Serious Dynasty League - Back to Back Champ

[fatlever]

Hey,

If you are interested in competing in a serious dynasty league with some of your fellow Bobcats fans, this is your chance.

The league is being run by EwingSweatALot. He is a new poster to this board, as of this summer, but I can vouch for his dedication to running this league. He and I work together and have been discussing the idea of a dynasty league for several weeks.

So far we have the following people committed: EwingSweatsALot (commish), fatlever, Sachmo, Amcoolio, LamarMatic7 and Biz Gilwalker... as well as at least one other person I work with. We would like to have about 10 people to start the league. That leaves at least 3 more spots to fill. However, if there is enough interest from serious dedicated fans, we could extend that to 12.

If you are interested please PM me with your e-mail address. This offer is limited to dedicated members (lurkers) of the Bobcats board only.

Below are the league settings and rules (as you can see, its a bit involved and requires a bit of manual work to be done by the commish, so hats off to him for agreeing to take on this project)

Website to be used: ESPN



BASIC SETTINGS

Number of teams: 8-12, two divisions made up of the same amount of teams

Scoring Type: Head to Head Points (You have a different opponent each week, and players accumulate points based on performance and they are totaled up. Team with most points in the matchup gets 1 win)

ROSTERS

Positions: PG, SG, SF, PF, C, G/F, F/C, 2 UTIL, 4 Bench, 2 IR (subject to change based on feedback)

SCORING

Points: 1 point

Blocks: .7 point

Steals: 1 point

Assists: .7 point

Offensive Rebounds: .7 point

Defensive Rebounds: .3 point

Personal Fouls: -.4 point

Turnovers: -1 point

Field Goals Made: .4 point

Field Goals Missed: -.7 point

Free Throws Missed: -.4 point

Double Doubles: 2 points

Triple Doubles: 10 points

Quadruple Doubles: 50 points

This point system is John Hollinger’s game score. The only components that are not a part of it are the DD, TD, and QD. Double Doubles are pretty prevalent, on average about 1 per game, so it is award 2 points. On average there are 5 times less triple doubles than double doubles, that is why it is worth 10 points. Quadruple Doubles are worth, It should be worth 500 because of the rarity, but to keep it simple they are at 50 points.

If two teams somehow someway end up with the exact same points for the week, there will be no tie. Basketball is not hockey or soccer. There will be a winner. The winner goes to the team who’s players scored the most real points, not fantasy points.

Schedule and Playoffs

The schedule will be unbalanced. You will play the teams in your division more than the other division.

Second the tie breakers if there are one go in this order. Head to Head Record and then Division Record.

Each “game” will be a week long. The only ones that will not will be the opening week, one day shorter and the week of the All Star Break. The All Star Break will week will be two weeks long.

If there are 8 or 10 teams, only 4 teams will make the playoffs, the top two in each division. Those two teams will play each other and the winners will move onto the championship.

If there are 12 teams then the top 6 will make the playoffs. The division winners will get a bye the first week. 2nd and 3rd place in each division will play the right to face the division winner in the second round.

Transactions/Draft/Rosters/Lineups

This is where the dedication comes in. It is why hardcore/basketball junkies are wanted. There is not a free website (that I know of) that does all of this for basketball. This info will be kept on a Google doc that all are able to see at any time. I understand that isn’t user friendly, but because there is not another way to accommodate it, it is the only way possible. This is why dedicated players are wanted. This is where most questions might need to be asked and I am more than willing to help on anything.

The draft will be an auction draft. Each team gets a set amount of money (TBD).

Whatever you pay a player in the auction draft is what their salary will be for your team. The salary cap will be the same amount as the amount of money you have in the auction draft. You can by no means go over the salary cap. If you do go over by the salary cap at any time, whether it be a trade or a pick up, your team’s stats will be voided for the period that you are over the cap. Miss a full day in a 7 day basketball league and your week is probably over.

