League Start Up

[Michael D.]

As far as tiebreakers go, maybe we can just use Summer League games. I know there is the Orlando one going on currently and the big one in Las Vegas starts next week. Just a suggestion/idea

[Michael D.]

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.

I don't know though because as far as I know, there is no compensation for losing FAs in the NBA so we can't do it like the football sim leagues. I'm not exactly aware of what the traded player exception is. Can someone clear that one up for me?

[Nathan S.]

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.

I don't know though because as far as I know, there is no compensation for losing FAs in the NBA so we can't do it like the football sim leagues. I'm not exactly aware of what the traded player exception is. Can someone clear that one up for me?

From wiki... just a quick find. If it's wrong, i'll relook.

"Traded Player Exception: If a team trades away a player with a higher salary than the player they acquire in return (we'll call this initial deal "Trade #1"), they receive what is called a Traded Player Exception, also known colloquially as a "Trade Exception". Teams with a trade exception have up to a year in which they can acquire more salary in other trades (Trade #2, #3, etc) than they send away, as long as the gulf in salaries for Trade #2, #3, etc are less than or equal to the difference in salary for Trade #1. This exception is particularly useful when teams trade draft picks straight-up for a player; since draft picks have no salary value, often the only way to get salaries to match is to use a trade exception, which allows trades to be made despite unbalanced salaries. It is also useful to compensate teams for losing free agents as they can do a sign and trade of that free agent to acquire a trade exception that can be used later. Note this exception is for single player trades only, though additional cash and draft picks can be part of the trade."

[Michael D.]

I have another thing to talk about. Max Contracts have been a large part of this offseason but I'm not sure how we can incorporate that into the league considering one person can just linger around, wait for FA to be opened and then offer LeBron a max contract immediately and make it impossible for everybody else to sign him. We can't have that happening IMHO

[Joe]

I think we can make it work Mike... in Miami's case, DWade, Bosh , and LBJ all took less money to make it work. So none of the 3 are getting max deals. So in our league, something like that will probably never happen.

As far as bidding wars go, we should put in some kind of signing bonus thats paid up front. So if I have 20 mil to the cap and you have 20 mil, we both offer the max deal and whoever has more cash put away could offer a bigger signing bonus, therefore getting the player. We get cash from attendance, playoff bonuses and that type of stuff. Im sure theres a way to make it work... just my opinion!!

[Nathan S.]

What about if two or more people bid the max, there is some sort of tiebreaker to decide. It could be a random drawing or a "closest to" contest. The winner would get the player. That would only be for situations where the max is being offered by multiple teams.

One more thing, team options. Will that be an option with the deals? And for current contracts with player options, what happens? Do they become a FA no matter what or do we make it so they play out the whole contract?

[Goodell]

What about if two or more people bid the max, there is some sort of tiebreaker to decide. It could be a random drawing or a "closest to" contest. The winner would get the player. That would only be for situations where the max is being offered by multiple teams.

I haven't thought enough about the rules quite yet and how I think everything could work (hopefully soon) but if we do find ourselves in a situation where some kind of tie-breaker system is needed in place of a player's free will (which we wouldn't have with simulated players), some possibility exists for using relevant information that a reasonable player might also consider and quantifying that. That is if there isn't some other way of deciding that as part of the auctioning.

Players want money -- but max offer money could be the same across multiple team choices.

Players want wins and rings -- we can quantify the recent winning tradition of bidding organizations to where a strong team with a recent history of being a winner might get an edge over a much worse team (ex. Clippers) with a ton of cap space to offer a max deal too. That also might help in keeping sim teams from tanking it one season to load up on free agents the next if tanking it hurts their chances.

Players want to play with other strong teammates -- as we saw with the 3 going to south beach. With each player having an overall player grade, it is possible to also quantify the quality of teammates on a squad already. Team X may have 1000 total points in terms of summed up player values, and team Y has 1200 total points from all its players under contract so maybe team Y with a stronger roster and the same ability to offer a max deal gets an edge over teams with worse rosters.

That would prevent sim situations like we saw in Miami where they had almost no players under contract but 3 super stars joining together, but would create more sim situations like we saw with the real Knicks who first signed Amare in order to increase the talent on the roster and potentially attract other signees.

Don't know if we'd do that or exactly what the mix of previous winning versus roster strength points might be, but that's an option in sorting out multiple teams with multiple max offers that can't go any higher thru auction.

Some formula that considers these factors could also help determine for a sim player if they'd prefer to stay with a team for the most money possible, or move to another team.

[Dustin S.]

You'd also have to base it on how the player fits in, especially with the points system. Like if Team X has 1000, but a gapingwhole at SF, and Team Y has 1200, but no holes in the starting lineup, obviously it would be a better idea to sign with the worse team in order to have that place to start and get the most playing time.

[Goodell]

You'd also have to base it on how the player fits in, especially with the points system. Like if Team X has 1000, but a gapingwhole at SF, and Team Y has 1200, but no holes in the starting lineup, obviously it would be a better idea to sign with the worse team in order to have that place to start and get the most playing time.

Yeah, possibly... but with some players that's very fluid as they can move around and play a couple different spots depending upon the matchups and situations on the court at the time, or the roster makeup. Maybe Bosh or Nene is a 4 on one team and a 5 on another.

And some players are freakish athletes that are hard to categorize exactly. LeBron's listed as a SF I believe (at least on Yahoo technically). Much like Magic of old, he could probably play just about anywhere and fit in many different ways.

If your sim team had LeBron and wanted to sign Melo (or some other star SF), we probably wouldn't want to block that by design just because both technically listed as SF if they could play together well in reality.

So I think that's another good thing that players would consider for us to possibly consider too as an element, but could get murky too. Some PG are more shooters than pure distributors and could easily slide over to SG if their team got an elite PG, others aren't. There are lots of swingmen who can go 2 or 3. Big men who could play on their own in the middle or team up with another big with one of them taking the 4.

[Nathan S.]

That's kinda a situation I had thought about, but my idea is kinda dumb. I was gonna say that if two or more teams bid the max, have someone who isn't in the league make a decision. Stern, I don't know if your going to be in the league, but you could be a candidate. If this is the system we propose and I don't get a team, i'll take the job. Possibly a 3 man system where each person submits a team and the majority wins. These people wouldn't know the owners (not sure how you'd work that out) and would be kept unknown. It'd add a human choice factor into the realism of the game.