I think you could possibly start by pointing out the product has been and is suffering. I haven’t been this disinterested in the NBA for a long time and it seems like every year my interest level diminishes even more.
Maybe do away with max contracts? Don’t offer fully GTD contracts like the NFL so it’ll be easier to move on and restructure your franchise if a player gets injured or underperforms. Maybe only have 2-3 year deals max? Of course, none of this will fly with the NBAPA.
Also, I hate the lottery system. Give the worst teams the best picks. People will say it will promote tanking and if so, who cares? It’s not like the league is super watchable as it is. If a terrible team wants to somehow be even more terrible, go ahead.
The owners want max contracts, or at least they're the ones who fought for it. Fully guaranteed contracts have been a thing forever in the NBA and is never going away. Contracts have been getting smaller over the years, but that's also generally the players who don't want to get stuck in long term deals with the way the cap has been rising. So you could actually start to see 2-3 year max deals. Historically owners loved locking up a great player on longer deals.
The lottery exists for one reason and one reason only. David Stern hated tanking. It's just kept on. I personally hate the lottery too and it literally does nothing to stop tanking. I think there a different methods of tanking too. The 2007 Celtics purposefully not playing Paul Pierce so they'd be more likely to lose games is bad tanking. Trading away your entire team for G-league level players to tank... well that's the product you're willing to put on the court, and you're gonna get less ticket revenue certainly, but to me that's less harmful to the league than star players sitting out. I think the league could regulate some of that kind of stuff, but they shouldn't regulate a team trading away all their good players because they want to rebuild via the draft.
But the thing is I've studied this stuff for a long time now, and well, it is very hard to build a team in the NBA. As clone mentioned, there's maybe 10 guys you can build a team around, and maybe only 3-4 of those guys per era will actually win titles. The NBA is a superstar/dynasty driven league and always has been. But how a owner chooses to build their team can be frustrating to fans. Most owners want to make a profit, so being a playoff team is often good enough to get to that point. Given how hard it is to get their hands on one of those 10 guys, they may just give up at that point and say "good enough" until luck strikes and something lands in their lap. Other teams are just bad at building no matter what they do (Wizards for example).
