In terms of the D-League, the NBA does acknowledge it's not working as originally planned. I read an article a few months ago (can't find the link) that the NBA wants the D-League to be more of a minor league system and for the better players to sign with the league instead of going to Europe. To accomplish that, the first step is to require a 1-to-1 relationship between NBA teams and a D-League team. That's starting to happen with most NBA teams aligning themselves on an "affiliate" level, i.e. the NBA team will control the coaching staff and personnel, but not own the team outright. There is separate ownership responsible for operations, marketing, etc. When NBA teams control the personnel decisions, it's easier to implement their systems and ensure playing time for players under contract with the parent team.
The next step is to increase player salaries to make the D-League competitive with European clubs. Once every team is affiliated with a single D-League team, I think the NBA will come up with some kind of funding proposal. I still believe teams will only have a set number of players under their control as is the case now (players assigned to the D-League still count against an NBA team's 15-man roster) and the remaining players have contracts with the D-League, not the teams. Maybe that increases by a couple per team. But the whole point is to make the jump from the D-League to the pros. If all players are bound to specific teams, that limits the opportunity for a player, for example, on SA's D-League team to move up, whereas a player on Philly's team has a big opportunity to be promoted.
Maybe as green suggested you make the draft a couple of rounds longer. Raise the limit of players on teams to 15 on the NBA roster and an additional 5 who can be assigned to the D-League. Then, you have to still be at a max of 20 each season, but 5 must qualify for the D-League (i.e. you can't horde NBA vets and assign them to your minor-league team). If you exceed 20 after the draft, you have until July 10th (when FA officially starts) to release players to get down to 20. Alternately, you could just pass on any of your draft picks.
The last step involves working with the NCAA on raising the age limit for the draft. There has been talk about using the D-League as an alternative for going to college. Players who did so would be eligible to be drafted once they reached the draft age, along with college sophomores (if the age limit is increased by 1 year).
Great analysis Core4, thanks a lot.
Also some interesting ideas you examined to improve the D-League. Maybe I could mention my idea that I had for years just at this point. Of course it's not actually my idea but I've always thought that it would be awesome with the NBA. Just think about a league structure that does not purpose the player development by any means but it does that purpose naturally, so there is no any kind of D-League problem or whatsoever. I should state first though, it's most probably not practical/applicable at this point and kind of a moot idea considering the route that NBA is taking recently.
Anyway, in short, a league system like in most European leagues might be really valuable and beneficial in the States. It would actually work better in US, imo, than it works in the major European leagues like ACB, Italian, Russian, French, Greek or Turkish leagues. In those leagues, you just don't have a singular league, you basically have a tier system that classifies the teams into separate professional leagues. It's generally three tiers in these leagues, meaning three separate professional leagues.
For example, the Turkish Basketball League(TBL) has three leagues plus local/minor leagues, as, TBL the main league that features the best 16 teams of Turkey, TB2L which is the second tier league with 18 teams and TB3L which is the third tier league and has 36 teams and finally the local/minor leagues, which don't mean much. But the main point and the most important aspect in this structure is the transitivity(permeability?) between the tiers. I mean, the best teams(generally 2 to 4 of them) in each sub-tiers can advance to the upper league and the worst teams(again the 2-4 of them) in the upper leagues can drop to the sub tiers.
Obviously, this is completely different structure to the NBA and D-League system but I believe it would be applicable if the NBA had taken a route towards it like 10 years ago or smthg. I believe with the right adjustments, like the league numbers(two tiers would make more sense for the NBA) and the team numbers, it could work better than it does with Euro leagues. Because, American basketball (American sports generally) is much more lucrative and productive than it is in Europe, the game there is integrated with the education system and it constantly and continuously produces great players/athletes. But the problem is, there is only one pro league. Thereby it naturally creates unemployment for American basketball players. Right now tons of American players are having to look for playing in foreign lands, not even just only Europe but China, other Far Eastern countries, Australia, Middle East etc as well. However a similar league structure with Europe could increase the saturation levels in US Basketball greatly. It could not only do that but could also bring all the sacred purposes that the D-League wants to bring, naturally even, because there would be real purposes, like winning, like advancing to the NBA, like making money and doing business. This all means lots of extra dough and business for the sports industry in an entirely professional structure.
Of course, it would had to be done with a great care not to ruin the current NBA and its lucrative environment. A two tier structure with 30 teams each, for instance, while preserving the current NBA structure as much as possible, would be great. 2 to 4 worst teams of the NBA, one or two bottom teams from the each conference, drop to the NBA2 league and the conference champions or finalists of the NBA2 get to advance to the NBA. This brings a completely new two excitements to the American Basketball; advancing to the NBA and hanging on to the NBA. Also during the construction of the new system, you could even solve the tanking problem with extra adjustments and a fresh draft system(it has to be a well-thought-out process though). So no more awarding the worst teams because they could achieve to be the worst, while all you want is a fair draft system.
Obviously, the best players generally would be in the NBA but you could see opposite instances as well. But more importantly, the player market would be much more extensive, deeper and richer, since the all teams and players would be more independent and competitive. The work of developing players would be a naturally and independently happening while also players earn their livings much better with decent salaries. And the teams in the NBA could see which and what kind of players are good and have potential. They could watch them, follow them and target and pouch them at the end.
There would even be space for Euro/International players in the NBA2, wouldn't it be great for the globalizing of the game? Furthermore, how about draft and stash Euro players into the NBA2(if they agree with an NBA2 team, of course), where they could be right before your eyes, where you could always keep tabs on them? It could definitely be possible after half a decade or so, when the NBA2 has flourished. You could also have an option to rent your players to the NBA2 teams or vice versa, as an equivalent of sending players to the D-League, that's a very common practice among the European teams.
Anyway, like I said, this is an entirely different idea and has its own problems besides its merits. But it wouldn't be completely nonsensical thing to discuss if the NBA had taken a different way in the last 10-15 years, which could make this kind of structure change more applicable.