There are contracts. The contract lengths are 1,2,3, and 4 years long. This is the length of years that you will actually keep a player, unless you trade them or drop them. You will set this yourself after the draft is over. You have 13 men to start on your roster. So you have 26 total years to split between those 13 players. Over the course of the years, your amount will go higher or lower than the 26, that is fine. If after you first set your contracts and you want to make moves to acquire all 4 year contracts or 1 year contracts so be it. It is your team, it is your strategy. Contracts are for a reason. You keep them under contract. You can choose to release the player into waivers, but there are penalties. If a player has 1 year left, there is no penalty, 2 years left is 25% of their salary, 3 years left is 50%, and 4 years left is 75%. Be careful who you keep under salary for long periods of time. For example: (Say you pay Westbrook $20. If he has one year left and you drop him you pay no penalty. 2 years left you still pay $5 on his salary that goes against your cap for the remainder of the year, 3 years left is $10, and 4 years left is $15) All of this info will be on the Google docs for everyone to see.

After the first draft, the following year there will be two drafts. The first is the rookie draft, and the second is the normal annual draft(free agency). In the rookie draft, you can only pick players that were in the NBA Draft that year. Each team gets two picks. The picks will be made in reverse order of the standings, worst to first, for both rounds. Each rookie contract automatically gets 2 years, no more, no less. Each rounds pick will be worth an amount for salary that will be determined at a later date. We can do a lottery, but some trust issues might come into play and I would just rather have it set in stone. The second draft(free agency) will be held after the Rookie Draft. This consists of all the players in the NBA that is not under contract for a team in our league. It will commence like the auction draft above. Though each teams auction salary will be different due to the players contracts running out and how much they were under contract for. You will fill the rest of your roster out with this draft. Some teams might only need 2 guys, some might need 8.

Lineups are set weekly. It locks at the first game played for that week.

There is no acquisition limit because of the weekly lock. That tends to deter people from just picking up anyone. Any player you pick up is only under contract for one year. This allows you to move them freely, but if you pick up a diamond in the rough, he is open to anyone the next year. This is so that the salary balance stays current. The free agent player auction will be done every Sunday so that you will have that player for the new week. Whatever price you win the player at is what their salary will be on your cap. So if you pick someone up and drop another make sure that the amount you pick up the guy is less than the dropped players salary plus what you are under the cap. There will be an auction amount limit set at a later date.

[Liver_Pooty]

Sent

[doc.end]

Intereseting. Just wondering the penalty for waiving a player, say with 4 years contract is for the remainder of the season only or it get further into next seasons as well (just 25% lower)? Like in the Westbrook example 15 first year, 10 another and 5 in season 3?

[fatlever]

i think we have 10 now, which is fine, 12 will also be fine. i dont think we have any interest in extending past 12.

so far

1. ewingsweatalot (commish)
2. fatlever
3. sachmo
4. lamarmatic7
5. amcoolio
6. biz gilwalker
7. liverpooty
8. blackoutbobcat
9. chabber
10. friend of mine from work

if you have any questions, post them here.

hopefully we will have an espn site up an running by monday. after we can decide on a draft time that works for all of us. the challenge will be finding a time that both lamar and sachmo can agree to.

i have everyone's e-mail address except chabber who should be sending his soon.

[fatlever]

A few questions for ESaL

1. will the initial start up draft include rookies this year?
2. if yes to #1, you mentioned that rookies will have a set two year salary based on draft slot when selected in the separate rookie drafts. assuming rookies are lumped in with everyone else this year, will the two year salary slot still apply and if so, how will that work?
3. in the offseason - lets say i have a full roster of players under contract prior to the rookie draft. does that mean i am not allowed to participate in the rookie draft? if i cut a few players prior, that would change correct? so does that mean, to draft anyone in the rookie draft you have to have an available roster spot?

thats all the questions i have for now

[chabber]

I sent you a pm on saturday with my email fats. I just sent another but it's sitting in my outbox and isn't in the sent messages. If you don't get any of them lemme know and I'll just post it in here.

[EwingSweatsALot]

Sorry for the delay on answering some of these questions. I've been out of town and sans internet for he last couple of days.

