If you didn’t know better (or perhaps if you do), it sure seems as if David Stern’s ultimate goal from the lockout is to reshape his league through some sort of real-life fantasy draft.
Getting beyond Sunday’s Twitter theatrics (we personally believe the answers were provided by some sort of auto-reply-bot or Adam Silver, which might actually be one in the same), perhaps the league’s YouTube slide show spelled it all out.
There, on the final slide, in effect, was the NBA “roster of the future” (our quote marks).
How do you build a roster that conforms to the NBA’s proposal and avoid all the draconian measures of the proposed next luxury tax?
According to the NBA, with:
One “Superstar (max salary)": $17 million.
One “All-Star": $14 million.
One “Starter": $10 million.
Two “Starters": $8 million (apiece).
One “6th Man": $5 million.
One “Rotation Player": $4 million.
One “Rotation Player": $3 million.
One “Rotation Player": $2 million.
One “Rotation Player": $1 million.
Five “Remaining Players": $3 million (total, $600,000 average, essentially minimum scale).
Go ahead, try to fit any recent championship model into such an alignment.
Taken further, and allowing for NBA-level salary inflation, try to fit the Showtime Lakers, any version of the championship Celtics, or even Michael Jordan’s Bulls into such a model.
And we won’t even get into the current Big Three Heat or Big Three Celtics.
It’s almost as if Stern (which could happen through decertification, at least according to Sunday’s threat), wants to reset the entire landscape, through the aforementioned fantasy-style draft.
The league designates 30 “superstars” (as if there are 30), and each team selects one.
The league then designates 30 leftover “All-Stars” (even though with 30 “superstars” would any All-Stars be left?), and each team selects one.
From there, a pool of $10 million starters is set, and so on.
We’re not talking parity here; we’re talking a completely new world order.
For months now, the whispers have been about how Stern and the owners were attempting to blow up the league.
Perhaps they are.
Ira Winderman writes regularly for NBCSports.com and covers the Heat and the NBA for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/IraHeatBeat.
