The consequence? Second-round picks, which would have been in the 50s overall, were lost by each team. Adam Silver and the team gave them a swift smack on the wrist, not a warning.
Because of this, you may have seen that the Philadelphia 76ers (in connection with the James Harden contract) and New York Knicks (with Jalen Brunson) made offseason moves that can be considered tampering and enhanced their squads.
Contrast that to the NFL, which punished Miami severely for FAILED tampering by taking away a first-round selection, a third-round pick and suspending Dolphins owner Stephen Ross for the first six weeks of the 2022 season.
Sean Payton, a former Saints coach, and Tom Brady, a former Patriots quarterback, were not signed by the Dolphins; instead, they were just approached. That was adequate.
It addresses fundamentally diverse viewpoints on how to operate a league (something Heat beat writer Ira Winderman and I talked about today). In contrast to the NFL, where players are more of a commodity and organizations see their careers as disposable, the NBA players have considerably more control.
The NBA is aware that cheating is commonplace. The objective is to keep the playing field reasonably level since we cannot limit the use of iPhones and social media too much these days. With players having such sway over their careers and where they play, the NBA is okay with it (a little too comfortable for some owners, with recent things such as the Kevin Durant trade request).
Rodger Goodell and the top-down NFL must eliminate tampering with penalties that cause teams to retreat from the line to manage everything. The Dolphins were poorly treated, and the sentence served as a deterrence.
The league recognizes the value in fans' obsession with what happens next and what decisions their teams should make, albeit they haven't yet worked out how to monetize all that chatter. Rest assured, they are working on it.
Fans also highly anticipated NFL movements, but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison because each league has a different compensation structure and player impact potential. NFL free agency sometimes lacks intrigue because of the franchise tag and other owner-friendly features.
Executives don't travel to meetings in the Hamptons to win over potential team members. With the NFL, things are resolved swiftly (something more accurate with the NBA in recent years). The nature of the games is also a component of that drama.
Despite the Brady/Aaron Rodgers exceptions, a player does not have the same impact on a franchise's prospects every time they enter the field as an NBA player at the All-Star level does
Simply because of how frequently NBA players touch the ball and their ability to influence the course of a game.
It proves to be the 800-pound gorilla of American sports; its popularity, income, and influence are unmatched. However, a wink-wink attitude toward tampering emphasizes that the NBA may be better at managing the changing media and social environment than younger generations.
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