An open letter to NBA Commissioner David Stern

Dear Mr. Stern,

I sat down this weekend and watched the NFL Draft and got very excited about the picks my beloved Dallas Cowboys made.

But the problem with that is, I don’t know when I’ll be able to see any of these guys play.

People tell me the NFL owners and players will keep this lockout intact throughout the preseason. And I’m actually OK with that, because I don’t want Tony Romo’s glass shoulder to get exposed any more than it has to.

But other analysts say that some regular season games may be missed, and that’s something I cannot deal with.

I know I am troubling you about the NFL, a sport that you have no control over, but I am just warning you about what’s to come.

Little whistling birds tell me that your league is fixing to lock out, too, and those same birds tell me that this lockout might be structured where owners tighten the lock in place and throw away the keys for what could be years.

Yes, years.

Can you imagine wasting away one full season of LeBron James’ prime because of a showdown of egos? What a shame that would be, right, Mr. Stern?

So I’ve studied your game real hard, the NBA has been my favorite sport my whole life, so here’s what I’ve done.

Below is a list of five things you should consider doing, some the players of the league will like, some they won’t.

Everyone needs to compromise sometimes and I believe they will understand that.

Here goes,

The top five ways to better the future of the NBA game:

Fewer games. The NBA’s postseason lasts two full months. That’s fine – I love playoff games. But the problem is that it doesn’t take 82 games to be able to tell who the best 16 teams are. Shorten the season to about 68 or 66 games and save your players’ bodies for when the big chips are on the table in June.

Make rookie contracts longer. The way rookie contracts work today is that every team gets a four-year contract with their first-round pick with a team option after the third season. So what happens in many cases is small-market teams draft good players, put a lot of time and effort into developing them, but then lose them to the sharks in New York and Los Angeles. Migration among stars to big markets is inevitable. But what I think you should do is create a system similar to baseball where teams own the rights to their draft picks for up to six years with a team option after three years. What this would do is it’d allow teams to get away from mistakes they might have made, while also holding their gems for a little longer. It would make the league more balanced and fun to watch.

Reward teams who lose stars, The NBA is heavily star driven. You need an elite-level player to be able to compete. What do the Oklahoma City Thunder, Miami Heat, Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls have in common? They all have legitimate stars. Where do you get that top-level talent if you’re a small market team? The NBA Draft. So give a team that loses an “A-list” player a Top 5, or even a Top 3 pick in the next year’s draft. If it’s a watered down draft class that year (like this one), then give them the option to roll that pick over to the next season. The size of your city should not be a detriment to your team.

Adopt non-guaranteed contracts, I understand that you want to reward executives who make savvy moves and punish those who overpay players who cannot perform. I get that and I agree with that. But the problem is that I have no faith in the general managers of the NBA. I just don’t. There are far too many instances where guys like Erick Dampier get about $35 million more than he deserves. Adopt an NFL-like system where teams can release a player at any time and get that money back. It’s not fair to the players involved, but they always have the option to not under perform if they want to max out their deal.

Don’t contract teams. Don’t listen to what LeBron James says. He doesn’t even know what the word contraction means, literally. He says the NBA needs to go back to the way it was played in the 1980s. The problem is that he was 5-years-old in the 1980s. Are we going to let kindergarten children dictate our rules now, Mr. Stern? The NBA is fine just the way it is. There’s a great amount of parity in the league. The problem is people just refuse to see it. Since 2000, 11 different teams have been to the NBA Finals and literally every single team has been in the NBA playoffs with most of those teams having won a playoff series. This isn’t baseball where some franchises have been bad for close to 30 years. The NBA has a lot of parity, it’s not your fault that people just close their eyes and don’t see it.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Listen to me and I think your league will be on firm footing now and into the future.

If not, I hope you enjoy padlocks, because your league will be locked out for a very, very long time.

You thought the NFL was bad?

They don’t have anything on your game.

Signed,

Sports Guy who loves him some NBA