And I have an answer to that, Skander.
What you propose is do-able, but it gets complicated after a while, and that's what I'm looking to prevent. Plus, why trade a keeper for a non-keeper? I'm hurting my own team, because the top player's eligibility is getting reset.
I understand Ziggy's point, because it's the situation that I'm in: Duncan and Nash. My way forces me to choose between Duncan/Nash and COMPLETELY rebuilding, or Duncan/Lewis and having at least SOMETHING to build from next year.
What keeps a person from tanking? Losing. If you're willing to lose year after year after year, without ever getting better, or at least trying to, there's nothing anyone can *EVER* do about that. If they do it in a season where the "magical" keepers are out there, it will benefit them for no more than two years...at which point, they're going to have to be "bad" again.
My question is if we're going to allow some circumstances to reset keeper eligibility OTHER than the draft, why aren't we resetting that eligibility in *ALL* circumstances?
Skander's proposal doesn't cover the two-trade scenario that I proposed earlier: If I trade Duncan for bum A and bum B from DaBods, it resets Duncan's eligibility. So then DaBods turns around and trades me Garnett for bum C and bum D. That resets Garnett's eligibility. I've got Garnett for two years, and Derek has Duncan for two years. Neither re-enter the draft. Neither was traded for each other.
The *ONLY* fair way to do it is that ELIGIBILITY STAYS WITH THE PLAYER. That way, there's no question as to what you are trading for. If you trade for Duncan this year, you *KNOW* he's going back in the draft pool. It's up to you as to whether you play for a short-term championship (Miami), or rebuild for the future (L.A. Lakers).
And, also, for example, let's say that I *REALLY*, *REALLY* like Steve Nash - or LTTK really, really likes Peja Stojakovic. You're telling me that in order to get him back, I have to let him go through the draft...which is okay by me...but if I trade him, I can't re-acquire him, even if his eligibility is reset. That's crazy. Perhaps I'm willing to mortgage my future to keep players I like. If I'm limited to WHAT PLAYERS I CAN ACQUIRE, and the situations through which they are acquired, then I'm against that.
Consider this situation: I trade Nash this year. He has no eligibility left for me. He plays on Ziggy's team for two years, and Ziggy trades him to Caleb. Caleb then trades Nash to me. Yet he's not eligibile for me to keep. Why? Because of something that happened THREE YEARS ago. That simply means that as time goes on, the rules get more and more and more complicated. That's bad.
The way to do it is with STRAIGHT ELIGIBILITY that stays with the player. The same way it can be beneficial to trade for a player with an expiring contract, it would be beneficial to trade for a player with no eligibility. For example, let's use the past year:
Derek has Jason Kidd, Tracy McGrady, and Kevin Garnett. He knows he's got two years of eligibility with McGrady, one year left with either Kidd or Garnett. But he's got a stacked team. Why not trade a Kidd and others for someone like a Dwyane Wade? In that way, he now has Garnett eligibile for one year, McGrady and Wade eligible for two. He gets to choose - dump Garnett for the long run, or drop a Wade or McGrady?
The trick to this is that you're limited to 2 keepers, but a lot of teams, if you were to really push them, would want to keep three players. Derek has Kidd/McGrady/Garnett. I have Duncan/Nash/Lewis. Last year, Skander had Arenas/Miller/Kirilenko/McGrady. The depth is out there.
Anything that limits the managers from moving a player in hopes of re-acquiring that player - via draft or via trade - I'm against. Anything that requires us to remember anything more than happened in the past two off-seasons, I'm against. The rules should be simple.
Anything that resets eligibility OTHER THAN THE DRAFT - I'm against. If we're doing that, we simply might has well just let people keep players for as long as we want them, because the thrill of having that #1 draft pick is MEANINGLESS. All the talent is gone.
If I have the number 1 draft pick, it ought to mean something. And as keepers start getting staggered - meaning Duncan is eligible one year and Garnett is eligible the next - then it will. The big problem is that we're at the initial start, and Duncan, Nowitzki, and Garnett are all in the same year. But how long before the off-year starts catching up in terms of keepers? You can figure Wade, Arenas, Maggette, and Iverson will figure highly in the draft two years from now.
A player's eligibility should - in part - determine his value. Duncan should be worth less in the upcoming year than he would have been last year. He should have been worth less last year than he was the year before. And his value shouldn't be less to me just because I had him before.
