Why rich white owners will never eliminate the draft system

Owners in the NBA will never give up the draft, and it is fairly obvious why. The league is very concerned about tanking, but these owners honestly could not care less. Rich people who are Making Money will vote for making money every time. They will continue to vote to make money, and they will hope that their players have as few rights as possible. They have gone so far as to force players to give up money when they leave their teams, and they have a draft system that keeps players with their original teams for up to seven years. Even Donald Sterling was making money, and he made $2 billion to sell his team.

Why would he care at all about players?

The draft makes life difficult for all

The draft forces good teams to sit back and let bad teams pick most of the time. There are rare exceptions when a good franchise is making a high pick, and that usually results in dynasties. Tim Duncan to San Antonio rings a bell. However, usually the bad teams get all the talent, ruin that talent, and they make the league worse. Imagine all the players that could have been great if they had been drafted or signed by good teams. Keep in mind, Kobe Bryant would not be Kobe Bryant if he had played in Charlotte. That is a fact. You cannot convince me or anyone who watches basketball that he would have been as great in the pitiful development system that Charlotte has.

The owners are going to make money either way

The owners are going to make money no matter what they do. They could even make money while they are locking out the players because they are sitting on billions. The owners have been so good at making money that Donald Sterling was making money even though he was openly not trying to win.

He was clearly not investing in the team, and that made the Clippers a laughingstock. They were so bad that they routinely ended up at the bottom of every list of franchises. Sterling was forced to sell the team because he said something racist, but he made $2 billion. A player in the NBA could breathe on a coach wrong and never play in the league again.

Some of them are rich, but most players are not.

Who will miss the draft?

Talent evaluators will miss the draft because they have to do a lot more work to market their team. No one is going to want to play in a place like Indiana. No one will care to play in Sacramento, and it will be a major drag playing in Charlotte. Why would you play for those teams when you can play in Miami or LA? You could play in Portland where everyone is hip, but that would mean you had a choice. Rich and powerful owners hate that.