NBA Draft/Offseason

DSafetyGuy · Post by **DSafetyGuy** » Sat Jul 12, 2014 7:33 pm

The players are going to opt out of the CBA after the 2016-17 season and be looking to drastically alter the 50-50 split of basketball-related income, salary cap, etc. I would expect few non-maximum contract players to sign contracts that go beyond that time.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Sun Jul 13, 2014 6:22 am

Paul Pierce to the Wizards??!!

Wow, Lionel Hollins still winning friends and influencing people, i see. A great coach, but not the cuddly type. Wonder if he and pierce spoke after Hollins was hired by the Nets...

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Sun Jul 13, 2014 6:43 am

Apparently te point of that is that the max contract will be maxxier by then because of tv rights/increased cap, etc.

EdRomero · Post by **EdRomero** » Sun Jul 13, 2014 8:47 am

tennbengal wrote:Paul Pierce to the Wizards??!!

Wow, Lionel Hollins still winning friends and influencing people, i see. A great coach, but not the cuddly type. Wonder if he and pierce spoke after Hollins was hired by the Nets...

Or he'd rather play with John Wall instead of Deron Williams. Also, maybe KG told him he's retiring. Actually, the Wizards probably just offered the most money.

Also, any guesses on which player will get burned by taking a max contract short term rather than long term, and then get injured or decline rapidly when the short deal ends?

DC47 · Post by **DC47** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 6:21 pm

The Pistons are loading up with talent. Cartier Martin, Jodie Meeks, Aaron Gray and now D.J. Augustin and Caron Butler. The Fab Five! This is what it takes to win.

And all the Cav's could do was draft Wiggins and sign James. If you put those two guys on the court against the Piston's Fab Five it's clear that the latter group wins. You could even make it Irving, Wiggins and James and the Pistons will win. Life is good for Pistons fans right now.

Ryan · Post by **Ryan** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 7:27 am

DC47 wrote:The Pistons are loading up with talent. Cartier Martin, Jodie Meeks, Aaron Gray and now D.J. Augustin and Caron Butler. The Fab Five! This is what it takes to win.

And all the Cav's could do was draft Wiggins and sign James. If you put those two guys on the court against the Piston's Fab Five it's clear that the latter group wins. You could even make it Irving, Wiggins and James and the Pistons will win. Life is good for Pistons fans right now.

You have to hand it to Detroit for staying away from the circus from Day 1 by drafting Darko.

Gunpowder · Post by **Gunpowder** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 9:18 am

AB_skin_test wrote:Apparently te point of that is that the max contract will be maxxier by then because of tv rights/increased cap, etc.

Maxi-paids

DC47 · Post by **DC47** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 3:38 pm

Ryan wrote:
DC47 wrote:The Pistons are loading up with talent. Cartier Martin, Jodie Meeks, Aaron Gray and now D.J. Augustin and Caron Butler. The Fab Five! This is what it takes to win.

And all the Cav's could do was draft Wiggins and sign James. If you put those two guys on the court against the Piston's Fab Five it's clear that the latter group wins. You could even make it Irving, Wiggins and James and the Pistons will win. Life is good for Pistons fans right now.
You have to hand it to Detroit for staying away from the circus from Day 1 by drafting Darko.

Even with Joe Dumars shunted to an advisor role and John Hammond exiled to Milwauk-beria, there's considerable PTSD in the Pistons' front office. If LeBron James changed his name to LeDarko James and offered to play for the Pistons on a veterans' minimum deal, they would no doubt decline. Just too much collective pain.

Sub-cultures tend to create identity niches based on some kind of connection to an external reference system. So hip-hoppers are coded according to their favorite old-school performer. Sixties people had their favorite Beatle. Deadheads no doubt identify by their favorite performance of "Dark Star." There's always something.

For Pistons fans of a certain age, it's "the player you would have drafted, at that time, instead of Darko." So, I'm a Bosh. I know many Wades. I've never met an admitted Darko. They may all have killed themselves by now.

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Thu Jul 24, 2014 12:54 pm

This could go in a couple of threads...

