Can Machete and Tiny Save the NBA?

Machete and I are sick of seeing the game we love go down the crapper. We talked about how to fix it:



Get rid of David Stern.



Machete: The guy was never that good, and now he’s straight-up delusional. He’s really setting the league back, not just with ridiculous crap like the dress code, but with actual infrastructure damage driven by his star-making fetish: the refs are debasing the sport of basketball.. Is there another sport where the rules are applied in a completely different manner to stars/non-stars? Also: the next time a ref goes into a Leslie Nielsen performance when calling a charge or a tech, I want him fined heavily.

Tiny: This is a no-brainer. David Stern could take the NBA in the direction of hockey if the sport itself wasn't so appealing. I feel like the Joey Crawford move was just a desperate attempt to prove referee culpability, and nobody's buying it. Superstar treatment is killing the NBA. Anyone who doubts my conviction on this statement should know that my login for NBA.com is 'superstartreatmentkillingthenba'.



These teams suck.



Tiny: Get rid of the Atlanta Hawks, the Memphis Grizzlies, the Charlotte Bobcats, and the New Orleans/Kansas City Hornets. Release the players as free agents, or have some kind of reverse-expansion draft. These teams are unwatchable, even by their own fans, and they're an embarrassment to the league. Just cut out the cancer.

Machete: I’d love to see a system where the worst two teams are sent to the D-League, but there is such an absurd amount of money sunk into these organizations that I don’t think it could ever happen.

Tiny: That would be great, but I just think the league is too big right now, unless they want to move into other countries. I'd love to see teams in London, Mexico City, and Tokyo, but it would probably mean too much travel, and we can't have the Vancouver Grizzly debacle repeat itself.

The only solution is to get rid of the dead weight.

Machete: The strange thing is, there are plenty of players to fill a league this size. The problem lies with the inept management and the GM who keep recycling the same tired coaches.



Viva



Tiny: Move the Sonics to Las Vegas.

Machete: I don’t care who, but move someone to Las Vegas.



The All-Star game is run worse than the Lions.



Tiny: Move the all-star game out of country.

Machete: This one drives me crazy. The all-star game could be a massive event every year, drawing a ton of dough and generating all kinds of interest in the league. First off: Put the Dunk contest out for sponsorship, when Nike makes that thing worth $1M, you’ll see Lebron and everyone else in it. The money will just get things going again, once people participate for a few years, pride will hopefully take over. The AS game is a perfect opportunity to show the personalities of the players, and the NBA completely botches it.

Make the all-star game the cultural event it should be.



Market to your strengths



Machete: Do whatever you have to do to figure it out. Pay the NFL to come in and consult, I don’t care. If you think white America just sees Iverson as a thug, hire Wieden+Kennedy to run an ad campaign demonstrating why he’s a pretty damn close approximation of the American Dream. That shit could have people in tears.

Tiny: This is what gets me the most. You can't see hockey or football players and baseball moves too slow. Basketball players are charismatic and bigger than life. We can actually see their faces during play. There are so many interesting stories of personal struggle and bizarre interest that it makes me cringe. This is an untapped goldmine: you have to read stupid blogs and Simmons to find this stuff out.



The season is too long



Tiny: Shorten the season to about 60 games. I'm sick of people not caring about games that barely count. 82 is way to many. There's barely an offseason in the NBA. Judging by the way winning a ton of regular season games killed the Mavs last year and the Pistons the year before, it's not even a good idea to win too many of the marathon 82 games. So what's the point?

Machete: Personally, I like having a game to watch so I’m not too concerned about the length of the season. Would 60 make things that much more interesting than 82? I’m asking, I don’t mean that sarcastically.

Tiny: Reducing it down to 60 games would shorten the season by a month or so. Considering how bloated it is now, it's headed in the right direction. Here's what I'm concerned about:

a) Teams running out of gas, reducing the importance of the regular season, and making the playoffs worse.

b) No one having the energy or time for international play in the offseason

c) Everybody but me and you tired of the NBA, because the season goes year round. You know I'll watch the Bucks play the Bobcats in a preseason game, but I don't expect anybody else to want to.



But do we let the players off the hook?



Machete: As stated, I blame Stern and company for a lot of the problems, but how much do you think the players have to do it with it? Do you think, on a general level, guys that for a large part grew up poor have a tendency to relax once they have 8 figures in the bank? Again, I blame the league for emasculating these guys and making it harder to care, but am I wrong in finding something refreshing in a guy like Stephen Jackson? He’s got his problems, but at least he gives a shit.

Tiny: I think the players attitudes are somewhat to blame, but I don't know how much control they have over the whole thing. I think players are in a brighter, faster media spotlight than they've ever been, and not 'more thuggish' than pros of the past. I'd like to see the days of 'boys will be boys' come back for these guys: I miss it. People like Stern freak out when Stephen Jackson fires off a gun outside a strip club, but regular business guys love hearing about something they'd never imagine doing.

I also think that the players have seen teams with impressive regular seasons fall twice in the playoffs in two years and figured that they need to win just enough to get a decent seeding in the playoffs. Since your chances to get in are better than 50%, you can see why they mail in some games.