To answer doc's question, Yes it would decrease each year, it is not a one year penalty. I should have stated that more clearly in the rules. So yes, If you drop Westbrook with 4 years left then it's 75% that year, and then 50% the next, and 25% the next. The reason for this is so that poor mistakes cannot just be washed away like they can in other fantasy leagues. If you make a poor decision you should have to pay for it, by either keeping the guy for whatever amount and having him hurt you directly or indirectly hurt you by basically paying the guy to go away. Now if you trade him away well then good for you, you found someone else to take him on. I see this happening most often with paying older players too much money and being on the hook for that contract when he can't get past half court on defense.

To answer Fats questions.

1. In my head I had just thought to throw everyone in the same pool this year and not have the rookie draft. I am always open to suggestions and opinions to what people think would make the league better and more fun. If people say hey, lets have the rookie draft this year too, then I am all for it.

2. If we do decide to just lump everyone in and not have a rookie draft, then no there will be no set salary or set contract length. They will be treated like a regular player.

3. You are always able to participate in the rookie draft. I haven't played around with it, but I believe it would take awhile to get a roster full of players that are all under contract for the following year. The reason being starting off with only 26 years to allocate, 2 year average per player, you are going to have a decent amount of players with 1 year contracts unless you go with all 2 year contracts, which could happen, but I foresee each person having at least a couple of guys that you want for more than 2 years. But say it does happen through trades and the draft. You will participate in the rookie draft each year as long as you have not traded your picks away. You will draft your two players or however many picks you have and then it will be your job as the manager of your team to determine who I need to cut or try to scramble and make trades before the season starts to get under the cap and/or have the right amount of players.


Also, a few other notes for the league that I don't know if I added in the rules I sent to Fats.

Rookie draft picks and future draft picks are available to be traded at any time during the basketball year or offseason. Since the draft for ESPN is technically considered auction you cannot trade picks through the website. I am hoping people get comfortable enough with everyone that they feel ok to email or message whoever and say hey lets look at trading so and so and so and so and I'll toss in my 2nd round rookie draft pick. Whether Fats wants to use this thread as a tool people can use for communication or we can start a large group email thread for everyone works for me. The more communication between managers the better.

One thing that has not been determined is after this first year, how many years can you allocate in the "Free Agency Period"(Auction Draft). Obviously 26 years will not be a limit because of trades and pick ups and what not. The issue will be setting a standard number say next year for people to allocate to the players they pick up in Free Agency. That will be something that all managers can discuss when that time comes and we can set what we think is best. It might be best to set an average amount for players you need to pick up to fill out the roster or something like that. That can be discussed down the road.

The Google Docs will have everything on it that ESPN does not cover for the league. I will do it in excel form and have tabs for everything with rosters, salaries, contracts. I will do a formula for a trade machine so that people can use that doc to be able to determine what the trades are that they want based on salaries. Also any suggestion for that doc to make it easier is always welcome.

I've mentioned a few times in this post about opinions and communication between all managers. I think it is best for a league like this. It is a deep intense type league and it is a lot for all managers to take on, not just me. I welcome all thoughts and all opinions on what people think will make this league run better and smoother. A league like this can get stagnant and stale if it does not adapt since a lot of these rules are league made and not website made. There will be some things that I have implemented that will work fantastic, and then there will be some things that don't run as smooth as I thought they would. I have no issue with y'all saying hey this is wrong, lets look at doing it this way. When something new is mentioned and discussed among the group we can all weigh the options and vote or just decide to change the rules to help this league run better. Just because I am labeled as the commish doesn't mean I want to make all the choices, I want it to be a league wide decision to continue to make this better because I know I don't always have the right answer or have the right out of the box thinking to bring an opinion to the table. One thing that I do recommend is that rules do not change during the year. If at some point during this year we find out something isn't working then I would prefer to wait until the offseason to make changes unless it is just single handily destroying the league or giving certain players a decided advantage.

Feel free to ask more questions. I now have internet so I should be able to answer them rather quickly now.