Rams Fanny · Post by **Rams Fanny** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 1:19 pm

I just read that the 76ers are fighting any changes to the draft because they are planning to suck the next couple years. Which got me thinking...why not just eliminate the draft? All eligible players become free agents, limit the max rookie deal to three years, and eliminate the rookie pay scale. Teams such as the Spurs, Cavs, Heat, etc are likely to be up against the cap whereas shitty teams usually have cap space or at least scrubs they can release to create space. If the Sixers are able to offer $7M/yr to a player to start and the Spurs are only able to offer $2.5/yr to be in a rotation, sheer greed would take care of competitive balance issues. Of course, smarter GMs would be able to clear space but wouldn't that be better than 13 teams not seriously competing the last two months of the season?

EdRomero · Post by **EdRomero** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 1:34 pm

I like it in theory, but with the NBA, more than any other league, it seems that Florida and Texas team with their tax laws and LA and NY with secondary deals available (plus it's NY and LA) have a huge advantage signing free agents. I don't know if it was talked about during my sabbatical, but I like Grantland's solution: Lottery Wheel

DC47 · Post by **DC47** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 2:05 pm

I don't think tanking is the biggest problem with the NBA draft. Teams that tank almost always have very little talent. Yes, they get that way intentionally. But it's still a fact that you are adding a high draft pick to a very bad team. That's the fundamental goal of the draft order being tied to the prior season's results. And tanking isn't a guarantee of future success. Many things have to work out right for this to be successful. And there is a serious financial cost to tanking -- alienating fans, leading to lower attendance and ratings on radio and TV.

A bigger problem than tanking is when teams that have enough talent to almost make the play-offs, but just miss and then get bumped up to one of the top positions in the draft, against the odds. And then this happens again a few years later. It doesn't happen often. But it seems to me that it violates the fundamental intention of the draft. Why not eliminate this possibility with a simple rule? Something along the lines of no team that jumps from outside the top 3 to inside the top 3 can do this more than once every 8 years. Slightly more complex would be to have the length of the ban on draft order movement tied to the position in the draft when the first jump occurs. So a jump from #8 would yield an 8 year ban on draft position jumping, and a jump from #6 would yield a 6 year ban. A bit more complex would be to tie the number of years for the ban to the number of draft positions jumped.

As I said, I think tanking is a lesser problem. And it's harder to address without doing damage to the primary reason for having a draft order tied to results -- helping bad teams get better, faster. But one way to moderate the success of the tanking strategy would be to limit how often a team could be in the top 3 (or pick another number) within a certain number of years, regardless of season results. So, for example, if a team picks first this year they would be limited to being no higher than fourth for X number of years, regardless of the team's results. There could be similar restrictions for picking second and third.

A team could obviously still tank once with no immediate downside. But would they tank again within the restriction window? In order to pick no higher than fourth (or any number the rules specified)? The downside here is that it would penalize teams that are legitimately very bad -- no tanking involved -- for multiple seasons in a short period of time.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 2:17 pm

DC47 wrote:And there is a serious financial cost to tanking -- alienating fans, leading to lower attendance and ratings on radio and TV.

I'm not sure how much I agree with this. There's a serious financial cost associated with losing, but that's going to happen whether in tank mode or just being honestly bad. I think more and more fans actually embrace tanking; if you're not going to be good now, be bad now and good later.

DC47 · Post by **DC47** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 2:46 pm

mister d wrote:
DC47 wrote:And there is a serious financial cost to tanking -- alienating fans, leading to lower attendance and ratings on radio and TV.
I'm not sure how much I agree with this. There's a serious financial cost associated with losing, but that's going to happen whether in tank mode or just being honestly bad. I think more and more fans actually embrace tanking; if you're not going to be good now, be bad now and good later.

Some may embrace the strategy. I certainly wish the Pistons had tanked at some point in recent years rather than whipping a dead horse.

But in general I'd expect more fans to watch (in person, on tv and radio) a team on the way to a 35 win season than a 20 win season. And some will disengage for more than a year. Some will never become fans at all.

