While the NBA’s Board of Governors approved a new system for the league’s draft lottery designed to curtail tanking, not a lot of people believe it’s going to do much good. The league pretty much acknowledged those doubts have validity by characterizing the lottery reform as "an incremental step," per ESPN.
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Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy has a better idea: Go all Walter White and full measure the tanking issue by eliminating the draft altogether.
“I’d get rid of it, just get rid of the draft altogether,” Van Gundy said this week, via the Detroit Free Press. "We’d just deal with the salary cap. Make all (rookies) free agents coming in and if I want to go give a guy $50 million a year, good, but I got to do it under the cap.”
Pro sports leagues have drafts at least partly to help distribute talent around the league fairly — the worst teams get to choose college and international players entering the league before good teams do.
Van Gundy, though, believes that eliminating the draft and max contracts would do more toward achieving parity.
“I think if you did that and you had no individual max on players, we’d start to get some parity in the league, but the league really doesn’t want parity. They want the super teams, and I get that. It’s worked well, business-wise,” he said.
If individual salaries were not restricted, Van Gundy argues, teams would have a more difficult time loading their rosters with superstars.
“Is (Kevin Durant) going to give up $25 million a year to keep the team (Warriors) together? Hell, no,” Van Gundy said.
As for the notion that all the best rookies would flock to certain teams, Van Gundy said the salary cap will take care of that.
“They say everybody would want to go to L.A., well how much money are they going to give up to go to those places?” Van Gundy said.