Random thought, and I may want to talk to some people in the know before posting this out there for everyone, but here goes . . .
Shouldn't a rich man who knows sports be talking to David Stern about resurreting the defunct CBA. My god, if Zeke was nearly as good an exec as he was a player. Could have done a great deal. Major teams would not need to own the new minor league teams. They could just pay their salaries. They could do the same with the coaches. The true "owners" (who could be the pro teams if they so wanted) would then pay the rest of the salaries (i.e. of players who aren't under contract), and be in control of marketing and coaching. Players under contract to a pro team could be released or traded (with the consent of the pro team owners), but of course if they were under contract to a pro team, they would forfeit that money. Players who weren't under contract could not be released. If hockey can thrive in Raleigh, why can't basketball succeed (okay maybe not raleigh, but freaking alabama would love that stuff, as would many other cities and states). In order to keep some stability, as well as to get the right incentive system in place, the pro team owners could pay out to the minor league teams a certain percentage of the remainder of the salary (i.e. 10%) , or a sliding scale based off total compensations for the year. that increases as the season goes on to prevent fans from seeing their team collapse after almost making the finals for the remaining calendar year. If you make the percentages right, you have situations where fans can still get somewhat attatched to players, because movement is somewhat limited. At the same time, the minor league team has incentive to develop players, because of the payouts from the salaries. Imagine Kwame down there, with his ~$3 million dollar contract per year. Doesn't it make more sense to have him play against others to develop. And he'd probably rapidly grow. Okay, so the owners might not losing Kwame if they really need him, but they'll be smiling about the $1.5 million they make as he is called up to play in the bigs. And as long as there was some ability to trade and sign others, it could allow for a very dynamic league with lots of constant trades going on. I should study how baseball and hockey do it, but I'm convinvced that with some tweaks of the incentive system (specifically so that local fans don't feel hosed) you could have both a big money maker (come on David, think residual tv rights, ownership fees, etc.) as well as a developmental system to deal with all of these new youngsters who don't get enough time on the court to develop into real players.

Salon has quality stuff. Hope the new advert biz model works for them. I'm still too cheap to pay