A Radical Idea To Change The NBA

Here is an idea to help increase the competitive balance in sports, improve the salary differential for players coming into a league versus veterans, and still let fans connect with players and teams. It also rewards teams for winning while still allowing teams that have a bad season to improve quickly without having to go through a 'rebuilding process'. There has been a lot of talk lately about how the NBA has become boring or predictable in a matter of speaking. People are talking about how that the same eight NBA teams have won the championship the past 30 years.

It's actually an idea that some fantasy league's use every year.

Let's use the NBA as the example for this since their season just ended.

The Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA Champion. Now that the season is over every team in the league would be asked to submit a list of three players that the team would like to retain the rights to for the following season. After every team has protected three players everybody else in the league becomes elegible for the draft that year. This gives teams and players, like the Toronto Raptors and Hedo Turkoglu, a way to part without

The draft would be a serpentine draft where the team that won the NBA Championship would draft first and the team that lost in the NBA Championship would draft second. From there it would go to the team with the best record for the third pick and down.

First round would look like this:

Los Angeles Lakers

Boston Celtics

Cleveland Cavilers

Orlando Magic

Dallas Mavericks

Phoenix Suns

Denver Nuggets

Atlanta Hawks

Utah Jazz

Portland Trailblazers

San Antonio Spurs

Oklahoma City Thunder

Miami Heat

Milwaukee Bucks

Charlotte Bobcats

Houston Rockets

Chicago Bulls

Toronto Raptors

Memphis Grizzlies

New Orleans Hornets

Indiana Pacers

New York Knicks

Los Angeles Clippers

Detroit Pistons

Philadelphia 76ers

Golden State Warriors

Washington Wizards

Sacramento Kings

Minnesota Timberwolves

New Jersey Nets

And then the second round goes in reverse. So the New Jersey Nets would get back to back picks at the end of the first round and beginging of the second round. The odd rounds would have the Los Angeles Lakers drafting first in that round and even rounds would have the New Jersey Nets drafting first in that round.

This would allow vetran players to generally get paid more than the rookies coming into the league.

This idea allows teams to improve quickly, not get stuck under salaries that would handicap a team from improving imediately, and still allow them to keep their stars so fans would be able to identify with a franchise and sell merchandise.

This also allows players to get paid what they are worth every year and improve their status with teams. Obviously for players you would have to something where they could negotiate a release from a team, a contract offer to them can not be less than or more than 20% of what they made the previous season, etc. Teams would have a certain amount of time to come to an agreement with the three players they are keeping, or they could choose to let that player go and sign someone else from the roster.

There would be a lot to work out with idea between players and owners of the teams, but this idea would benefit everyone involved from the players to the teams and the league and sales of merchandise. Keeps the fans interested in the NBA after the NBA Championship is over by being interested in who their team is going to keep and who they will draft. It would make the NBA a topic to talk about even in the off season, much like it is with this year's free agent class.