Does the NBA need a francise tag?

In a week where many NFL players are getting the franchise tag, insuring them a one year deal worth 120% of the last year of the deal or the average of the top five players at his position which ever is higher, I have to wonder if the NBA doesn’t need a system like this. Sure the NFL and NBA are very different places. In the NFL a team can survive losing an elite player, because the concept of football is focused on teh team. In the NBA losing an elite player is nearly a death sentence, just ask the Cleveland Cavaliers. I wonder if a franchise tag would work in the NBA.

The first thing we have to consider is the NBA already allows a team many allowances in signing their own players. It is sort of like a franchise tag, but they still have to work out a deal between the player and his agent. With the mess that Lebron James and Chris Bosh made last year, and with guys like Dwight Howard and Carmelo Anthony threatening to make life difficult for their current teams this is a very relevant issue.

I don’t like a guy essentially being held captive by a team after he has successfully completed a contract, but in the NBA there are what like 15 guys who draw fans in? If all of those guys end up on a few teams we end up with a real problem. In my mind that speaks more to contraction than a franchise tag.

In the end I think the NBA has to do something to help its teams resign their own star players. I wish that the players themselves would be more loyal to organizations that made them a star in the first place, but we do not live in a perfect world.

Related Links:

• The Business of the NBA
• Joshua Lobdell.com