Stan Van Gundy is a passionate man. Whether he’s trying to ‘form a f***** wall,’ or fighting with Dwight Howard, or coaching the Detroit Pistons, he attacks every situation with a sort of chaotic energy that I find endlessly entertaining. Because Stan Van Gundy is who he is, you shouldn’t be shocked to find out that he has a very aggressive idea that will, in theory, put an end to tanking in the NBA for good and create more parity across the league. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
What Van Gundy is actually suggesting here is the removal of max contracts and a complete elimination of the NBA Draft. I told you it was aggressive. Van Gundy’s new idea stems from the recently-announced NBA Draft Lottery reform that slightly tweaks the 1st overall pick odds for every team in the lottery.
The new lottery rules are supposed to disincentivize tanking by decreasing the chances that the team with the worst record in the regular season lands the No. 1 overall pick. Critics of the new system suggest that all this really does is move the tanking line. Instead of having teams tank for the worst record, they’ll tank for one of the three worst records, and so on. It’s putting lipstick on a pig, essentially.
Like countless others, Van Gundy wasn’t thrilled with this round of lottery reform, and that’s what prompted him to spill the beans on his idea that would fundamentally change the way the NBA works.
Transcript via The Detriot Free Press:
“I’d get rid of it, just get rid of the draft altogether,” Van Gundy said. “We’d just deal with the salary cap. Make all (rookies) free agents coming in and if I want to go give a guy $50 million a year, good, but I got to do it under the cap. I think if you did that and you had no individual max on players, we’d start to get some parity in the league, but the league really doesn’t want parity. They want the super teams, and I get that. It’s worked well, business-wise.”
Van Gundy admits that it’s difficult to see what kind of negative ramifications a radical change like this would mean in the real world, but it sure sounds good on paper. Van Gundy also understands that the biggest critique of his plan is the idea that every high-profile prospect would just sign with a team in one of the bigger NBA markets, much like how free agency works today. To that point, Van Gundy says “they say everybody would want to go to L.A., well how much money are they going to give up to go to those places?”
It’s a decent point, but it’s something we can’t possibly predict until we see it in practice. In theory, it works. A team like the Lakers shouldn’t have the cap space to sign both elite free agents and elite prospects. In Van Gundy’s world, the salary cap should prevent that.
While NBA Draft elimination sounds pretty farfetched, the removal of max contracts is something a lot of NBA pundits have been promoting over the last several years, and it’s a concept that is pretty easy to wrap your head around. The reason a team like the Golden State Warriors can employ Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, and Draymond Green is because there is a maximum amount the NBA allows teams to pay their star players.
If players were allowed to make what they’re really worth, you’d see the salaries of the NBA’s elite rise to a point that having more than one or two of them on a single roster just isn’t feasible. It’s another idea that sounds wonderful on paper but would probably have some unforeseen drawbacks in practice.
