but thats football! no club in NBAl have some youth academy...
Right but in e.g. Germany we don't draft rookies from High School or College. They're coming from the youth teams
I think you can extend that concept to pretty much every nation in the world except for the States. However, BB is clearly modeled after the NBA, so I don't have a problem with the draft, as long as it is vastly improved.
Promotion and relegation is DEFINITELY not an NBA concept, which is why I would suggest the NBA-style draft (sans lottery) is not so compatible here. A draft is built for a system where all the teams are in a league are consistent, and draft order is meant to give the weakest teams an advantage by picking first. Here, the bottom teams drop down to a weaker league, and that helps the team get wins.
And I'm going to disagree with some of the above posts regarding what you can't buy on the TL. I got a pair of all star potential, one at a $3,307 salary and the other at $2,846 salary, for $40k and $36k respectively. Anyone who thinks these sort of players cost $100k on the TL is not correct (or has been overpaying). $76k for a couple of sure-thing 18-year-old all stars I think is better than $100k+ of question marks. That has been my point all along.
Both of these players are better than all three of my draftees this season, and I had a lot of scouting information (my first pick was my 3rd choice, a "5-star" with unknown potential, and I lost the the gamble on the potential, not that I had better choices given the information I had since all the players I had double information on except one either had poor potential, poor attributes, or were 19 and average). It's been 3 seasons since I've had a good draft (I got lucky that draft since I didn't spend much on scouting that season since I was the best team in my league that season and figured I'd get lousy picks).
I'm not necessarily saying the draft needs to be ditched. I'm saying the risk-reward ratio of the draft needs to improve so that it's too hard to make the case that saving cash for the draft crumbs on the TL isn't more reliable/economical than the draft.
Don't ask what sort of Chunks they are, you probably don't want to know. Blowing Chunks since Season 4!