[Senator Clay Davis]

But if the worse you do means the more you can offer a potential new NBA player that does nothing whatsoever to stop tanking. It's basically the same system as now where the worse you do offers you an advantage, but instead of offering a virtual guarantee of a top player in the draft to a tanking team you've now introduced the backdoor of that player going to the best team in the league instead.

And yeah big markets will have mechanisms to close the gap in terms of total compensation that small markets can't offer. The only reason the Kawhi thing went sideways was it was an actual no-show job. Better to have it be a no-work job where they show up and do nothing and get paid. And good luck stopping that. Can't ban players from earning off-court money.

And, of course, eliminating the draft would severely curtail trades and since no other league thrives off constant player movement more than the NBA, it would probably end up being a net negative for the league. I think this approach would have a small chance to improve the tanking issue, while offering a lot of risk it ends up only helping the big franchises.