A look at the NHL and NBA offseasons (and what we can learn about MLB’s from them)

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Can MLB’s supremacy be challenged?

While the occasional article is free for everyone, the vast majority of this content is restricted to my Patreon subscribers, whose support allows me to write all of this in the first place. Please consider becoming a subscriber! -Marc Normandin
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Drafts are indefensible, unless you’re a team owner

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The NBA Draft lottery occurred earlier this week, and with it came the usual fanfare. In addition, there was also criticism of the NBA Draft, and sports drafts in general, from various commentators like Bomani Jones and Joe Sheehan, whose Twitter thoughts on the matter I’ll share below:

Sheehan:

“Just a reminder that Zion Williamson should get to pick where he works, like the rest of us do, rather than have his employer picked for him and his salary dictated to him. Sports drafts are indefensible.”

Jones, in response to Sheehan:

“I say this every year and people act like it’s the craziest thing ever. Drafts are so baked into sports that people can’t even consider the idea they are fundamentally unfair.”

Sheehan is wrong about one thing: drafts are defensible, so long as you happen to be working in or for one of the leagues operating one. As Bomani Jones implies, fans are brainwashed into thinking drafts are necessary, when they very much are not. Drafts, like pretty much every other policy put forward by owners in sports leagues, exist in order to control labor and limit their earnings. In a league with a salary cap like the NBA, this becomes even more obvious: 29 of the NBA’s 30 teams spent the 2018-2019 season right below or right over the $109 million salary cap (the latter allowed by a series of complicated exemptions for additional spending). No one in the NBA can hoard talent in the absence of a draft, as roster limitations, the salary cap, and the lack of an organized minor league that’s comparable to what Major League Baseball has in play make that impossible.

Continue reading “Drafts are indefensible, unless you’re a team owner”

Let’s talk about antitrust exemptions

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Do you know anything about how the modern incarnation of the National Basketball Association was formed*? There was an NBA union before the NBA as we know it existed, and the actions of that union helped form the much larger, much more stable and lucrative NBA of today.

*I promise, this is related to baseball, just give me a minute.

Continue reading “Let’s talk about antitrust exemptions”