Should the Stepien Rule Be Abolished?

[Donoghus]

Good read & thought exercise here concerning the ramifications of this new CBA and how to possibly tinker with it.

https://hardwoodparoxysm.substack.com/p/the-nba-must-abolish-the-stepien

An excerpt.

If you remove the Stepien Rule, you open up the ability of these teams to dig themselves out of the hole they willingly entered into during the previous CBA. These teams dug a hole in the previous CBA, based on the treasure (a title) they were digging for, and the previous CBA allowed spending as a ladder to climb out.

The new CBA basically dumped the dirt on top of those teams. Removing the Stepien Rule provides them with a little shovel to dig their way out.

If you open up the ability to trade back-to-back seasons, you allow for:

Milwaukee to use multiple picks as sweeteners to add to a deal to build around Giannis, helping them keep their franchise star.

Teams trying to trade for Giannis should he want to leave to trade more picks, which will get Milwaukee back to a full reset quicker than the current ?worst of both worlds? they are facing.

Denver to move difficult contracts to put a winning team around a 3-time MVP.

Boston to more easily move salary in this transitional period and to also add more players so they can compete again in 2026 when Tatum is healthy.

Phoenix to be able to move Bradley Beal more easily to try and capitalize on the remaining window of Kevin Durant, who, by all accounts, still wants to stay at least a little, and Matt Ishbia still wants to contend with him.

Teams like the Spurs, Rockets, and Thunder with so many picks to consolidate into more immediate help in their current window, rather than having to wait for various picks to convey.

The NBA instituted a CBA that radically alters the ability of teams to remain in contention if they committed to builds prior to the institution of that new CBA. And while those owners are partially responsible for not convincing their fellow owners of a more forgiving system, these teams should be granted some forward path without just having to give up on championship windows.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

If teams want to surrender consecutive first rounders, they should be able to. Just like any other strategy, it might work out and it might not. I don't think the league should be babysitting teams that risk being too risky.

[Who]

It is one thing when a contender trades away future picks that are late 1sts. Or mid 1sts if things go badly.

It is different when a lottery team in the bottom 5 or bottom 10 are trading away all their picks for the next 5 years ... and it then backfires, leaves them outside of the playoffs with no hope of change for a long period of time. No future picks. Cap jammed up with those veterans they traded their picks for.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

It is one thing when a contender trades away future picks that are late 1sts. Or mid 1sts if things go badly.

It is different when a lottery team in the bottom 5 or bottom 10 are trading away all their picks for the next 5 years ... and it then backfires, leaves them outside of the playoffs with no hope of change for a long period of time. No future picks. Cap jammed up with those veterans they traded their picks for.

That would stink for that team and its fans, but my libertarian streak says let them do what they want, and if it bites them, it bites them. Maybe they learn from their mistake. Or maybe they don't, but either way, it should be up to them.

[BitterJim]

It is one thing when a contender trades away future picks that are late 1sts. Or mid 1sts if things go badly.

It is different when a lottery team in the bottom 5 or bottom 10 are trading away all their picks for the next 5 years ... and it then backfires, leaves them outside of the playoffs with no hope of change for a long period of time. No future picks. Cap jammed up with those veterans they traded their picks for.

That would stink for that team and its fans, but my libertarian streak says let them do what they want, and if it bites them, it bites them. Maybe they learn from their mistake. Or maybe they don't, but either way, it should be up to them.

From a league/owners perspective, though, the downside is huge. If a team mortgages their future by trading all of their picks but sucks anyway, the value of the team goes down a lot. And a team selling for that lower value would hurt the valuations of every team.

That's not even a hypothetical, either, it's the literal origin of the rule (the NBA partially made up for it by giving the new owner the ability to "buy" first round picks from the league for the first couple of years).

