As a league that increasingly seeks to improve and become a world reference, whether in the sports segment or in the business arena, NBA goes through changes every year. New exchange policies, salary cap, game format, age limit joining the league, new rules and the draft itself are often changed and discussed among teams so that competitive balance, one of the key operating concepts, becomes a reality. For many years, the league, as a whole, has grasped that teams should have the same competitive chances, that is, there must be mechanisms that favor weaker franchises to set up more robust teams and compete with more structured franchises. According to NBA commissioner Adam Silver:
"What we're really focused on is parity of opportunities ... There are changes that we can make to the system and I think by doing that we will have more competitive balance and thus more equal opportunities ..."
There are some metrics that the league uses to measure the success of competitive balance, among them: the diversity of teams to be champions and of reaching the playoffs, the frequency of records, 50% or more victories in the season, the number of teams that do not reach the playoffs for a long time and the difference in victories between one conference and another that, when presenting the expected results, make the game more attractive, strengthening the NBA as a product, increasing the number of sales, sponsors, sells more seats in games and consequently it is a win-win situation to all stakeholders. After all, who was happy with Kevin Durant going to the Warriors in 2016? Only their fans, right?
On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand ... according to Adam Silver himself, despite the intense search for this concept of competitive balance, dynasties such as the 2015-19 Golden State Warriors, the 1989-98 Chicago Bulls and the Lakers 1980-91 are very important for the NBA, a good number of people only know basketball because of the success of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and their teams that made history and have set milestones in the league. In fact, many people in Brazil who recently started to practice and follow basketball, have Stephen Curry as their greatest idol.
But the competitive balance is not just about winning titles, this is just one of the metrics being applied, the important aspect of it is to give the opportunity through mechanisms for teams like the 2014 Milwaukee Bucks to rebuild themselves and become competitive teams year after year as we had previously written about it.
For this competitiveness to reach its goal, the NBA has some mechanisms, notably:
DRAFT
Draft is an event that has been held annually since 1947 and is the time when new players join the league, usually from American college basketball teams or international professional leagues. The franchises that present the worst performances at the end of the season have the highest chances of choosing the best talent enrolled on the draft evening, so the league gives the opportunity for the worst franchises to rebuild themselves and increase competitiveness.
There is no denying the positive impact that Luka Dončić had, when he joined the Dallas Mavericks team after the 2018 Draft, for instance. A team that has not progressed since the first round of playoffs since 2012, and since 2016 had not qualified, now has a much higher chance of being more competitive.
For the current Draft, the first fourteen choices are drawn among franchises that did not qualify for the playoffs, the three worst teams of the season have a 14% chance each to get the first choice, while for the other teams, this percentage gradually decreases according to its classification. The other choices that go up to number 60 are chosen in reverse order to the record of the regular season.
This is one of the most direct opportunities that teams that have not been successful have to evolve within the league’s competition.
SALARY CAP
If the most valuable and profitable teams in the NBA could offer the value they wanted when hiring a player, surely the best would play in these franchises, making the league an environment where franchises with greater financial power, would always be a favorite every year.
The salary cap is the limit for players' salaries imposed equally on all franchises, it is recalculated annually as profits increase or decrease, as the case may be.
An example of this mechanism is the Los Angeles Lakers in the current season, with two players benefiting from the maximum salary and the salary cap in the limit, if they wanted to add another star with the same caliber as LeBron or AD, they would have to get rid of almost half of the team or pay a sort of fine called “Luxury Tax”, which would become an extremely high cost for the franchise to bear.
This is one of the ways that the NBA offers smaller teams the chance to negotiate with great players.
RENDA DE DIREITOS TELEVISIVOS
According to Sports Media Watch, the NBA annually makes $ 2.6 billion from broadcasting the games nationwide, all of which is distributed equally among each franchise. In this way, teams with fewer fans and exhibitions that would profit much less than the most popular teams, have a significant source of income to offer good contracts and improve their structure each season.
As time passes and the game evolves, more measures are needed for the league to adapt and become a more balanced and competitive environment. Even so, there will always be external factors that positively or negatively influence this scenario. One thing is certain: the more franchises that know how to take advantage of the opportunities that the league offers, the more competitive they are likely to be. A great proof of the misuse of these mechanisms is the Knicks, because in spite of being the NBA's most valuable franchise, a series of wrong decisions increasingly distance them from the Larry O’Brien trophy.