That's a material short-term cost to take into account when deciding whether to tank. Another is that tanking is a mixed bag when it comes to player development. More playing time for less experienced players is a plus. That can result in finding valuable players who were buried somewhere, as well as faster development. But if the team culture goes downhill due to the impact of losing plus the absence of successful veterans, the young players are likely to be learning some bad things too.

Still, I think fewer basketball and football teams tank than should. Most likely due to owners' lack of knowledge and unwillingness to experience significant pain with their hobby project, and career risk-aversion by coaches, GMs and presidents.

Giff · Post by **Giff** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 3:00 pm

mister d wrote:
DC47 wrote:And there is a serious financial cost to tanking -- alienating fans, leading to lower attendance and ratings on radio and TV.
I'm not sure how much I agree with this. There's a serious financial cost associated with losing, but that's going to happen whether in tank mode or just being honestly bad. I think more and more fans actually embrace tanking; if you're not going to be good now, be bad now and good later.

There were tons of Rockets fans who hated that they never tanked after losing McGrady and Yao to injuries. I thought it was great that Morey would do what he could to put up a consistent playoff contender with no stars until he was able to find the trade to acquire one, then land another via free agency. I feel like you see a lot of the same teams over and over in the lottery and fans just stop caring too much.

Gunpowder · Post by **Gunpowder** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 3:08 pm

Giff, what do you think about the Astros? They've been near unwatchable for years but now it looks like it was probably the right move.

EdRomero · Post by **EdRomero** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 3:16 pm

I think the perception of tanking is more of an issue for promoting the entire league. As a Celtics fan, I was okay with them tanking, but it's tough to like a league where so many teams are intentionally bad. I figure that has some sort of financial impact on the league.

DC47 · Post by **DC47** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 3:18 pm

You can become a good team fairly quickly in basketball, compared with football and baseball. It's a smaller numbers game. Three or four good players and you are very competitive. So you can get there with a small number of moves. The salary cap generates free agents and cap-triggered trades that a GM can use to get from bad to good in one off-season. Pile up draft picks and gave a few work out -- even if you are not picking one or two, and you land good but not great players -- and you are very good.

DC47 · Post by **DC47** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 3:19 pm

EdRomero wrote:I think the perception of tanking is more of an issue for promoting the entire league. As a Celtics fan, I was okay with them tanking, but it's tough to like a league where so many teams are intentionally bad. I figure that has some sort of financial impact on the league.

I wonder if even fans who accept the strategy pull back from buying tickets to watch the results? And you know that there are many fans who simply aren't as knowledgeable or patient who are going to pull the plug.

govmentchedda · Post by **govmentchedda** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 3:22 pm

EdRomero wrote:I think the perception of tanking is more of an issue for promoting the entire league. As a Celtics fan, I was okay with them tanking, but it's tough to like a league where so many teams are intentionally bad. I figure that has some sort of financial impact on the league.

Agreed. I'm a casual to semi-avid NBA fan, and have never gotten behind the closest team (Magic) basically because Orlando sucks, and even when they were good I never really got hooked. I was thinking recently that the Sixers are going to be really good (even without tanking this year, and the 3rd really high draft pick in a row) once Embiid and Noel are playing together. I also like what Washington is doing, and have at least one year of Beal at Florida to hang my fandom hat on. Maybe I'll just stay a non-partisan fan.

Giff · Post by **Giff** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 3:46 pm

Gunpowder wrote:Giff, what do you think about the Astros? They've been near unwatchable for years but now it looks like it was probably the right move.

They were unwatchable even when they were trying! I think it's harder to compare sports, but the previous ownership just completely destroyed that farm system, so I understand why the new regime took this approach. Ed Wade did make some nice moves on his way out (the Hunter Pence trade was very nice for us), but the drafting and free agent signings from 2006 onward were awful. They had at least one draft that produced zero major leagures, I believe. I do think they've gone to the extreme a little too much, but I think a lot of that is the product of the way the system is set up. It will be interesting to see what they do this offseason.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 3:53 pm

Yup, on the system. Every league that reverses order or weights the lottery incents bad teams to be as bad as possible and are asking them to go against self-interest by trying to win 30 rather than 20. Unweighted lotteries would be cool.