Maybe we're at the point where team owners are smart enough to not pull a Stepien, but based on the Luka trade I doubt it. Also, eliminating the rule only helps in the short term, in the long term teams would be in a similar position to the Bucks or Suns due to trading all of their picks rather than all of their allowed picks

[BitterJim]

Good read & thought exercise here concerning the ramifications of this new CBA and how to possibly tinker with it.

https://hardwoodparoxysm.substack.com/p/the-nba-must-abolish-the-stepien

An excerpt.

If you remove the Stepien Rule, you open up the ability of these teams to dig themselves out of the hole they willingly entered into during the previous CBA. These teams dug a hole in the previous CBA, based on the treasure (a title) they were digging for, and the previous CBA allowed spending as a ladder to climb out.

The new CBA basically dumped the dirt on top of those teams. Removing the Stepien Rule provides them with a little shovel to dig their way out.

If you open up the ability to trade back-to-back seasons, you allow for:

Milwaukee to use multiple picks as sweeteners to add to a deal to build around Giannis, helping them keep their franchise star.

Teams trying to trade for Giannis should he want to leave to trade more picks, which will get Milwaukee back to a full reset quicker than the current ?worst of both worlds? they are facing.

Denver to move difficult contracts to put a winning team around a 3-time MVP.

Boston to more easily move salary in this transitional period and to also add more players so they can compete again in 2026 when Tatum is healthy.

Phoenix to be able to move Bradley Beal more easily to try and capitalize on the remaining window of Kevin Durant, who, by all accounts, still wants to stay at least a little, and Matt Ishbia still wants to contend with him.

Teams like the Spurs, Rockets, and Thunder with so many picks to consolidate into more immediate help in their current window, rather than having to wait for various picks to convey.

The NBA instituted a CBA that radically alters the ability of teams to remain in contention if they committed to builds prior to the institution of that new CBA. And while those owners are partially responsible for not convincing their fellow owners of a more forgiving system, these teams should be granted some forward path without just having to give up on championship windows.

To me that logic kind of just boils to "these teams dug themselves into a hole, and then the league took away their shovel. If we get the league to give them back their shovels, all the problems will be solved!"

[Moranis]

I think you could tweak it, maybe something like you must own at least 3 future 1st round picks at any time.  So you could trade every other for 6 straight years, or you could trade 3 in a row at some point in the next 6.  If you owned multiple picks in future drafts, you could even trade 4 or 5 straight years (if you had 3 1st's 6 years out).  I think that achieves the spirit of the rule, but also provides a bit more flexibility for teams.

[bdm860]

Maybe we're at the point where team owners are smart enough to not pull a Stepien, but based on the Luka trade I doubt it. Also, eliminating the rule only helps in the short term, in the long term teams would be in a similar position to the Bucks or Suns due to trading all of their picks rather than all of their allowed picks

We're definitely not at that point, nowhere close. That's why we have teams like Phoenix now. Or look at the Nets, they screwed up by going all in on Garnett/Pierce, and once they finally dug themselves out of that hole, traded 3 firsts and 4 swaps for James Harden. Brooklyn will still be paying the price for James Harden till the '27 draft, 5 years after he left the team!


But I agree with the rest of what you wrote, I think the problem with the idea in the article Dons posted is that it really only allows teams a one time fix, and then teams will quickly be right back where they are. And if anything it would cause league wide inflation by increasing the supply of tradable picks, you'll just see stars traded for 5-7 picks instead of 3-4 picks + 1-3 swaps.

As an example let's think about this retroactively, if Milwaukee had more picks to trade, they'd have already traded away those picks for Lillard, actually putting them in a worse position (because now they'd have less picks). Or Brooklyn would have traded all their picks away for Harden. This doesn't make teams better, this will just make the gap between the well run teams and the poorly run teams wider.

Besides, teams have already pretty much side-stepped the Stepien rule by adding in swaps.

If this is the route you think the league should go, then the next step (after poorly run teams find themselves in worse positions because now they have no picks) is to change the rule limiting trading draft picks 7 years out. "Think of the help Milwaukee could add to Giannis if they were able to trade away picks 8-12 years out!"

