Beyond the first 450, the next best players are D League. I doubt all the foreign leagues combined do $1B in revenue.
Um, I don't think so. For one, D-league salary is capped at something ridiculously low. For another, D-Leaguers function as a bastardized minor league for the NBA. The quality of players in Europe is much, MUCH higher, even among Americans who played college BB. Not just because they're paid a lot more, but b/c the stigma of the DL is such that veterans don't generally go there. Josh Childress didn't say "Eff you, ATL...I'm going to play in Charleston/Goose-Creek!"
NBA "Dream Teams" routinely destroy opponents in International play. An NBA team is effectively a collection of all-star players from at least a decade of college seasons. Seriously, the kind of players we'd see in the NBA minus the 452 ( to be exact) who played last year would be Linton Johnson III. European teams might sign an occasional NBA player at a high salary, but no way could they sustain a $60M payroll. It's a marketing gimmick only.
Here's the 2010-11 Euroleague All-Star Team Here's the 2010-11 D-League All-Star team. Joe Alexander, Chris Johnson, Curtis Stinson, Trey Johnson, Ivan Johnson are better than Diamantidis, Big Sofo, JC Navarro, San Emetrio and Mike Batiste?
The Best NBA "Dream Team" since the Original almost lost to Rudy Fernandez, a 17y/o PG and other Spaniards you never heard of in the Gold Medal game. But we're not talking about that. You said that the next best players in the world after the NBA were in the DLeague, and I highly disagree. Juan Carlos Navarro, for instance. He may not be a starting-caliber NBA PG anymore, but he didn't sign up with the Bakersfield Flash, he went to Spain. He's a better PG than anyone in the DL. As for your "take out the best 452 and see who plays" game...I'd take Jasikevicus or Diamantidis over any guard in the DLeague. I'd take Sofo over Chris Johnson, and I'd take Sergio Llull over any wing. Even Jeremy Pargo would crush D-Leaguers. The D-League encourages a fast-paced, little-D-played, jack-up-shots game. It's done a good job of identifying athletic guys who can shoot and promoting them to the NBA.
If the NBA started back up without the current 450 players it would still be very exciting. There would be new stars such as the undrafted Wesley Matthews from 2 years ago that we'd instantly find exciting. I believe the NBA makes the stars with their hyped TV exposure, team rivalries, and overall media coverage. If you put any 12 scrubs in a Lakers uniforms I would be pumped to see a Portland team crush them. I'd DVR the game and yell at the screen jump up and down and be happy for days. I would play with the trade machine to find a way to snag the great John Burks from the Magic without giving up Rudolph Spangenie. We'd still be vehemently arguing here on the time to fire Nate!
What makes the NBA compelling is the continuity. New players join and old ones retire, but a team's roster doesn't wholly change from one season to the next. Certainly not the whole league. The NFL played a few weeks in '87 with scab players. It was an immediate financial hit of 20% to the league and it likely would have declined further once the novelty wore off.
Those who say they will put as much money and time into watching a scab NBA of D-Leaguers will learn otherwise. There will be fewer exciting plays, action will unfold more slowly, etc. 10 years later the league will have rebuilt, but meanwhile the league's revenue loss will be in the billions. Any former owners who in 2011 were poorer than Paul Allen will now be on welfare or hot dog vendors.
I don't buy this argument. The best players (in the US, at least) will still want to play in the NBA. Maybe a few superstars who have already made their nut will retire instead of taking a pay cut, but are we really going to be so much worse off without Kobe and LeBron? The career of an NBA player is so short that even if you took the top 450 out right now and shot them, the league could replenish itself in much less than 10 years. barfo
With NFL scab players, there was a feeling (as I recall) of lack of permanence. The real players were out there, lurking, and would be back at any time. If there was a similar sense with the NBA, I think that the league would have some serious problems. If there was a more serious break with the status quo--lots of players went to form their own league, or went to play overseas, or the owners won a massive series of court victories--then I think the actual quality of play would not be a big factor. After all, is the NBA more or less popular in 2011 than it was in, say, 2001? Are the players and teams better in 2011 than they were in in 2001? Do we even know the answer to that second question? I doubt it. After a few years of entirely new players, it would be an academic exercise to determine whether the new batch of players were as good or better than the 2011 version. And it would be a lot of fun arguing about on in interwebz. Ed O.
There's another huge difference. Football is extremely team dependent, while NBA basketball is largely about the stars. You can't play a particularly good brand of football with replacement players over the short-term.
