Why Professional Sports Drafts Are Evil - Part II

My good friend Rob has told me many times that blog entries should be short and to the point. While I respect his opinion on publishing matters, this is one of my entries that does not follow his formula. I can't help myself. Sometimes I get fired up and I just keep talking. Or typing. So, to the four of you that will read this, I salute you for your patience and your time.

Tonight, the NBA Draft Lottery will be conducted during Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals. The futures of many a franchise will be determined...by ping pong balls. Millions will tune in to see where their team will draft this summer, and I have to ask, how does this make any sense whatsoever?

Who does the draft system hurt? I told you earlier that some of my answers might surprise you. The most obvious answer is the players. I made the case in Part I that the entry draft system is unfair to players. There is no need to rehash here.

Who else is hurt by the current draft system? American sports franchises themselves are often hurt by the archaic system they embrace. John Q. American has been duped by a notion even more insidious than that of playing pro sports being a privilege, one that has provided the backbone of the unfair draft system since it's inception. That would be the competitive balance argument. I was once a big proponent of the competitive balance argument, but no longer. Why? It is an argument that simply does not stand up to logic.

The first problem with the competitive balance argument is that you can not force competitive balance. Yes, the NFL has achieved its much-desired parity, but not all leagues have seen the same "success". One reason? City and market size discrepancies between franchises. To put it simply, a team in New York has a financial competitive advantage over a team in Cleveland. Why? Large-market teams are able to lure players due to the additional income that can be earned through endorsements in a more populous metropolitan area.

A second problem with competitive balance is that of limited resources, particularly players talented enough to play at a high level, especially when necessary physical characteristics are taken into account. For instance, there is a very short supply of very tall people with NBA-caliber skills. The NBA cannot snap their fingers and create more Tim Duncans or Shaquille O'Neals. So, if a team is lucky enough to have the ping pong balls bounce their way so that they acquire a player of this caliber, they have an advantage over everyone else whose ping pong balls did not bounce in a fortuitous fashion.

The competitive balance argument has been used for decades to justify the draft systems employed by the American sports leagues. The worst teams from a given season are given the first choices for the next entry draft. The thought being that the worst teams get first dibs on the best new players. There are a couple of problems with the logic behind this policy.

First, leagues reward franchises for futility. Rewarding franchises with the best players, especially franchises that languish year after year in last place, makes no sense in any other system. It only makes sense in the closed cartel system of American professional sports, because logic dictates that there is only one direction to go from the bottom. However, there are franchises in every league that show that the draft system doesn't help them. If it did, they wouldn't be the dregs of their sport every year.

In a few of the leagues (NFL, NBA) the system also fosters a culture of tanking - just one example of how the current system hurts fans. What is tanking? Tanking occurs when a team realizes it has no chance of competing, and knowing that having a terrible season means a better chance at a higher draft pick, the team does not do everything in its power to win. This is often done with no regard whatsoever for season ticket holders who pre-pay for their seats and are stuck having to watch an inferior product. This can actually affect a team for more than one season, which brings me to...

Rebuilding. Under the current system, in most of the American sports leagues, it takes time for a team to acquire enough talent to compete at the highest level. Under the current draft system, teams get to select one player in each draft round (barring trades), during which each team in the league gets to make a pick. In a league with 32 teams, a team is theoretically going to be able to acquire one of the top 32 players in the first round, and so on.

Here is the problem: not all drafts are created equally. You have heard the phrase "a once-in-a-generation talent". Let's go back a few years and look at the emergence of LeBron James. James was the consensus #1 pick coming out of high school, and any team in the NBA would have drooled at the prospect of signing him. However, only a select few teams that had terrible seasons that particular year had any shot at him due to the draft system. So, if a team was bad, but just not quite bad enough, tough luck!

Wouldn't a better system be to have an open signing period? All potential entrants to the leagues would be free agents. Sound crazy? It is a system that works in Europe and it could work here. Under the current system, middle of the road franchises exist in a type of limbo, and I argue that they are punished for doing the right thing. How? Let's look at the Philadelphia 76ers of recent years. They have had just enough talent in most seasons to eke into a playoff spot (not so much this year, but I digress). They try hard to win as many games as they can, which is the ethical thing to do, since people are paying (save your jokes!) to see the games and expect an honest effort. They have had a zero per cent change of winning a title and have very little chance of landing impact players in the draft due to their middling draft position. The only way the Sixers can acquire the talent necessary to compete is through free agency, or by tanking.

A better system would be to allow a true free market for entrants to one of the respective leagues. It would be better for players, it would be better for teams and it would be better for fans. One big roadblock to change is that the drafts (mostly the NFL) themselves have become big business. However, it would not be difficult to make an open signing period an event on par with the draft.

As a fan of the Sixers or another middling team, wouldn't you relish the idea of being able to go after multiple missing pieces from the newly-eligible rookie crop? Don't you think the Sixers, if they had the salary cap room, would like the option of making offers to the players they like best instead of hoping a player they like will drop to them on draft day? Don't you think the players would like to have the ability to have some control over their destiny and career path? An open system would be better for everyone involved - players, teams and fans.