I think it's time that the NBA redoes the D-League to something like baseballs Triple A system.

Have each team have it's own D-League team, like the Lakers, and all players on it are under contract by that team. Also, expanding the draft 3 rounds would allow them to fill the rosters + leftovers from Summer League teams.

Thoughts?

The problem isn't the number of bodies, the problem is none of the teams ever send any legit talent there. NBA teams seem content to let a project first rounder warm the bench and practice against the real team rather than send him down to the D-League where he'd play more.

Until that changes, there's no real point in expanding/altering the D-League. It doesn't seem like the NBA organizations have enough interest in committing money for coaches, facilities, travel, ect. to expand it, and I seriously doubt there's enough fan/sponsor interest to justify it.

I could see it working if they expanded the draft.

Guys like Scheyer or Bouldin could be drafted in later rounds and assigned to a D-League team, and someone could find a diamond in the rough.

The draft used to have more rounds, they cut it because they realized that very few of those players ever matter in the NBA. Even in the second round, 90% of the players drafted fail to average 1 win added per season (to put that level of suck into perspective, Dan Gadzuric , Voshon Leonard and Malik Rose exceed that threshold). Besides, anyone that teams would generally be interested in are probably already playing in Europe or the D-League.

There just isn't a high enough return on investment for teams, not when they can already give a couple of guys a shot at very little investment or go pluck guys from Europe.

thats kind of how it works now.. and obviously that is stern's vision for it someday. the problem is i think in almost every case, guys would just rather go play in europe

i think 2 things they could do are:
1. make 2nd round draft picks play in the d-league their rookie year if they arent on a roster. if they go to europe during that first year, they cant go to the nba without a year of d-league play (or something like that... you get my point)
2. modify the current 'one-and-done' system. it is bad for college basketball.

my proposal would be that a player still has to be a year out of high school to be drafted, but if a player goes to college, he has to be at least 3 years out. then youd have guys like durant, wall, and rose in the d-league instead of ncaa.

I think that's about the only way the D-League would ever be relevant, those 8-12 high schoolers that used to go pro every year ending up in the D-League and then getting drafted the next year.

Then hopefully the talent level would be further boosted by teams keeping more of those young projects (ie James Johnson, Hasheem Thabeet, DeAndre Jordan, the list goes on) in the D-League rather than having them simply take up space in the pros, especially if they staggered the schedule so the D-League ran from like November to January, giving them several months to still use guys in the NBA if they choose.

That is the best option really.

the level of competition is better in the d-league than college as well, so the whole "we need to better evaluate their talent" argument is even more solid if you go that route.