Watercooler Talk: Relegation?

[Yoki_IsTheName]

So, I've been tuned in to see Liverpool's title hopes slip away. And with that, I also channel surfed to see the other games, looking at Cardiff, Fullham and Norwich City fighting for their Premier League lives.

And while I'm there, I am also looking at the DKC Draft Lotter, which was nice. And then it hit me...

So we are having this problem in the NBA about "tanking" to get a top overall pick right, and thinking of means to avoid it. So, how's about relegating the bottom, the worst team of the season to the D-League and promoting the champion D-League team to the NBA?

I know it's complicated, with the draft picks owned by the would be relegated team and all, so it needs a ton of work, but you get the picture (something I havent have any clue yet, but I'm thinking the draft picks would transfer to the promoted team, maybe).

So, just for the fun of it, what do you think? Radical idea, no?

[LatterDayCelticsfan]

The financial hit would be brutal. Its not unusual for English clubs to go into receivership because of relegation. Can't imagine how a former NBA team would cope with relegation with things like max contracts and all that.

[Yoki_IsTheName]

The financial hit would be brutal. Its not unusual for English clubs to go into receivership because of relegation. Can't imagine how a former NBA team would cope with relegation with things like max contracts and all that.

Guess they should play better and not tank to avoid such thing, right? 

But yeah, guess I haven't thought of that. But that's the thing, reward the winners and demote the losers. Isn't that what will make for better competition? Every game will be meaningful now, because even though you got an All Star player in your team, if you don't perform well, you'll be on the verge of losing your major league stake on the league.

And that goes the same for D-League teams. Now every one of those small teams will compete even harder for a chance to be in the NBA.

Although the money thing is true. It'll be hard for the Bucks to make money if they are in the D-League. But hey, at least they can be the best team there. 

[LooseCannon]

Given the affiliations that D-League teams have with NBA teams, it's not happening.  If you want some sort of relegation system, you'd be better off pushing the NBA to expand to 50 teams ASAP, then try to institute relegation once you reach a critical mass of teams.

[Yoki_IsTheName]

Given the affiliations that D-League teams have with NBA teams, it's not happening.  If you want some sort of relegation system, you'd be better off pushing the NBA to expand to 50 teams ASAP, then try to institute relegation once you reach a critical mass of teams.

Thought about that just now. I guess the NBA can cut the affiliation ties with the NBA teams?

It may be a long process but why not? Move the teams to cities who wants carry D-League teams that has the potential to be an NBA team if they perform well, so instead of having San Antonio and Austin in the NBA it could be San Antonio and maybe Kansas City (where the Toro's moved). The way NBA teams are making money, it could be relatively easy to move a D-League affiliated team team to any city in the US or Canada.

The next thing to figure out are the players who's draft right are owned by NBA teams that are playing in the D-League. Guess they have to call him up now.

D-League teams should also be allowed a cap limit the same as than NBA teams are. So they are basically NBA teams, but still considered Division II. And then the competition to move for the Division I or stay there will ensue.

And then they could also work together in a sense that NBA Free Agents and D-League Free Agents are going to be allowed to sign to any league teams, but not trades. But the Draft stays the same. NBA teams draft first, the D-League teams. The first division gets first crack at the best players coming up, all the time.

It may very well be a decade long process to figure out how it will mesh well. But hey, at least you got better competition, and you eliminate tanking once and for all. I mean, watching two teams play each other in the last game of the season to avoid relegation, that's ratings...

[Ogaju]

it will not work under the current construct.

You will need a viable second division to make it work.

You will also need a real league. If the recent Clippers/Sterling debacle as taught us anything at all it is that the NBA is not a real league with different owners competing. The NBA is a monopoly made up of 30 caretakers and players union in  a partnership to provide entertainment based on faux competition.

The English Premiership and most soccer leagues do not follow this model.

[nickagneta]

There is simply zero chance of the NBA even allowing a CHANCE that they could lose a team like the Knicks, Lakers, Celtics, and Bulls out of the league and off network television, which is what would happen under relegation.

European soccer and the way it is structured is a different animal. Relegation just would not work in any league in America.

[Yoki_IsTheName]

There is simply zero chance of the NBA even allowing a CHANCE that they could lose a team like the Knicks, Lakers, Celtics, and Bulls out of the league and off network television, which is what would happen under relegation.

European soccer and the way it is structured is a different animal. Relegation just would not work in any league in America.

But we can say the same with club giants like Barcelona, PSG, Bayern Munich, Milan, Ajax or Manchester United can't we?