Machete: That’s my biggest problem with it: middle America (the ones who would ever watch the NBA, anyway) is not nearly as ignorant or racist as Stern and his cronies assume. If you can demonstrate a little bit of nuance, show that while AI and Stephen Jackson have definitely made mistakes they still want to win and genuinely care about their teammates, I think everyone involved would be pleasantly surprised. A great example of the type of exception that should be the rule: The documentary “The Year of the Yao.” My dad is a 54 yr. old white male who’s voted straight ticket republican since he was 18, and when he saw that Steve Francis and Cuttino Mobley made an effort to befriend Yao and help him acclimate o the States, I can guarantee you he didn’t notice the tattoos. He was impressed by their humanity and their desire to help Yao become a force so they could all win games, and that’s what mattered.



Why the divisions again?



Tiny: Get rid of the divisions within the Western and Eastern Conference. It's not creating rivalries, it's pissing people off at the end of the season when teams with worse records get seeded ahead of them in the playoffs. If the NBA wants rivalries, I'd like to see them do what the MLB does here and have series within the season. That's one of my favorite things about baseball, and it would be great to see everyone play everybody else three times in a row.

Machete: I could go either way on the conferences, but I love your idea about playing series. The complete lack of rivalries in this league is a direct effect of the emasculation of all the players and coaches. They need to let these guys play and bump a little more, and if they’re worried about “public image” they should try developing an actual marketing plan (preferably one that doesn’t involve Rob Thomas or the Black Eyed Peas.







Tiny: I wasn't thinking about that, but the sissy-calling of the game is having it's impact as well. When's the last time you saw a flagrant foul that actually look like it might hurt somebody or endanger their career? Isn't that why the flagrant was invented?

The thing that upsets me the most about this is that it's never going to go in the right direction. The league is TERRIFIED of another palace-brawl type incident and totally convinced that business dudes want to see themselves reflected in the NBA (which is absurd, to think that the reason stock traders like Allen Iverson is because he wears a nice monkey suit.)

But without Pistons/Bulls or New York/Miami this league is starving. Make no mistake about it.







Are the playoffs too long?



Tiny: Get rid of the first round of the playoffs. If you're not going to get rid of the divisions, then have each division winner and one wild card winner from each conference. Otherwise, just do the best record 1-4. This is the first year in more years than I can remember that there were actual watchable series in the first round, and that was only 2 out of the 8. I've also heard people suggest that we should have a pre-playoff tournament to decide the final 2 spots of the 8, and I like that idea as well, but you're going to have to get rid of regular season games first, or the playoffs are going to run into the start of the regular season.

Machete: I’m down for six teams from each conference with a 3 game series for the final two spots.

Tiny: How about the first and second place finisher from each division get the first six spots, and then 4 teams with the best records play a mini-tournament for the last 2, single elimination. Then, make the play-offs 5 game series for the first and second rounds to make up for the games lost to the mini-tournament.

I hate the 7 game series format for the first rounds. It's the main reason why they suck so much: no possibility for upsets, with the possible exception of Golden State/Dallas.

Machete: Agreed.



Tanking is for assholes.



Tiny: Something needs to be done about the tanking. I'm thinking everyone who doesn't make the playoffs gets one ping-pong ball, but I'm open to suggestions. I don't know why we reward failure and punish talented prospects by sending them to teams incapable of developing their talent.







Machete: They should have some accountant/economist develop a formula to punish teams that lose a disproportionate number of their last 20 games. Also: with the salary cap in place (a system that I like, with some reservations), is a draft even necessary? Wouldn’t it be more fun, and more fair, to have all of the teams sit in a room and bid for the talent they want? For instance, Brewer is going to be a fantastic pro and would be a great complement to Lebron. Shouldn’t the Cavs have a chance to say “Hey, we really like this guy and we’re willing to pay him $7M even though he might bust (he won’t).” Should he really fall into some teams lap that won’t know how to use him because they happened to have a ping pong ball come up?

Tiny: OK, Mr. Libertarian, let's not go too far. As much as I'd love one of your cronies figuring out the best way to punish teams like the Celtics for embarassing basketball, some sort of system needs to be in place to help out teams to not go bankrupt. The NBA as a whole gets hurt when certain teams have no chance to compete. I know you think this will naturally work it's way out through market competition, but something has to be in place to punish teams who don't feel the need to win because they're making money without it. Also, this will just lead to teams who are willing to go over the salary cap (Lakers and Knicks) to buy championships, making the same big money markets competitive over and over and increasing the NBA's tendency to be one dynasty after another. I like seeing some good teams last a while, but 6 champions in the last 20 years is ridiculous. (I don't know why I'm doing this: getting into a financial discussion is a really bad idea for me.)

Machete: Alright, you reformed hippy, the libertarian charge isn’t too accurate on this one because I just said I like the salary cap. That ain’t exactly free market. How about this: Make the luxury tax $4 to $1, but give teams three exceptions that they can use to match salaries for their core, and add a provision that teams more than 10% above the luxury tax can’t bid on the top 20 players.







Tiny: Um, sounds good.