout where we remedied these two problems. Here are the three proposals to make the league more exciting from October to March.
1. Make the playoffs smaller. I know, the playoffs are by far the best part of the year. Everyone is trying and stuff! As fun as it is to see Brandon Roy remember his own name for a quarter and a half against the Mavericks, are the 2010-2011 Blazers really the best the NBA has to offer? Why are they playing marquee games that we all have to watch? Same for the Pacers and the Hawks and the Knicks. In basketball, everyone who is decent gets in. Every big name you can think of gets to play post-season basketball. Well what if only 12 teams made the playoffs? I know, I know, the Grizz wouldn't have made the cut last year - or maybe they would have because they would have been trying harder all season. I'm a firm believer that the only teams that should be allowed into the post-season are ones that have a legitimate shot of winning it all. And let me tell you something - last year's 76ers didn't get knocked out because the refs were on the take. They lost because they sucked. The other benefit of this is that legitimately good teams might miss out every once in a while, which would increase scrutiny, give us more guys to call choke artists, and heighten the drama of every game throughout the course of the season.
2. Make the league smaller. Mega-contraction. Don't just cut 2 or 4 teams - cut 6. You redistribute all those expansion rosters onto the other teams, suddenly the Thunder have a deep bench and maybe John Wall has someone competent to oop his alley. Again, no one wants to see those terrible teams with no star power, and we don't have 30 superstars. Shit, we don't have 24 superstars (Don't Monta Ellis on my head and tell me it's raining), but cutting the league by 17% would be a start. The owners don't want to hear it, but if you want a juicy TV contract, you have to provide a juicy product. And LaMarcus Aldredge ain't that.
3. Increase Loyalty Incentives. Right now, a big star gives up 4 or 5 million dollars a year by choosing a big market over a small one. Buy guys like Dwight Howard will make a lot more money in LA on endorsements than he will in Cougartown. Also, they give you a Kardashian when you get off the plane. But what if Howard was giving up 10 or 15 million dollars a year? That's right - if hometown teams want to keep their franchise players, they should be able to pay them 30 to 35 million dollars a year, while no free agent changing teams will be able to make more than 20. The max could increase with MVPs won or All-Nba teams made. This last measure is two-fold. First, it will make stars think twice - I don't think it will keep everyone in place but it would make a guy like Chris Bosh think about selling his soul to be third banana. More importantly, it would be harder to put together a dream team under the cap, and it's hard to imagine a guy like Lebron agreeing to get paid half of what his teammate Dwayne Wade does.
The NBA didn't try anything radical in its resolution of the lockout. It went back to business as usual with both sides unhappy and trying to buck the system. Chris Paul's aborted trade is the first of many unfortunate situations that will arise as the result of avoiding the problem as opposed to confronting it. The problem is the players in the NBA have more power than those in any other league. A system must be put in place that both harnesses this talent and encourages players monetarily to pursue their legacies independently of one another.
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