Go to Hell Ping Pong Balls

I'm not really a big Bill Simmons fan. Usually, I think his ESPN column is more geared for the fan who likes juggling monkeys during time outs, and Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl. You know, he's the cotton candy of sports journalism. His column is full of pop culture references like the ones I used above, and the actual sports analysis is generally a bit on the thin side. Not too much to gloss over the eyes of the less inquisitive fan. He's not altogether bad, as long as you know what you're getting yourself into when you make that decision to read his work. The latest piece had a few interesting points that I wanted to highlight here.

To provide you with a little background on the piece, in case you don't want to read the whole thing on your own, he says that the NBA is suffering because teams are now inclined to tank the season to get a top pick. He tells us that the lottery was originally designed to prevent "tanking" and preserve the integrity of all the games late in the season, even involving teams long since eliminated from the playoffs. Simmons suggests that the return of this "tanking" mentality came when the Magic won back to back lotteries, snagging Shaq and Penny in successive offseasons. The league weighted the lottery, foolishly returning the incentive to "tank" to the game.

Here we are in 2007 with the big stars at home with their feet up, fantasy GMs left scratching their heads during championship week with their best players missing a boatload of games to "injuries", and fans paying premium ticket prices to watch D-League performers trip over themselves on a nightly basis. (Yes, I'm talking to you Boston.) Kevin Garnett is home again this season, and has never had a real chance at anything thanks to the excellence in mediocrity that Kevin McHale has achieved in Minny. That in and of itself is one of the biggest crimes against the sport in its long history.

Now that you know what this is all about, here are two of Simmons' three suggestions:

1. Contract the league to 27 teams and dump Memphis, Charlotte and Atlanta, three cities that can't support NBA basketball and never could. Then we'll have a league-wide lottery to determine positioning for the dispersal draft of players from those three teams. (Note: We've already sedated Chad Ford just in case this happens.) And if a contender like Chicago happens to end up with Pau Gasol ... I think we'll manage.

Mr. West and I have been talking about a piece along these lines since before the season even tipped. Unfortunately, we (I) never got around to putting it together, but we'll do something on this soon. I want to contract all the major sports leagues, the NBA being most desperately in need of the move. More soon.....

2. Change the lottery back to that of the late '80s: one envelope per team, same odds for everybody, top three draft spots only. Boom! We've solved the tanking problem. If a half-decent team happens to land a franchise player, like the Wolves getting Oden and pairing him with KG ... I think we'll manage.

I like this idea a lot. Half of the contraction philosophy that I subscribe to is the notion that we need more star players paired with other star players. It's much better for the league to achieve parity via a more competitive field of teams. Diluting the field with so many franchises only guarantees that you get parity via mediocrity. Fewer teams, with more combinations of star players, achieves parity via quality. It's the classic example of quality over quantity, I suppose. It's not a problem to see Orlando win back-to-back lotteries, in my opinion (and Simmons' as well). Great. Congratulations. Shaq and Penny get to play together and one of your floundering teams is rescued. They are now likely to avoid the lottery altogether for a generation, and you can hope that another of your hard luck franchises can win 2 or even 3 times in a row.

In a perfect world, the worst team, which needs the most help, should have a greater chance at the top pick. That's how welfare works. Screw welfare. The object of the NBA is to put the most exciting product on the court, and if that means occasionally seeing one of the good teams become great, even while the bad teams still struggle a bit, so be it. It's just as likely that the worst team in the league will win the lottery two or three times in a row, as it is the team that is on the bubble. I'd love to see New Orleans, for example, get the top pick this year and add Greg Oden or Kevin Durant to a roster already rich with Chris Paul, Tyson Chandler, David West, and the player formerly known as Peja Stojakovic. That would mean a lot of big men, but it would also free the team to trade David West for a swingman or two guard of some quality.

I'd love to see the Sixers win the lottery in back to back years and score Oden and O.J. Mayo to go along with Iguodala, Dalembert, Andre Miller, and company. Just an example, but I think you see where I'm going with this. It would be good for the NBA to put one envelope per team in a hat and forgo the weighted lottery altogether. It's more exciting for the fans, and it's better for the sport. So, give those ping pong balls to Shawn Kemp and start a Beer Pong D-League.