NBA feigns toughness, passes stricter regulations

The National Basketball Association, NBA, on Friday, passed new regulations, especially the one regarding tampering.

This new development was quite necessary as the act of tampering has always been a big issue which has never sat well with most fans and teams. Before this development, certain elements, including media outlets, stakeholders in the NBA, and even the players themselves, were in the habit of asking for bigger deals, mostly during transfers, or for asking a coach or manager of a team to get interested in a player, specifically one who still has a contract with another team.

Ordinarily, there are rules regarding such things, but tampering tends to make things seem illegal, which it really is.

Part of the regulation includes the imposition of fines up to the tune of $10 on teams caught in the habit of tampering, and if a player is caught making underground deals, they could pay as much as $250,000. But it does not end there. The NBA could also fine executives, and also avoiding of contracts, plus the dresses forfeiting of NBA draft selection.

This stuff regulation was necessary, as stated by the NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, “We need to ensure that we’re creating a culture of compliance in this league and our teams want to know they’re competing on a level playing field and frankly don’t want to feel disadvantaged if they are adhering to our existing rules.”

Obviously, tampering in the past has always created an unfair environment for teams who played by the rules because they were mostly cheated by those who did not. Some of such acts of tampering includes when Kawhi Leonard tried talking Paul George to join him at the L.A Clippers while George still had a contract work the OKC Thunders. So such things have always existed and have proved to be a menace to fair play and conduct, something that should be integral to a body like the NBA.

One of the means adopted by the body to check on teams includes randomly audit five teams at the end of the season, just to know how far the regulation has worked. And that would be quite helpful, keeping everyone on their toes since no one knows who would be picked to be audited.

Written by: Leon Osamor