I have a love/hate relationship with the NBA. I love basketball and I love to see it played by its best players, and I suppose that's why I have such high hopes for the league- and why I'm continually let down by it. This season I was ready to walk away, what with the well-noted Tankapalooza 2007, reading today what I already said would happen when Coffee Bitch sold them last summer, and poor Wolves beat reporter Steve Aschburner inventing new ways to put a positive spin on yet another blowout loss for a team that quit because incompetent management/ownership has given them no other choice. But then Commissioner David Stern threw the curveball of curveballs by suspending referee Joey Crawford for the rest of the season and possibly the playoffs for ejecting whiner/All star Tim Duncan for LAUGHING.
To me there are three major image problems for the NBA... and one of them is nuclear war (sorry old Austin Powers joke)...seriously one of them is the pro wrestling atmosphere of the playoffs where it seems that maybe, just maybe, the whole thing is rigged for certain teams with certain high-profile players to win *cough*Dwyane Wade*cough*. True or not, the stigma of one-sided or biased refing in the playoffs has stuck, to the point that just about everybody who wasn't a Miami Heat fan calling the officiating last June a joke. Crawford, one of the longest tenured refs, was one of the worst offenders, and over the past few years his ego was almost eclipsing that of the players, which is saying something. It seemed as though Crawford wanted the spotlight in playoff games, and made some ludicrous calls to get his shiny bald mug on TV. His ejection of Duncan was unbelievable, and yet I expected nothing to happen because nothing EVER happens to referees that blow calls or job teams. The league says it will reprimand or fine an official or suspend him or whatever, yet that same crappy egomaniac is back giving Wade or Lebron free throws and throwing out whoever dares even think about disagreeing with a call. I mean it got to the point where Stern was throwing such enormous fines at people for complaining about the officiating that even Mark Cuban, who seemingly lives to get fined, hasn't said a peep all year. And now Stern suspends Crawford and gives a rational explanation? What's next- Stern admitting the lotteries for the Knicks in '85 and Wizards in '01 were rigged?
Honestly, I'm not sure where we go from here. Is this Stern admitting he was wrong and making amends, like Lost killing off Nikki and Paulo? Or is just another publicity stunt to grab headlines like with the ball, or the dress code. I hope Stern will finally let the world's best groups of athletes decide the NBA champion instead of the officials. That would solve ONE of the league's biggest problems.
The other two? Well here's where the Commish and I disagree, at least publicly. Stern stated on espn.com yesterday that he intends to address the tanking issue this offseason, vowing to find a way to stop teams from tanking to get the best possible pick. Me personally, I'm not bothered by Memphis or Boston sucking to get a chance at once-in-a-decade talents like Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. As the Sports Guy and numerous others have explained, a potential superstar can change the fortunes for a team in basketball more than any other sport, so why wouldn't a team with no chance of making the playoffs give themselves the best possible chance to land one of these two? It's not like this happens every year either. Since the lottery concept began in 1985, and was tweaked after 1993 (when the Magic landed back-to-back #1 picks) there's only been a handful of drafts where there's been a player worth tanking for. Seriously look at this: Ewing in 85, Shaq in 92, Webber/Penny Hardaway in '93, Duncan in '97, and Lebron/Melo in '03. Including this year, that's 6 drafts in 23 years.
The tanking that DOES bother me hits with NBA's other real problems, which are an image of lazy players and dumb GM's. For the 2nd year in a row, your aforementioned Wolves are trying to secure a particular draft spot so they don't lose their pick because their GM made a bad trade/signing. The TPups aren't alone either, as Atlanta and Indiana tried to do the same this year, and you can be certain that with so few competent GM's in the league, and so many players getting guaranteed contracts no matter how they perform, this isn't going away. GM's will continue to make dumb trades and sign guys to bad contracts, crippling their team. I mean really, what options do the Wolves have? McHale has screwed up this roster so badly with poor drafting, trades and free agent signings, that their only hope of keeping Garnett is to keep their #1's and land Oden or Durant. That's it.
The solution here is simple: do away with guaranteed contracts. It's why the NFL is the most popular sport on the continent, because players HAVE to give their all or they get cut. Doing this in the NBA would do a much better job of making players give max effort, and also letting GM's off the hook for bad contracts. Fans get to see players actually trying on a nightly basis, and they know their teams aren't trapped in salary cap hell if/when their GM makes a dumb move. Everybody wins- well except the lazy-ass players who currently get guaranteed money.
It would take a man like Stern, who when he wants to can be as intimidating a figure as there is in sports, to make this happen. The players union would fight it at all costs, and as the lockout dragged on the owners and fans would fight it too. But IF he could hold his ground, and explain in ways that only he can to "make them an offer they can't refuse", it would be his boldest and best move as Commissioner.
Short of that, there is an easier way to help solve the problem of bad GM's and bad contracts...which we'll save for next time.
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