You're right that the All-Stars stat cuts both ways, but I was mostly using it to show that it's not the case that a significant majority of the great players in the league change teams early in their careers. Most of those 13 are veterans, which changes the math in several ways, most significantly because a lot of them came into the league before the 1998 lockout and major CBA overhaul. The way the salary structure is now, guys like LeBron, 'Melo and Wade have to play 3 years with the team that drafted them before they can get their real contract, and even then they're going to end up spending at least 3 more years before even having a chance of opting out or realistically pushing for a trade. But this also further refutes the implied argument that the current structure doesn't allow teams enough different ways of winning.

The other stat I should have included is that only 9 of those 29 All-Stars were taken in the top 3 of the draft. Clearly you don't need to win the lottery to win a title, or even to get a superstar, but it definitely helps to have a pick in the top 10 or so. Smart teams can make the playoffs and still end up with top 10 picks (see: Suns and Bulls), and they will reap the rewards even without picking Oden or Durant (and could even end up with a player that's better than both for the first year or two, when they're still fighting for titles). Remember, the Boston team that is complaining about getting screwed is the same one that picked Chauncey Billups 3rd and traded him away.

Posted at May 25, 2007 9:49 AM in response to Another Needed Reform

I really don't mean to sound snide, since I found this piece very well-written, but do you actually have any clue what you're talking about? You make several statements that are questionable at best, so let's take a look at a few of them:

If total salaries are capped, as management has managed to do for basketball and football (but not baseball), in order to restrain their own impulse to transfer money to their employees (an impulse that doesn't need restraining in similar hobbies, like art collecting and home renovation), then presumably every team would have the same amount of money over time and none would have an advantage over any other.

Umm, what? While you're correct that IN GENERAL most if not all of the teams in the NBA have enough money to spend up to the salary cap, you're completely ignoring the fact that it's not an iron-clad cap. Teams are allowed to go above and beyond to resign their own players, and the rules involving trades allow teams to trade players with expiring, vastly overpriced contracts for players making the same or more but with 4 or 5 years left on the deal. This is how a team like the Knicks can be paying the equivalent of a capped out team ($55 mil or so) to players that aren't playing for them anymore. (I think their total team salary is in the $150 mil range, counting all those other players). So while a salary cap may decrease the gap between the economic haves and have-nots, it certainly doesn't eliminate it entirely. You also completely overlook the fact that there are individual player salary caps in addition to the team caps. Just a few minor details.

Therefore, why not have the teams winning their division in the regular season be the teams that draft the highest? One could fear that the best teams would then get ever stronger. However, what's wrong with that?

Well, do you think that the NBA would be better if LeBron had gone to the '03 Spurs or Mavericks instead of the Cavs? Or if Tim Duncan had joined Michael Jordan's Bulls in 1997, during the middle of their second threepeat? There's no question that those teams would be better, and your argument that parity doesn't necessarily mean better entertainment is valid, but it's been a clear goal of most of the major sports for a long time now. Simply put, while having more great teams (and correspondingly more awful teams) might mean more interesting playoff matchups, it also significantly increases the chances that a team will get stuck in the cellar for even longer, possibly killing fan interest in an entire city. (or in the case of San Antonio, preventing it from becoming a big-time NBA town, despite having no other major sports teams, something that probably would never have happened without Duncan and the 3, going on 4 titles)

The drafted players don't often stay more than a few years with the team that drafts them...

Taking a look at the 06-07 NBA All-Stars, 16 of the 29 are still with the team that drafted them and of the remaining 13, 2 were taken in the 2nd round (Arenas and Boozer) and two of them were traded for each other (Shaq and Caron Butler). If you just look at players drafted in the Lottery, you see lots of players changing teams, but it's not the superstars, it's the busts. If a guy can play, and his team isn't a complete disaster, he's not going anywhere.

The system doesn't seem "plainly broken" to me, and for all the teams complaining about getting shafted, keep in mind that since the 1988 draft, only 3 players taken in the top 3 (the picks that the lottery decides) have won titles in their prime: Duncan, Shaq and Chauncey Billups (a few guys like Alonzo Mourning, Gary Payton and Glenn Robinson also won titles, but as backups at the end of their careers).

After so many harsh words, I'll end with a few kind ones: you're right that the NBA regular season needs to be tweaked to make it more exciting. Ideally, cutting 10-20 games from the schedule would make the most sense competitively, but the economics might be tricky. But there's definitely a lot of room for improvement there.

Posted at May 24, 2007 1:58 PM in response to Another Needed Reform

I think that questions 1 and 2 that you pose hint at a possible avenue of investigation: do we have any "control" examples of technological development to compare bubbles to? Or does major technological innovation necessarily require a bubble? I definitely see the argument that there are significant positive benefits to a bubble bursting, but is the outcome better than the alternative? Or is there even an alternative?

Posted at May 14, 2007 9:42 AM in response to UNCORKING A DISCUSSION ON POP