Simmons believes the NBA chased competitive balance and an equal playing field at the expense of a compelling on-court product.
“Ultimately, the league should care about good basketball,” the Ringer founder said. “Basically what they’ve done with this whole system is they’re so desperate to create parity and to not have that bottom half of teams that suck that they’re penalizing the teams that are smart.”
Simmons also listed numerous other issues with the NBA that league executives could be fixing instead of bringing the hammer down on player salaries and manufacturing balance.
“What the league should actually want if they really cared about this s***, which I’m not positive they do, because if they cared about the overall health of the league, the schedule wouldn’t be 82 games, we wouldn’t be in this situation where it’s roulette every summer with guys just jumping around and 15 teams that are unhappy and 20 superstars and stars who are unhappy,” Simmons said. “One of the things we should fix is the continuity piece, and rewarding franchises for continuity, for drafting players correctly, for keeping nucleuses together. [That] should be what the league wants.”
Simmons believes the NBA, which already faced challenges around constant roster turnover, will only see more churn in the future.
“It’s too late now to fix it. I guess what bugs me is we’re probably not going to see great runs again,” Simmons said. “What we have with (Nikola) Jokic and (Jamal) Murray (in Denver) and what we have with (Jayson) Tatum and (Jaylen) Brown (in Boston), those are going to be anomalies. That’s not going to be the foundation of what the league is going forward. The foundation is going to be guys jumping around.”
Simmons is a prominent voice and advocate for the NBA. His words likely carry weight for league decision-makers.
As much as his monologue was a rant, it was likely also a plea for someone with the power to change it to do so.
Bill Simmons: The NFL is a more fun, better-run league than the NBA right now
Bill Simmons delivered a plea to the NBA to get its priorities straight before saying the NFL has overtaken it even for him, an NBA diehard.
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