The Damian Lillard Conundrum
Dame says he won't play in the resumed season if the Blazers don't have a real chance to make the playoffs. Other stars probably feel the same. How should the NBA deal with that?
Good morning. Let’s basketball.
The Rommelpot Player, Frans Hals
In a conversation with Yahoo!’s Chris Haynes, Damian Lillard said he will not play in Disney World if the Blazers don’t enter the bubble with a real chance to make the playoffs. Dame says he’d show up to be with his team … and he’d stay on the bench.
This is a problem for the NBA.
Lillard likely isn’t alone. I can’t imagine Stephen Curry or Draymond Green suiting up for the Warriors for 5-7 games in Orlando. It would be cruel to expect Karl-Anthony Towns, who lost his mother to COVID-19, to play in meaningless games for the 19-45 Timberwolves just to bolster the league’s revenue picture. Should Kevin Love be obligated to suit up for the Cavaliers if there’s no legitimate chance to compete, which there would not be without drastic changes to the competitive format?
The NBA is bad at forcing teams to play all healthy players, and coronavirus won’t make that any easier. Yes, Damian Lillard gets paid to play basketball. Fans want to see him play. The Blazers are infinitely more entertaining and compelling when he plays. But the heaps of new pandemic bubble artifice piled on the already existing artifice that is NBA basketball make all of it seem a little absurd. If winning is all that matters and the Blazers have no mathematical shot to win with a reduced regular season, what the hell is the point?
And yet, before the shutdown, Lillard was actively playing for a Blazers team that was effectively in a four-way tie for ninth place, 3.5 games out of the playoffs with 16 games left. Playoff models gave them about a one-in-10 chance of making it. Is that the standard? If the Blazers have at least a 10-percent chance of making the playoffs (where they’d face the Lakers or Clippers in Round 1) Dame will play? What if changes to the schedule make it a 5-percent chance? What constitutes a “true opportunity” to make the playoffs as Dame phrases it?
If the NBA just runs back 5-7 regular season games, no, the Blazers (nor the Pelicans, Kings or Spurs, to say nothing of the Suns) would not have a true chance of making the playoffs. Which means there’s no reason to bring back any of those teams, or any of the non-playoff teams in the East. Which means the NBA would have no real reason for more regular season games other than to hit revenue thresholds and provide some warm-ups for playoff teams. Which is not something the NBA seems entirely interested in doing.
So the question becomes how the NBA can make it worth it everyone’s time and energy (fans included) to bring teams like the Blazers and players like Dame Lillard into the bubble without unfairly advantaging teams chasing the Grizzlies (in the West) and the Magic (in the East). How do you change the rules to get maximum participation and maximum intrigue yet maintain some competitive integrity?
The Damian Lillard Conundrum is not what you do with superstars uninterested in playing meaningless games in a bubble. That debate is useless — the NBA won’t force anyone to play, and wasting energy making a moral argument in either direction seems pointless given the circumstances. The Lillard Conundrum is what you do to make it so these games aren’t meaningless without disadvantaging the teams that performed better through March 11 so heavily that they get turned off to the resumption plan.
As you’ll see in the Links section, there are ideas galore floating around. But the Lillard Conundrum is proof that it’s not as easy as it looks.
Links
Adrian Wojnarowski on the big ongoing debate on how many teams to bring back into the bubble. The Hawks, for example, really want to play some more.
Kevin O’Connor on how a potential World Cup style group stage would look for the NBA. I love weird competition formats but I hold to Tuesday’s viewpoint: if you want this season to have some legitimacy after all that has happened, you need to make it as normal as is safe and reasonable to do so.
Mark Cuban wants a play-in tournament for the Nos. 7 and 8 seeds in each conference … despite his Mavericks standing to lose the most as the current No. 7 seed in the West. Gutsy! Under Cuban’s scheme, only the Warriors and Wolves are already essentially eliminated from the play-in tournament assuming 5-7 additional “regular season” games being played. I kind of love this idea. It solves the Damian Lillard Conundrum for all but the Warriors and Wolves.
The Pistons are on the hunt for a new general manager. Frankly, if I were a team in the market for a general manager, I would wait until Daryl Morey’s future is decided in the offseason. Or I’d be actively pitching Morey and/or Tilman Fertitta. Offer T-Fert a $100 million loan at 10 percent interest to release the GM from his duties early, Morey pays for himself!
Caitlin Cooper is in favor of leaving artificial crowd noise out of the NBA broadcasts so we can hear more delightful soundbites from players and coaches. Same.
This is a headline: “Alex Caruso vows to dap up Rihanna ‘for the culture.’”
Wow, Dan Devine on how the infamous Stevie Nicks Fajita Roundup sketch on SNL got made. Content I never knew I needed so badly.
The Athletic ranks the top 25 sports episodes of The Simpsons.
MLB’s pay proposal for players is pretty fascinating, with the highest paid players getting massive cuts. I want to say it would never fly for the NBA, but then the NBA has salary rules that essentially do this (tamp down top salaries to boost the median salary for lesser players) as a rule.
And finally: Don’t just tweet, act.
Be excellent to each other.