Chilled by a draft

And now, the NBA Draft, in which Zion Williamson will go to the New Orleans Pelicans because that's where the NBA will tell him to go, and where unless traded he will have to stay for seven years because that's how the League works, and from which he will as likely as not flee as soon as he becomes an unrestricted free agent, because he never chose the place to begin with.

This is how it works in professional sports. This is how it's always worked. And because of that, no one blinks an eye.

I take that back. This guy does.

It's always a little unsettling when someone punches a hole in the box and beckons us to step outside  it, because it's human nature to cling to the creature comforts of the familiar. The NBA draft, the NFL Draft, every other kind of professional sports draft: They're the Way It's Always Been Done, and never mind that they're exactly the sort of socialist enterprise certain politicians are constantly warning us against. It seems we're all for free markets and the great god capitalism here in America, until we're not.

Well. What this guy's proposing is, at bottom, capitalism in its purest form. Its principles beat a direct path back to Adam Smith himself. And if that's unsettling because it's demonstrably not the Way It's Always Been Done, it's downright unnerving how much sense it makes.

Look, I get it. I do. The argument for a socialist construct in professional sports has always been that it preserves at least the illusion of competitive balance. And yet it doesn't. Awful organizations remain awful organizations, because there's no incentive to be otherwise. They may briefly rise because the system assists them in doing so, but it's always artificial. Sooner or later, like water, they seek their own level.

You want to remedy that?

This guy makes an excellent case that an unrestricted free market will do that.

Don't like players jumping from team to team?

Allow them to choose their employer the way people do in every other industry, and they'll be more invested in staying.

Want to improve chronically underperforming franchises and put an end to tanking?

Make them have to sell themselves to prospective players instead of rewarding their ineptitude by simply handing them the best incoming talent each year.

Think this means no one will choose the Timberwolves over the Warriors, or the Grizzlies over the Rockets?

Perhaps. But aren't they doing that now, albeit on a delayed basis? Plus, in 2019, with the advent of social media and a fully web-integrated world, no one has to go to New York or L.A. to make a splash anymore. Would Giannis Antetokounmpo be any more saleable in New York than he is in Milwaukee?

And theoretically, the salary cap would tend to act as a brake on that sort of thing; the glamour destinations might not always be able to land the top incoming talent because they don't have the cap space to pay the price tag. But of course, this is all theoretical, because the draft isn't going anywhere, at least in the foreseeable future.

It's the Way It's Always Been Done, after all. No stepping outside the box allowed.