Clarkmeister
07-10-2004, 06:45 PM
I was arguing with my Uncle over the 4th of July weekend about who was a better coach, Phil Jackson or Red Auerbach. He kept coming back to the "the talent is diluted" and "no easy wins" argument, which to me may be the worst argument ever.
First, it should be obvious that it is tougher to win 4 playoff series than to win 2. Second, to me it is clear that while the league has grown by over 2.5x since the Boster glory days, the talent pool (in all sports, not just basketball) has grown by much much more than 2.5x. Third, the salary cap has made it more difficult to achieve long term success. As an example, would the Bulls have won 12 straight titles with no Jordan retirement and unlimited cap room? Don't people think that players like Ewing, Malone, Stockton would have jumped at the chance to play in Chicago if there were no cap constraints?
But then I thought of this following thought while talking about it with a friend. Say we shrunk the NBA or any other league down to 8 teams today. We redrafted and these talent laden 8 teams had a regular season. While the 8th best team in this theoretical league *may* be better than most (all?) of the teams in the current league, that 8th best team would STILL be no match for whatever team was the best. I don't think the league would be more competitive at all. The gap between the best and worst teams in the smaller league may be smaller than the same gap in a larger league, but it is still large enough to mean that effectively, the worst team has no chance. In other words, even if we ignore the three points I mention in the above paragraph, more absolute talent/team does not necessarily mean more competition between the top team and other teams.
First, it should be obvious that it is tougher to win 4 playoff series than to win 2. Second, to me it is clear that while the league has grown by over 2.5x since the Boster glory days, the talent pool (in all sports, not just basketball) has grown by much much more than 2.5x. Third, the salary cap has made it more difficult to achieve long term success. As an example, would the Bulls have won 12 straight titles with no Jordan retirement and unlimited cap room? Don't people think that players like Ewing, Malone, Stockton would have jumped at the chance to play in Chicago if there were no cap constraints?
But then I thought of this following thought while talking about it with a friend. Say we shrunk the NBA or any other league down to 8 teams today. We redrafted and these talent laden 8 teams had a regular season. While the 8th best team in this theoretical league *may* be better than most (all?) of the teams in the current league, that 8th best team would STILL be no match for whatever team was the best. I don't think the league would be more competitive at all. The gap between the best and worst teams in the smaller league may be smaller than the same gap in a larger league, but it is still large enough to mean that effectively, the worst team has no chance. In other words, even if we ignore the three points I mention in the above paragraph, more absolute talent/team does not necessarily mean more competition between the top team and other teams.