The biggest behind-the-scenes hoops story during the upcoming NBA playoffs will be the negotiation of a new collective bargaining agreement. The most contentious point appears to be the proposed age limit, which would retard the flow of teenagers into the league. However, another part of the agreement – the institution of a formal minor league – will have the most far-reaching impact on the NBA’s future.

While these two issues are presently linked in the NBA’s proposal, Commissioner David Stern has said that he’s willing to separate them into different bargaining units. Since both the league and the players association agree in principle on the minor league, the ink is nearly dry on that section of the new CBA, though the age limit is still far from settled upon.

The minor-league system will result from the expansion of the NBA’s semipro affiliate, the National Basketball Development League, into a formal feeder group. Such a league will help hone the skills of teenagers, foreigners, and even players with collegiate experience whose games aren’t ready for prime time. Not only will this create a more reliable in-season source of secondary talent for NBA teams, it will also introduce a vastly improved concept of talent development into every team’s resource-management plan.

Until fairly recently, NBA teams didn’t have to develop talent – the NCAA did it for them. That began to change as highschoolers like Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, and Jermaine O’Neal successfully made the jump straight to the pros. But with them came teens such as DeSagana Diop, Kedrick Brown, and Leon Smith, who flopped. In addition, as NBA teams intensified their scouting in Europe, increasing numbers of talented, yet green foreigners, took their seats at the ends of NBA benches.

The need for remedial training in the NBA is unfortunate, but obvious. Too many players can’t shoot, which has resulted in a general decline in quality. The dramatic increase in scoring this year – teams are averaging 97.1 points per game, an increase of 3.7 over last year – is largely due to an increase in game pace; teams are averaging 94.2 possessions per game this year, as compared with last year’s average of 91.7. Shooting percentage, meanwhile, has increased to just 44.7% this year from 43.8% last season.

Any increase is good news, but fans old enough to remember the 1980s will cringe at these percentages. In 1984-85, the league-wide shooting average was 49.1%. Today’s hoopsters are better athletes than their predecessors, but they aren’t better basketball players.

The everyday rigor and travel of the NBA season tends to work against long-term skill development. Detroit’s Darko Milicic may be the poster child for players in need of significant development, but the same holds true for youngsters like Utah’s Kirk Snyder, Phoenix’s Leo Barbosa, and many others, regardless of whether they arrived from high school, college, or Europe. In fact, nearly every NBA team has two or three players in need of on-court time to polish their skills.

A minor league will aim to remedy that. It’s where forwards can develop mid-range jumpers and learn to box out, and guards can hone their ball-handling and find the stroke from behind the arc. This class of younger players will provide replacements for injured players and midseason call-ups. In addition, NBA regulars rehabbing injuries will be able to get back to speed by playing in the NBDL – Nets fans would no doubt feel better about their team’s postseason chances if Richard Jefferson had tested that injured wrist in a game or two.

The advantage for players is clear. Unlike the Continental Basketball Association and other current minor leagues, the DL teams will offer players proximity to the big time and a chance to showcase their skills to crowds peppered with NBA officials. If an age limit were enacted without a minor league, teenagers would likely head to Europe, where they could get paid for playing rather than go to college. Though this linkage has yet to be made explicit by Stern, it stands to reason that one of the details being negotiated is how teams could maintain talent younger than the age limit within their minor-league system.

Players Association head Billy Hunter has expressed concerns that players would be sent to the minors and never get the chance at the bigs. His objections can be addressed by using Major League Baseball as a template. According to MLB rules, players can only be sent to the minors a finite number of times after they’ve made the major league roster. The NBA could feasibly use something resembling baseball’s Rule V draft, whereby players with a set amount of service time are eligible to be drafted by another team.

Though such details have yet to be agreed upon, the minor league is as good as a done deal. The NBDL, which already operates teams in Columbus (GA), Roanoke,Va.,Asheville, N.C., Huntsville, Ala., Fayetteville, N.C., and Fort Myers, Fla., recently announced an expansion into Tulsa, Albuquerque, Fort Worth, and Austin. Stern has said that he hopes to expand the NBDL to 15 teams and have each team stocked in part by prospects from two NBA franchises.

Currently, NBDL rosters are comprised of undrafted free agents and players who were cut by NBA teams. Several players, most notably Clippers swingman Bobby Simmons and Indiana point guard Anthony Johnson, have used the DL as a springboard to key roles on their NBA teams. In Stern’s vision, about half of each NBDL roster would consist of undrafted free agents and the other half would be projects from the NBA affiliates. A coach from each of the two NBA affiliates would join the team, allowing the big-league organizations to monitor the progress of their charges.

This new approach to talent evaluation could end up being the most far-reaching effect of the NBDL. Since the only available pools of talent have traditionally been the two rounds of the draft and the free-agent market, the result has been a league rife with bad contracts, such as the six-year, $37 million deal given by Golden State to the rapidly declining Derek Fisher.

Once teams get in the habit of taking unfinished talents and shepherding their rise, they may finally realize that marginal production shouldn’t cost full midlevel money. Perhaps they’ll also stop the practice of paying players in the decline phases of their careers as if they were likely to improve. In today’s NBA, many roster-construction strategies involve working around bad contracts rather than building title contenders, as Knicks fans are painfully aware.

The institution of a formal minor league will expand the pool of available talent, giving organizations a bigger picture of the scope and true potential of prospective hoopsters. This should eventually result in a higher skill level in the pro game, and more teams with good young players and genuine title hopes. That’s something all NBA fans will appreciate.