The answer to all this NBA Lockout talk: Contraction

[OsirusCeltics]

Basketball to me is the only professional sport where the players are more important than the game itself. It is a star-driven league where marketability is needed to help it function. The players where no helmets, or face guards. So its easier for casual fans to see their faces and buy their endorsements

So its understandable that the teams struggling financially are the NBA teams with a low number of stars. Celtics, Lakers, Bulls, Knicks, Miami, San Antonio, etc. really don't have a problem with losing money

My idea is just to contract the league. Make it a 20 team league
-Judge the teams that are going to be cut by how much debt/negative profit they are in. The 10 teams that are losing the most are gone
-All the staff of those teams (coaches, trainers) can be transferred to the remaining teams

Two main reasons why I want this contraction

1. No team would be losing any more money, the remaining teams would actually gain more money. The media revenue would share between 20 teams, instead of 30. Simple Math. No owners would be losing money, and able to pay players the contracts they want (I do believe in a hard cap though)

2. The wealth of talent would be so much better on each team
It started with the beginning of the 90's. The NBA is too watered down. Theres so many examples of franchises having one lone great player, with no help around them
Mitch Richmond, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone

Imagine having teams being 10 deep of all star caliber players. There won't be games where you can take a day off, and regular season games would be more watchable and competitive. Every team would have a chance to win the title each year. It wouldn't be a combination of dead-set contenders and bottom dwellers

[LooseCannon]

2. The wealth of talent would be so much better on each team
It started with the beginning of the 90's. The NBA is too watered down. Theres so many examples of franchises having one lone great player, with no help around them
Mitch Richmond, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone

Imagine having teams being 10 deep of all star caliber players. There won't be games where you can take a day off, and regular season games would be more watchable and competitive. Every team would have a chance to win the title each year. It wouldn't be a combination of dead-set contenders and bottom dwellers

Yes, because there were no bad teams in the 70s and 80s.

Also, Karl Malone never had a great teammate?

[Donoghus]

You wanna contract from 30 to 20 teams?

Good luck getting the player's union to agree to that.  Will never happen in a million years. 

[PosImpos]

Actually, the teams that are losing money are not so much the ones that are the worst of the worst, but rather the small market teams that are spending a lot in order to compete with the big boys.  The Spurs, for example, are not a hugely profitable franchise.

Put in a hard cap and limit player salaries so smaller market teams aren't forced to spend above their means in order to compete with the big market big spenders.

[OsirusCeltics]

2. The wealth of talent would be so much better on each team
It started with the beginning of the 90's. The NBA is too watered down. Theres so many examples of franchises having one lone great player, with no help around them
Mitch Richmond, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone

Imagine having teams being 10 deep of all star caliber players. There won't be games where you can take a day off, and regular season games would be more watchable and competitive. Every team would have a chance to win the title each year. It wouldn't be a combination of dead-set contenders and bottom dwellers

Yes, because there were no bad teams in the 70s and 80s.

Also, Karl Malone never had a great teammate?

The Jazz's talent 1-10 (best player to 10th best play on the depth chart) had no where near the Bull's 1-10 talent level
Thats what I meant

[Lucky17]

-Judge the teams that are going to be cut by how much debt/negative profit they are in. The 10 teams that are losing the most are gone

I have a feeling that the Celtics would be on your list for contraction.

[Chris]

You wanna contract from 30 to 20 teams?

Good luck getting the player's union to agree to that.  Will never happen in a million years. 

Yeah, that would just make things worse. 

[OsirusCeltics]

Hey Lebron also wanted the idea of a contraction earlier
So if Lebron says it, its gotta be right

[17wasEZ]

2. The wealth of talent would be so much better on each team
It started with the beginning of the 90's. The NBA is too watered down. Theres so many examples of franchises having one lone great player, with no help around them
Mitch Richmond, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone

Imagine having teams being 10 deep of all star caliber players. There won't be games where you can take a day off, and regular season games would be more watchable and competitive. Every team would have a chance to win the title each year. It wouldn't be a combination of dead-set contenders and bottom dwellers

Yes, because there were no bad teams in the 70s and 80s.

Also, Karl Malone never had a great teammate?

He must have forgotten about Greg Ostertag. 

