League Start Up

[Dan M]

I would love to be in on this when it starts.

[Joe]

Thought I posted something awhile back... guess not. Anyways, Im definitely in!

[Dustin S.]

I def want to be apart of this, I'd love Philly, but I'll take any team really.

[Dan R.]

I def want to be apart of this, I'd love Philly, but I'll take any team really.

As a Philadelphia native, I'm usually one of the first to try to stake a claim (though obviously, my attempts have been unsuccessful up until this point). But if you want the 76ers, go ahead - my Philadelphia loyalties don't really extend to them. I'll pay attention and be happy if they succeed, but their blunders have completely turned me off of them - instead, Villanova and Temple have my joint loyalties.

[Dustin S.]

I def want to be apart of this, I'd love Philly, but I'll take any team really.

As a Philadelphia native, I'm usually one of the first to try to stake a claim (though obviously, my attempts have been unsuccessful up until this point). But if you want the 76ers, go ahead - my Philadelphia loyalties don't really extend to them. I'll pay attention and be happy if they succeed, but their blunders have completely turned me off of them - instead, Villanova and Temple have my joint loyalties.

to be fair, they need one of us in charge to make them into a good team, where in philly r u from?

[Michael D.]

Since Troy has been busy and somethings are going on I think are worth discussing (and other points I thought of) I thought I'd help him out here to get things rolling early on.

SALARY CAP
I know we've touched on this before in how we are handling certain situations. I'm just seeing if you guys think we should include things like Mid-level Exception and Max Contracts like we hear so much about nowadays on ESPN or NBATV. I'm pretty sure we can't find ways to incorporate things like Larry Bird rights, but I just wanna get the ball rolling with what we are and aren't gonna include.

PLAYERS WE HAVE RIGHTS TO
More importantly what effect they have on the salary cap. Is it going to be something like the MLB sim leagues where if they play for us at any point during the year, then they count against our cap. I think each original GM should be responsible for finding thier own players overseas or in the NBDL that they have rights to, but if any individual is going to do it, I'd like to volunteer.

DRAFT LOTTERY
Are we just going to go by slot accordance? *Ex: Say this last year I had Team X and we had the worst record in the league. Since the Nets got the 3rd pick in the draft, Me and my Team X would also receive the 3rd pick* Or is it going to be something where Troy could randomize some software?

These are just some things to generate discussion, I'm sure we can add on to this and I know I will when things come to mind.

[Nathan S.]

Here are my takes.

Salary Cap
Include:
Mid-Level Exception - 2009/2010 = $5.854 million - Once a year, teams are allowed to sign a player to a contract equal to the average NBA salary, even if the team is over the salary cap already, or if the signing would put them over the cap.
Rookie Exception - sign their 1st-round draft choices to rookie "scale" contracts even if their payroll exceeds the cap.
Minimum Salary Exception - Teams can sign players for the NBA's minimum salary even if they are over the cap, for up to two years in length. In the case of two-year contracts, the second-season salary is the minimum salary for that season. The contract may not contain a signing bonus. This exception also allows minimum-salary players to be acquired via trade. There is no limit to the number of players that can be signed or acquired using this exception

Don't Include:
Bi-Annual Exception
Larry Bird Exception
Early Bird Exception
Non-Bird Exception
Traded Player Exception
Disabled Player Exception

I just used wikipedia, but those all sound correct from what i've heard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Salary_Cap

Player Rights
I also agree that the owner of the team should have to find them. If we go away from that, i'd be more than happy to help you Michael. I have time now to find some as well. One question would be, how far back would we want to go. If we just searched through drafts to find players, how many drafts back would we want to look. 3 years? 5 years?

In the NBA don't they have to be signed from the DLeague to play for the team? I'd say just go with what they have. Not sure if it is the whole year or just for X amount of days.

Draft Lottery
If Troy can't build one, we could just use this one http://www.realgm.com/src_lottosim.php and put a team with each real team. So the worst team in our league would be the Nets. Than simulate it and adjust accordingly. Your idea for just going with whatever slot the team in the NBA got is fine as well.

[Dustin S.]

Thats not how the mid level works, you don't get one every year. You only get it if you are over the cap, so if at any point, entering the offseason, you are under the cap, then you don't get the exception. if you start under, go over, and then get back under, you still don't get the exception.

but honestly, the best idea, would be the have a hard cap for us. the average salary for an nba player is just under 6 million. we need 13 players. that is 78 million. make the cap somethig like 65-70 million. and that should be fine. especially if you want to get rid of larry bird rights

[Onyxgem]

Also would need to figure out what we would do about sign and trade options? If we do allow them then we would need to allow the Trade Player exception also.

[Goodell]

Discussions of all those things are welcome. I definitely want to hear what people think about some of the setup issues brought up. A couple of notes...

- Part of the vision I'd like to keep for all the leagues here is realism. So the leagues are not just a game where we make up much of the league rules for us, but represent essentially what a real team GM would have at their disposal to build a real team as much as we can reasonably do. That way the leagues are almost like walking in a real GM's shoes as much as we can simulate and that are teams are authentically built in a way that is actually possible in reality, but also so the leagues serve as a bit as sports entertainment education also. I know so much more about MLB rules and prospects since I've been in sports leagues, and getting to know a sim league's rules are even more rewarding if it also helps in understanding what real sports teams are doing and why.

- That said, I imagine getting a new sports league up could be complicated and we might have to simplify initially and go from there.

- I sent out an email on June 25th to email addresses I had in PayPal history for donations to the league to give people who had donated first cracks at team assignments. I heard back from a couple so far. Some paypal emails used may not be valid or ones you use regularly, so if you didn't get that communication but donated to the league before just send me a note.

- I hope to get a general team signup setup maybe early next week. As part of that we'd do the usual tie-breaker questions or donation options when more than one GM wants a team. If any good tie-breaker ideas (usually something fairly random) you can post or let me know. It'll be too late to guess where LeBron is going. Maybe the all-star game final talley, though in a different sport.

- Related to the tie-breaker and random events, I have thought about how we'd do the lottery. Was thinking about our own simulated ping-pong balls, but like the idea of our sim lottery teams matching up with a real lottery team and seeing where the real ping-pong balls go in the NBA lottery and giving our sim teams in those associated slots the real lottery assigned positions.

- I haven't had that one weekend yet where I can focus on a possible league 100% and really get the ball rolling to making it happen with realistic league rules and movement on tools. Maybe this weekend.

We'll try to get a team assignment process going before too much longer, though. Thanks for your patience as well as discussion on league rule possibilities.