Dear Mr. Lowe,
Thank you so much for your great work analysing the NBA, journalists whose range go from micro (gameplay) to the macro (league environnement) are rare and I surely appreciate your comments and your lack of punditry.
Inspired by your column, I wanted to share with you ten things I would like to see implemented. Obviously, some of them slide on the side of provocation, others might be more realistic, but I hope that all are original and will trigger a bit of interest from your part.
I apologise for not writing as eloquently as you do, I am active in a totally different branch.
Warmest regards from Hong Kong,
Stéphane Noël
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10 THINGS I’D LIKE
Considering the profound imbalance between the conferences, I believe that home-court advantage in the Finals should not be determined by overall record but rather by the results of the two direct confrontations. It is not a dig versus Boston—I grew up a fan of Bird and McHale—but it seems unfair that the Celtics have this advantage given that half of their games are played against mediocre teams from the Eastern Conference.
To prevent super-tanking, I would remove the possibility to protect picks, thus de-incentivising late season laissez-faire, which often affects the final standings.
Still on that tanking matter, I suggest to go even further and adopt a semi-relegation system: through the mid-point of the season, each team should have played each in-conference team twice or thrice (i.e. half or the confrontations scheduled), and each team from the other conference once. At this point, teams failing to reach a threshold do not qualify for the second part of the season, losing a lot of revenue; the threshold could be based on a differential to the average or median winning percentage, or in numbers of losses ahead of the first, or tenth team. I know, that will never go but the quality would go up for sure!
Going back to feasible ideas, there is a very unfair practiced that could easily be reffed out: sometimes a three-point shooter lands on the player guarding him, but the defender did not jump and has his feet set inside the three-point line... often this results in a defensive foul or even a flagrant-one; however, I think it should be called an offensive foul, which would reduce leg flailing a lot and be fairer to a defender who scrambled to his position in time and did not initiate any contact.
A smallie next: if a streamer purchases the NBA TV rights, I think it is a great opportunity to reduce the amount and the duration of timeouts, which would render the games more fluid, FIBA-style, and also encourage a larger use of players from the bench (the talent is here for sure).
In terms of product fluidity as well, I think the referee crews should be made of four persons, one of which would be following the game on screen and be able to influence decisions faster. Their voices would count as much as that of the three referees on the floor and they could make calls when there is a doubt on the floor, when a coach asks for a review, or even in the action (he or she would have a whistle). This role could be performed by each referee alternatively (one different video-ref per quarter).
At the moment, the salary of bought out players is input on the team buying them out. I would argue that if a player is picked up by another team, his salary cap figure should affect the team taking him on. If not picked up then it stays by the team buying him out, of course. That would help player mobility because teams would be keener to release players but would less advantage big market teams.
Talking about trades, a super-maxed player asking out should have his contract downgraded to a max, and the super part could be transferred to another player remaining on the team or to a newly acquired player. This could lead to a super-max cap as well, i.e. a team would only be able to have one or two super-max player(s). Of course, the burden to prove that a player asked out would have to be codified.
The All Star Game became unwatchable but what if an All Star selection would give a player eligibility to a super-max if—and only if—his team wins? That isn’t a 500K incentive, it is tens of millions over a few years, a real incentive!
The tenth thing I would like is for you to lose track and not notice I actually only had nine things I’d like to share with you, but I am sure you won’t fall for that.