HaulCitgo · Post by **HaulCitgo** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 3:59 pm

Except you could be in the NBA cellar for a long, long time with a unweighted lotto. Id still prefer it but you need all stars to win in the NBA and teams unlikely to get free agents would probably dissolve. Actually, its perfect!

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 4:09 pm

If you're worried about the overall quality of the game, I think you'd take the risk that a team would repeatedly be unlucky w/ lottery placement and the picks they make versus the current race-to-the-bottom system.

Rush2112 · Post by **Rush2112** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 5:06 pm

DC47 wrote: The salary cap generates free agents and cap-triggered trades that a GM can use to get from bad to good in one off-season.

Though in reality there are a very few destination teams for FAs. Texas, FL, and LAL/C have an almost unfair advantage in FA.

DC47 · Post by **DC47** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 8:06 pm

They certainly have advantages. But Al Jefferson, Marc Gasol, Iguodola, Paul Millsap, Gortat, Hayward and other good players have landed elsewhere. Not to mention Ben Gordon, Josh Smith, and now Jodie Meeks going to a certain on-the-rise Midwestern city of culture and opulence. Fortunately there are paths other than free agency for the unfavored teams to trod on the way up.

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 9:17 pm

I'm going out on a limb here - The Lakers will be the worst team in NBA history that has two hall of famers on its roster.

They aren't just bad, they are abysmal.

Giff · Post by **Giff** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 9:19 pm

But their message board will be filled with some really rational fans of a certain player. I'll really miss that on the other message board I frequent.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 9:25 pm

Check the 2007-08 Miami Heat.

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 9:33 pm

mister d wrote:Check the 2007-08 Miami Heat.

Good call.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 9:58 pm

It wasn't from memory, I just have too much time on my hands. Do we assume that team had 3 or 4 or 5?

Gunpowder · Post by **Gunpowder** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 10:21 pm

That team was so garbage and was the last NBA team I saw live. 2008 Heat v. Michael Redd midrange jumper-chucking Bucks. Guh.

Wade and Shaq must have played like 20 games combined that year.

Joe K · Post by **Joe K** » Fri Aug 01, 2014 9:58 pm

Tough offseason for Indiana. Paul George just suffered a gruesome broken leg tonight in a Team USA scrimmage. The slo-mo replay was awful.

Rex · Post by **Rex** » Fri Aug 01, 2014 10:00 pm

don't watch it guys. and for pete's sake, don't post it here.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Sat Aug 02, 2014 6:57 am

man. rex was right. i got nauseous from that.

Johnny Carwash · Post by **Johnny Carwash** » Sat Aug 02, 2014 7:30 am

Yeah, I can't help but watch most times there's a "seriously, don't watch it" injury like this. For the morbidly curious, it's the basketball version of the Joe Thiesmann leg break, with the part of LT played by the stanchion under the goal (which was apparently closer to the court than normal).

This is already being talked about as a trigger to a move away from using established pros for international play.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Sat Aug 02, 2014 7:50 am

What i can't figure out is why they need a six week training camp.

Rex · Post by **Rex** » Sat Aug 02, 2014 8:04 am

It would be totally predictable but sucky if the owners use this as a launching point for pulling the pros from international competition.

AB_skin_test wrote:What i can't figure out is why they need a six week training camp.

Seems like about the same length as the soccer training camps, and those guys practice and play more regularly. What I can't figure out is why they are randomly visiting Senegal right before the tourney. Yo guys, Ebola. At least they're avoiding Atlanta, I guess.

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Sat Aug 02, 2014 8:30 am

I was avoiding it (I still haven't seen Kevin Ware!) but saw a pic embedded on Twitter last night. AH!!!!!!!!!

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Sat Aug 02, 2014 8:26 pm

ESPN currently citing "sources" to say that Paul George is likely to miss the season. They might as well just cite "common sense" to say that.