If they did get away with the Stepien rule, I'd want it to go in the other direction. You can trade consecutive picks, but all teams are limited to trading away picks to a max of 5 years out. In the current NBA, once a star leaves his rookie team, they don't tend to last 7 years with the next team that trades for them. Chris Paul, Kawhi, Durant, Harden, Westbrook, Paul George, Kevin Garnett, Anthony Davis, Jimmy Butler, Tracy McGrady, Dwight Howard, Kyrie Irving, Deron Williams, Chris Webber, Shaq, Allen Iverson, etc. I'm sure there's some All-Stars that stuck around, but Kevin Love (8 1/2 years in CLE) is the only one I can think of right now (SGA will be next year, but he also wasn't a star yet when he was traded, so I'd consider him outside this scope). Not that this would be the only reason, but I feel like the churn on ownership and GMs is at its highest point (google AI tells me the average NBA ownership duration is 12.4 years, while the average GM tenure is 3 seasons), plus that where in the middle of a player empowerment era, I really think the league needs to protect teams from themselves.

[tazzmaniac]

Maybe we're at the point where team owners are smart enough to not pull a Stepien, but based on the Luka trade I doubt it. Also, eliminating the rule only helps in the short term, in the long term teams would be in a similar position to the Bucks or Suns due to trading all of their picks rather than all of their allowed picks

We're definitely not at that point, nowhere close. That's why we have teams like Phoenix now. Or look at the Nets, they screwed up by going all in on Garnett/Pierce, and once they finally dug themselves out of that hole, traded 3 firsts and 4 swaps for James Harden. Brooklyn will still be paying the price for James Harden till the '27 draft, 5 years after he left the team!


But I agree with the rest of what you wrote, I think the problem with the idea in the article Dons posted is that it really only allows teams a one time fix, and then teams will quickly be right back where they are. And if anything it would cause league wide inflation by increasing the supply of tradable picks, you'll just see stars traded for 5-7 picks instead of 3-4 picks + 1-3 swaps.

As an example let's think about this retroactively, if Milwaukee had more picks to trade, they'd have already traded away those picks for Lillard, actually putting them in a worse position (because now they'd have less picks). Or Brooklyn would have traded all their picks away for Harden. This doesn't make teams better, this will just make the gap between the well run teams and the poorly run teams wider.

Besides, teams have already pretty much side-stepped the Stepien rule by adding in swaps.

If this is the route you think the league should go, then the next step (after poorly run teams find themselves in worse positions because now they have no picks) is to change the rule limiting trading draft picks 7 years out. "Think of the help Milwaukee could add to Giannis if they were able to trade away picks 8-12 years out!"

If they did get away with the Stepien rule, I'd want it to go in the other direction. You can trade consecutive picks, but all teams are limited to trading away picks to a max of 5 years out. In the current NBA, once a star leaves his rookie team, they don't tend to last 7 years with the next team that trades for them. Chris Paul, Kawhi, Durant, Harden, Westbrook, Paul George, Kevin Garnett, Anthony Davis, Jimmy Butler, Tracy McGrady, Dwight Howard, Kyrie Irving, Deron Williams, Chris Webber, Shaq, Allen Iverson, etc. I'm sure there's some All-Stars that stuck around, but Kevin Love (8 1/2 years in CLE) is the only one I can think of right now (SGA will be next year, but he also wasn't a star yet when he was traded, so I'd consider him outside this scope). Not that this would be the only reason, but I feel like the churn on ownership and GMs is at its highest point (google AI tells me the average NBA ownership duration is 12.4 years, while the average GM tenure is 3 seasons), plus that where in the middle of a player empowerment era, I really think the league needs to protect teams from themselves.

Regarding Brooklyn, they are actually in good shape with picks including their own.   They got 4 1sts and a swap for KD to Suns and 5 1sts and a swap for Bridges to NYK.   So for KD they really netted 9 1sts, 2 swaps and Cam Johnson.