Concrete Sneakers - Sue the NBA

For many years now I have advocated the elimination of the NBA draft.

The reasons are obvious as the NBA's season is once again a bi-polar set of races. Teams who drafted the right superstars are racing ahead. Teams whose management participate in incestuous buddy practices charge ahead.

At the other end of the spectrum, big city teams who in other sports are allowed to compete for talent enrich the respective sports with competitive play.

In the NBA we have teams essentially mailing games it to acquire a seat at the lottery. And so the ruse of sportsmanship and competitive play is dutifully manufactured to cover-up the humiliating truth that the NBA is no longer a game but a money-laundering scheme that dictates winners, losers, and who will place or show.

The distortion of play puts the NBA squarely into the realm of post-modern sport fabulations such as a number of the high-profile wrestling venues. The mediocrity of play in the NBA is profound. It is not the athletes who are on steroids but the game itself.

Developing young talent is the lifeblood of all sport and yet in the NBA the combination of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and the newly eligible player draft create a policy of contrived malfeasance for sport.

Under the CBA, teams are charged a luxury tax for spending more on player than a yearly calculated team spending threshold. Fair enough. This means that in a sport where teams desire to compete, they can spend what they deem fit to put together a competitive team.

No team in the NBA is allowed to simply acquire the talent they want in this way (which, btw, is fair). Assuming the big-spending teams are taxed by 100% of their overspending (which they are), teams in poorer markets would be financially compensated to allow them to spend more freely as well as they deemed necessary.

Cynics will insist that small market teams will still be at a disadvantage but one need look no further than the Memphis Grizzlies to see that the current policies still produce financially crippled franchises.

Today, all franchises have to make a hard choice - attempt to compete in a rigged game or choose to lose in the hopes that "winning a lottery seat" will ensure a brighter future. Franchises who operate on the fringes of financial stability regularly step down rather than step up. They measure success by staying in business than by any competitive virtue. Their fans know it and the public knows it. Unlike other sports in which such a team can trade player rights for cash considerations - no such thing exists in CBA rules.

In other sports, small market teams have no reason to tank games nor are they doomed to be exposed as financially struggling. These teams not only compete but manage their resources as assets that are convertible in either talent swaps or money exchanges.

The question becomes, could the Grizzlies be any worse off in an open talent market than in a manipulated one?

I believe they would fare far better. And the same is true of big market teams whose fans have big market expectations. The second CBA component that perverts competition in the NBA are the absurd trade restrictions placed on team management. Teams desiring to compete must attempt trading talent that match such rigid dollar for dollar exchange rates that talent for talent trades rarely take place.

Big market teams have different compensation ranges than small market teams. The asymmetry ensures that big market teams who are struggling can never get out from under the dual poison of guaranteed contract obligations and trading that asset for someone else with a similar salary with better assets. In other words, a struggling franchise (35 years and ticking) cannot exchange a contract and cash to a small market team for talent except in rare instances. So the paralysis of the inability to improve from the outside perpetuates a competitive status quo that prevents real sport competition to ever be introduced.

Teams who try to circumvent the system by risking trades are more often than not doomed to eternal mediocrity by being denied a high lottery choice and being locked into CBA salary hell. The Knicks are a prime example of this. They can afford to spend more to acquire talent but they cannot acquire the right talent. They are relegated to the under-performing, big salary swap risk pool.

The fans are relegated to being laughing stocks because no matter who runs the team, undoing losing is harder than being draft lucky.

Players are more likely to earn a ring by laboring for a losing team and finally playing as a bench player for an anointed franchise than being groomed within a developed team without a superstar talent. The Jordan/Duncan/Shaq effect is the antithesis of competitive sport. It fixes the sport in ways that prevent others from assembling challenging teams to take on the status quo.

And let's stop pretending that records in the NBA mean anything when a dozen teams are playing to lose.

Once again I call upon deaf ears to modify the policies to broaden competition.

Do some combination of modifying draft rules so that every team participates in the lottery, not just those who race to the bottom.

Eliminate trade restrictions - allow cash transactions and asymmetric contract valuation trades.

Eliminate the top three winning teams from receiving luxury tax compensation. This will strengthen the other franchises.

Finally, fans would be better served by suing to eliminate the CBA. Here are the grounds for dismissing the policy.

The issue of collusion can certainly be applied to this year's Garnett trade between Danny Ainge and Kevin McHale. If the NBA cannot even the playing field for talent acquisition then it should be shut down.

Secondly, fans should sue to get certain uncompetitive CBA policies thrown out. The NBA is either a sport or entertainment. If it is no longer sport then the Sherman Act need not apply because fans are being duped into believing it is a sport.