An Idea for Fixing the Talent Gap

The NBA is broken. Teams tank to jockey for biggest loser position in the draft. Teams like the Knicks try draconian cost-cutting and ruthless player machinations to be cap friendly for Free Agent acqusitions. The result is ugly, anti-competitive athletic events.

The statistics are largely meaningless when the opponents are talentless hacks helping the opposing team win. The sport is bankrupt, corrupt, and a competitive travesty.

I've thought about this for a long time and have always thought the lottery was one talent constraint too much. But the NBA and the media love the spectacle and cost containment it provides.

So I think I've found a middle ground. The goal of this proposal is to make tanking less desirable and extreme cap space maneuvers unnecessary while maintaining some of the cost-containment features of the existing system.

My idea is that every year any team can recruit and sign one draft eligible player before the draft is held in open market style.

This allows a player like Stephon Curry to negotiate with the Knicks (as an obvious example) and sign a deal. Now, maybe the Kicks would sign someone else or no one.

But the total compensation paid to a pre-draft signing would result in a dollar for dollar contribution to the luxury tax aside from the cap limit. So the price for signing such a player would be considerable and temper this being a regular practice by any team.

Players so signed would simply not be eligible to be drafted but the draft would take place with as usual. In fact, this will increase the number of second-rounders who get drafted making the talent pool that much deeper.

Today, a team like the Knicks has spent two years in self-inflicted mediocrity to have a chance of signing a marquee player. There's no guarantee.

The draft is a crap shoot. There needs to be a way for a team to improve by simply acquiring talent on an open market. I think this suggestion goes a long way in resolving many issues.