As good as they are, they are still playing in a level field where if they screw up, they can still get relegated. And those would be huge blows TV wise for the football leagues as well.

Besides, wouldnt it be fun to see those 4 teams on the brink of relegation. It's a negative, but boy, the media circus it would create  and of course the haters of those franchise would keep watch just to see if they can survive or not.

And I don't know, but the Lakers, Celtics, Knicks or Bulls being relegated and playing in th D-League for the first time, I think that could be a media magnet as well. They'll be covered the whole year, how they managed to screw up and their fight to be back in the major league. There's drama there, I think.

[celticsfan8591]

It's an interesting idea but the way you proposed it wouldn't work because D-League teams are affiliated with NBA teams.  They also don't get draft picks, so the playing field isn't remotely level in terms of the ability to acquire players.  Under the current system, there's no way any D-League team could ever be better than an NBA team.  The relegated NBA teams would dominate the D-League, the promoted D-League teams would get eviscerated every night, and they would switch back at the end of the season.  In English soccer, any team, both inside and outside the EPL, can sign any player (though usually players start playing for clubs' youth teams as teenagers and get promoted to the senior team), so even though smaller teams are at a disadvantage, it's possible for them to develop a few good players and become good enough to stick in the EPL.  I think the only way it could work in the NBA would be to either end the affiliations between D-League and NBA teams, redistribute talent, and allow D-League teams to draft, or just divide the NBA into a first and second division and leave the D-League out of it.  Either way though, this wouldn't solve the tanking problem because the top draft pick would presumably go to one of the worst teams in the second division, and those teams would just tank (perhaps even more than now since they wouldn't even be eligible to make the playoffs/win a championship). 

[nickagneta]

Once patrons stop coming to games because teams are now D-League teams, the teams will fold. Once teams aren't getting a portion of the network television contract, the teams will fold.

Sorry, Yoki, but American fans won't get relegation. They will abandon their teams and the teams will fold. There's just no way this ever happens. The NBA would never want teams like the Lakers, New York, Brooklyn, Miami, Chicago and Boston, teams that drive television ratings and television revenues to be relegated while teams in Boise, Souix Falls, Grand Rapids, and other tiny television markets in less than adequate arenas get promoted to the  NBA.

The revenues generated by those NBADL teams in their substandard for big league arenas with their miniscule markets just aren't there to allow for such a thing to happen. Its a business model that just is unsustainable.

This also doens't even address the NBAPA and the power they have and what problems they would cause to such an idea.

[Celtics18]

TP Yoki,

I've made the same suggestion before and been met with the same dismissal.

The thing I would change about the idea as you have presented it, though, is that I wouldn't involve the D-League.  Rather, I would split the current NBA teams into a sixteen team first division and a fourteen team second division. 

Each year I would swap the bottom four first division teams and the top four second division teams.  I would keep a fourteen team lottery for the second division teams, but would have it equally weighted.

The first division playoffs would be comprised of eight teams.  That would leave a limbo of about four first division borderline playoff teams fighting simultaneously to make the playoffs and to avoid relegation, and about four teams fighting furiously for their first division lives. 

I think it would be a fun league with enough turnover that relegation wouldn't necessarily be a franchise death sentence, but, on the other hand, it would definitely be enough of a deterrent to "tanking" that every team would fight like heck each year to avoid getting sent there or to try to get out.
 

[oldtype]

If you wanted to do this the only way to accomplish it would be by expanding to 40 teams and splitting into two leagues.

Thing is, relegation works in Europe (and to be honest it doesn't even work particularly well anyplace outside of England) because the ratio of diehard fans who will go to every game regardless of which division their club is in is fairly high. The financial hit from relegation is brutal, but still bearable because the clubs themselves are institutions with their own inherent value.

In contrast, aside from a few outliers like the Celtics American sports fans are much more into the spectacle than the clubs themselves. A much higher ratio of NBA seats are filled by fans who just want to see Lebron/KD when they're in town. The financial hit from going down a division would be incredibly brutal.

That said I don't think it's completely impossible if the demand for NBA teams keeps rising to the point where you end up needing more teams than a single league can sustain. That's probably far, far, far in the future though.

[oldtype]

On an entirely different topic, I'd very much be in favor of European soccer emulating American sports and adopting a hard salary cap. Unfortunately that's probably also impossible for logistical reasons.

[Ogaju]

please keep your hands off European soccer. The farce that is American pro sports is best left in America.

[Celtics18]

please keep your hands off European soccer. The farce that is American pro sports is best left in America.

I honestly don't care what they do with European soccer, but I would like to see improvements to the sports league which I love.