One of the better parts of the new CBA, besides the fact that they got the blasted thing signed with only a few weeks of FA delay, is the new official Minor League affilliations the NBA has with the D-League. Players can be sent to the D or called up from the D to help grow their game and still allow teams to maintain their rights. This may create weirdness as teams still pay NBA salaries to players farmed out, pairing them with REAL D-Leaguers making piddling money. Any player can be sent down 3 times, but only two players at a time for any team. What they haven't said yet is how this affects roster counts. Can you send a Johan Petro down to the D-League rather than put him on the IL for the mandatory 5 games and call him up if there is an injury? This gives him mor e PT experience than he will get on the active roster. Can you sign 8 Day contracts to replace a farmed D-Leaguer? The Sonics are sharing the new Albuquerque team with the Jazz, Suns, and Kings. I like the idea of a Minor League, but I am not sure how this implementation is going to work out. I guess this season will be our first test. SOURCE
I'm sure there will be a lot of wrinkles to iron out in the first season, but I can't see how it won't be beneficial. Someone like Petro needs to be playing regularly, even if coaches talk about how a season of being involved with training will do wonders for a player. He needs to be playing competitive basketball consistently, and what better way to do that than to have Dijon Thompson feeding him the rock? I mean, c'mon, MUSTARD!
I'm interested in seeing how teams are going to run plays, give minutes, etc. to these "NBA" players. Why would an American who isn't property of a NBA team want to play in the D-League now? Teams have too much money invested in these younger players to see them sit the bench behind a regular D-League player. I guess the CBA may have a reemurgence considering that European teams aren't paying Americans like they used to. If you have all of these different players from all of these different organizations on one team I'm sure that D-League coaches are going to feel pressures from these NBA teams to showcase their organizations young talent. If Johan Petro, Robert Whaley, and Kris Humphries at some point were all on the same D-League team (or even a young Phoenix big--if they had one) would Johan be able to develop if he couldn't beat out the Jazz duo and get substantial floor time? Would a player who couldn't speak the language benefit from learning a system different from the one that he was drafted into? Some things to take into consideration. This isn't like minor league baseball where an organization has two or three teams to pull from. I don't think that it is a bad idea to use the NBA Developmental to help players develop but I kind of feel like if they have to be sent down to the D-League they probably shouldn't be in the NBA at that point in their career to begin with.