[17wasEZ]

2. The wealth of talent would be so much better on each team
It started with the beginning of the 90's. The NBA is too watered down. Theres so many examples of franchises having one lone great player, with no help around them
Mitch Richmond, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone

Imagine having teams being 10 deep of all star caliber players. There won't be games where you can take a day off, and regular season games would be more watchable and competitive. Every team would have a chance to win the title each year. It wouldn't be a combination of dead-set contenders and bottom dwellers

Yes, because there were no bad teams in the 70s and 80s.

Also, Karl Malone never had a great teammate?

The Jazz's talent 1-10 (best player to 10th best play on the depth chart) had no where near the Bull's 1-10 talent level
Thats what I meant

The Bulls were about 3 to 4 deep with arguably the greatest player of all-time.  From 4 or 5-10, I didn't see them as anything other than role players.  The Jazz had Malone, Stockton and Hornacek to go with their share of role players (Byron Russell comes to mind).  If Malone didn't choke as often as he did in his career or could close games, he would have had at least 1 ring.

Other than that, I hear what you are saying.

[Evantime34]

Financially long term it makes sense. Get rid of some of the unprofitable teams so that only the financially sound teams remain. However, if you were to contract the teams you would need to pay the owners of the contracted teams the market value of the teams before they were dissolved. A time in which you are not receiving revenue after a year in which you took heavy losses (according to the league) is not the time to be shelling out hundreds of millions if not Billions of dollars.

The true answer is revenue sharing. Don't drop the under performing part of the business but find a way to make it profitable (revenue sharing and forcing new management upon those teams would work). It's not like there is a lack of good NBA players to go around.

[greenpride32]

Just because a team with on-court success or a larget fan follwing or in a big market does not mean they are profitable.  Both the Celtics and Knicks claim to have lost money during the 2008-09 season.  

It's well known amongst Celtics fans that the team basically broke even during the 2008 title season.  Think about that for a minute; sell out every game, probably have 10-12+ home playoff games, sell a ton of KG and Ray merchandise, win the title, and break even???  How much better can you really hope for than that, and you just break even?  I understand much of that has to do with the fact the Bruins own the building and the Celtics lease/rent it from them.  But that's reality, and we don't always live in an ideal world.

Also the idea behind expansion in the league was to grow revenue.  When you have more teams, obviously you have more games played, more merchandise sold, more TV contracts etc.

[OsirusCeltics]

2. The wealth of talent would be so much better on each team
It started with the beginning of the 90's. The NBA is too watered down. Theres so many examples of franchises having one lone great player, with no help around them
Mitch Richmond, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone

Imagine having teams being 10 deep of all star caliber players. There won't be games where you can take a day off, and regular season games would be more watchable and competitive. Every team would have a chance to win the title each year. It wouldn't be a combination of dead-set contenders and bottom dwellers

Yes, because there were no bad teams in the 70s and 80s.

Also, Karl Malone never had a great teammate?

The Jazz's talent 1-10 (best player to 10th best play on the depth chart) had no where near the Bull's 1-10 talent level
Thats what I meant

The Bulls were about 3 to 4 deep with arguably the greatest player of all-time.  From 4 or 5-10, I didn't see them as anything other than role players.  The Jazz had Malone, Stockton and Hornacek to go with their share of role players (Byron Russell comes to mind).  If Malone didn't choke as often as he did in his career or could close games, he would have had at least 1 ring.

Other than that, I hear what you are saying.

Yeah i agree with Malone choking
But Bulls had players like Craig Hodges, Tony Kukoc, Ron Harper, Steve Kerr, Brandon Armstrong who sat on the bench
No one on the Jazz bench was that good

[TheTruthFot18]

God 20 teams means every one of those teams would have a big 3 (more or less). WHile your money argument makes sense, the lockout is happening because they want all teams to make money. If the league can somehow manage to make money for all 30 teams, thats a better financial option then 20 teams making money. Its all about money and how much you can make. 

[OsirusCeltics]

-Judge the teams that are going to be cut by how much debt/negative profit they are in. The 10 teams that are losing the most are gone

I have a feeling that the Celtics would be on your list for contraction.

I don't care what the stats say
A team that is sold out almost every night and top 10 in attendance is never losing money
Prob their team's net profit might not be as high as previous years, but they aren't losing money