It makes little sense to send the sport’s top prospects to the worst situations to start their careers.
If the goal is to promote parity around the league, just give the worst performing teams more money to spend, but allow league entrants to agree to terms with any team of their liking.
We can expect the median league entrant to have the goal of maximizing career earnings, which is a good proxy for the situation which best promotes their growth as a player, which is what’s best for the league and the sport. This will almost certainly lead to better outcomes than the status quo, which is just random with bad situations / dysfunctional franchises weighted more heavily.
If a franchise still can’t attract talent either via FA for existing players or new entrants, even despite the financial advantage, then they deserve to continue to be bad, and it will serve as a forcing function to remove the toxic culture more quickly, rather than the luck of the draft potentially shielding mismanagement from accountability.
It just gives both sides (players and teams) more optionality to achieve the best outcomes.
What’s the downside?
Without a draft the best prospects would be able to sign anywhere
If salary space is available*
Maybe teams would recruit regionally from colleges. Or pair with them as affiliates.
But if Wendy wants to play for let’s say LA. He couldn’t, there’s no space. And if a team wants to move 50m of cap space for 1 player I think that’s fine.