Stephen Tsai: Corrective measures could boost various sports

Forget Judge Judy and Simon Cowell and other dispensers of judgment.

It was former NBA player Rasheed Wallace who popularized basketball’s most fundamental ruling. After Wallace was assessed a debatable technical foul, an opposing player missed the ensuing free throw.

“Ball don’t lie,” Wallace yelled, a phrase he credited to streetball games he played growing up in Philadelphia.

There’s an imbalance in life. Some are wealthy, many are not. Some are built like Blake Griffin, most like Family Guy’s Peter Griffin. But in theory, when it comes to sports, all’s fair.

Las Vegas gives odds.

The poorer a golfer, the larger the handicap. In fundraising tournaments, a player can buy a mulligan.

If last year’s gross was gross, you don’t get moved to the front of the concert-ticket queue. If you’re a bad NFL team, you get a high draft pick.

The NBA adopted a shot clock, widened the lane, and made goaltending a no-no to deter 6-foot-10 George Mikan from loitering in the paint. That was back in 1944, decades before players formed super teams and franchises manipulated the draft.

But the effort to level the proverbial playing field, to give each entity a reasonably fair chance, is proving to be too daunting. There are exemptions and creative accounting that allow teams to exceed salary caps and withstand pay-level aprons.

Here are a few corrective suggestions:

1. A very long time ago, a group of reporters, editors, union and business leaders and a professional mascot gathered at a minute after midnight to select players for a fantasy baseball league. The rules were simple: Each owner had $100 to build a 25-player roster, with bidding in 50-cent increments. Everybody had a good time, except for the guy who spent 40% of his budget on two players.

And that should be the format for the NBA Draft. Every draft-eligible player should be a free agent. The three teams with the worst records would be allowed, say, $25 million to spend on first-year players. There would be a sliding scale in which the three teams with the best regular season records would have a $2 million budget. And let the negotiation begin. A rookie could earn a large check from the Nets or choose to sign with an NBA champion for a million dollars. The worst teams have more to offer, the players have the freedom of choice.

2. At the March 6 weigh-in for their BMF title bout, Max Holloway tipped the scale at 155.5 pounds and Charles Oliveira at 156 pounds. Because the BMF belt was not an officially sanctioned title, each was allowed a 1 pound grace over the 155-pound limit. The next night, Oliveira was noticeably heavier when he stepped into the octagon.

Fighters have the capacity to gain significant weight overnight. Maybe it’s replenishing fluids. Maybe BMF stands for Big Mac and fries.

A suggestion is to conduct weigh-ins an hour ahead of the scheduled fight time.