As NBA Commissioner David Stern prepares to retire in February, maybe his last big hurrah should be to make the NBA more like soccer. No I’m not talking about making players dribble with their feet or allowing players to head butt the ball (although players on several Eastern Conference teams are doing many of those things voluntarily), but rather mimicking soccer’s system of promotion and relegation. Maybe then, the quality of play in the Eastern Conference would rise above the pathetic level where it currently sits.
Sure, I realize that LeBron James and the two-time defending champion Miami Heat are from the East. However, besides the Heat and the Indiana Pacers, the quality of basketball in the East is as bad as Ola Ray’s Michael Jackson tribute. As Charles Barkley would say, it’s “turrble, just turrble.”
As it stands today, the Eastern Conference has a total of three teams above .500, the Heat, Pacers and the Atlanta Hawks. Even the Hawks are a pretty average team who would have a tough time making the playoffs in the West. Just think about it: If the playoffs started today, Michael Jordan’s Charlotte Bobcats would make the playoffs. No wonder it’s so cold outside – hell is freezing over.
In the European Premier League (soccer), the bottom three teams in the league are automatically demoted into a lesser league for the following season. In the lower league, the top two teams are automatically promoted into the Premier League. The third spot is determined through a playoff. So even when teams are rebuilding or mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, they still have something to play for – a spot in the big leagues.
Think about it. The NBA already has the D-league as a place to develop young talent or rehab ailing stars before their return. What if the top teams in the D-league had a shot to make it to the “real” NBA – not just a player, but the entire team? It would instantly make the D-League relevant. For the NBA teams, it would surely light a fire under awful teams such as the Milwaukee Bucks and the grossly and habitually underachieving New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets.
How quickly would the disastrous Jason Kidd experiment come to an end with the Nets if Mikhail Prokhorov knew all his $100-plus million bought him was a coach ticket to the JV league? How quickly would ESPN explode if the big city Knicks were on the verge of relegation?
It wouldn’t just work for the East, though. Take a gander out West, folks would be fighting in the streets if the hallowed Los Angeles Lakers might be playing next season’s games in the Compton Baptist Church’s rec center instead of the Staples Center.
Even though the NBA makes an effort to discourage tanking through its draft lottery system, it’s not enough. The Boston Celtics waived goodbye to all its able-bodied star players in the off-season to go into full rebuilding mode. Ironically, because the East is so bad, they could still end up in the playoffs with a paltry, sub-.500 record. In fact, it’s very likely that several playoff teams in the East will have sub-.500 records.
The move may sound drastic, but it’s exactly what the NBA needs in order to regain the passion and excitement it held in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I’m not trying to be a scrooge or sound like an old fogey wishing for the return of the good old days. The NBA is exciting and still has plenty of star power. However, in the East especially, many of the games aren’t worth watching.
Whether it’s the high number of injuries by star players or just the lethargic level of play compared to the uber-competitive West, there’s no point in watching the Heat and Pacers massacre the meager opposition or in watching two teams battle with virtually no chance at doing anything worthwhile in the postseason.
People often lament the huge guaranteed contracts that NBA players receive. Let’s watch them earn it. All contracts can stay guaranteed – as long as the player’s team is not relegated. Then we’d see teams fighting and scrapping until the final buzzer. We’d see coaches who care, regardless of the standings. We’d see players on teams at the bottom of the standings diving for loose balls, fighting through picks and putting it all on the line, even if they can’t make the playoffs.
We already pluck the talented players from European squads. Now it’s time to steal one of the rules that keeps soccer as the most popular sport in the world (even though it’s treated like a red-headed stepchild here in America). Whether it’s Stern’s final act, or incoming commissioner Adam Silver’s first, it’s time for the NBA to take a Euro-step into history.
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