[fatlever]

Great answers ESaL

I am fine with using this thread for league communication, at least for the near future, until we get something more permanent set up. hell, maybe amcoolio with put that bobcatalley domain to use for something other than his restaurant and create us a league webpage haha.

we have 11 now. Doc.end was last to join. 12 would be perfect, but we cant wait too long on finding a 12th man. i think we need to set a concrete deadline to find a 12th man, or else move forward with 10 (sorry doc - if that happens, we can add 2 expansion teams next year - or perhaps there is one among us who is getting cold feet). i will change the thread title to attract 1 more person.

i agree that doing the rookies in with the regulars is the best way to proceed this year, especially since we are only a about 12 days away from the start of the season.

it will be near impossible for us to pick a time that everyone can make the draft, so we will have to go with what works for the majority. sachmo, lamar and doc will probably be the toughest to please considering their time zones.

I would suggest something around 9PM EST, but thats just me.

how does an auction draft work if you have a manager that isnt present? is there a way to do some pre-ranking type stuff? i have never done an auction draft.

[doc.end]

I would suggest something around 9PM EST, but thats just me.

how does an auction draft work if you have a manager that isnt present? is there a way to do some pre-ranking type stuff? i have never done an auction draft.

I would prefer something a bit earlier but it depends on the day and others preferences. I am not even in.

ESPN list players by something the call your pre-draft value or something so I guess you could possibly edit that in an actual league.



I agree with rookies being included as everybody else, they would have a 2-years deal after rookie draft which is the same as average length (26 years/13 players on roster) and next year we will have rookie draft order determined (what will be the kicker for teams with same record? conference rank, head to head, total points, total real points,...?).

As for rookie draft versus roster spots, maybe team could over 13 players during offseason and cut the surplus before season. Or let's say teams would just hold their draft rights till they would clear space for them (and in sad case of non-responding inactive team that would not do cut player to make room for rookies in time, those could lose the rookies instead). I am no sure how well the waivers will work, I guess we will find out in first season.

Roster spots reminded me - in case of trade, I get that you cant get over salary limit and now i see you may use draft picks as an incentive but in case of multiple players involved and receiving more than incoming - do you have to make room on roster in advance like in reality?

I guess we will not have the every time has to have at least one pick in back to back years rule, I doubt it would be needed anyway.

I guess that's it, end of brainstorming session

[EwingSweatsALot]

I would suggest something around 9PM EST, but thats just me.

how does an auction draft work if you have a manager that isnt present? is there a way to do some pre-ranking type stuff? i have never done an auction draft.

I would prefer something a bit earlier but it depends on the day and others preferences. I am not even in.

ESPN list players by something the call your pre-draft value or something so I guess you could possibly edit that in an actual league.



I agree with rookies being included as everybody else, they would have a 2-years deal after rookie draft which is the same as average length (26 years/13 players on roster) and next year we will have rookie draft order determined (what will be the kicker for teams with same record? conference rank, head to head, total points, total real points,...?).

As for rookie draft versus roster spots, maybe team could over 13 players during offseason and cut the surplus before season. Or let's say teams would just hold their draft rights till they would clear space for them (and in sad case of non-responding inactive team that would not do cut player to make room for rookies in time, those could lose the rookies instead). I am no sure how well the waivers will work, I guess we will find out in first season.

Roster spots reminded me - in case of trade, I get that you cant get over salary limit and now i see you may use draft picks as an incentive but in case of multiple players involved and receiving more than incoming - do you have to make room on roster in advance like in reality?

I guess we will not have the every time has to have at least one pick in back to back years rule, I doubt it would be needed anyway.

I guess that's it, end of brainstorming session

I have never done a fantasy basketball auction draft, but in the football and baseball ones I know that you can rank your players and the computer bids for you based on your rankings for them. I have seen it help managers and I have seen it hurt them. It rarely overbids for a player, but it can get good cheap players at the end because of the salary it saves by not over bidding.

The easiest way to handle rookies this year would be to throw them in the pool and if a manager wants to draft them then they draft them and if they don't then they don't. It isn't mandated that you have to take them, but it is mandated that if you do draft an NBA Rookie that their contract is automatically 2 years at whatever price you pay for them.

If we wanted to make everyone have 2 rookies this year then the nomination order would be set and you nominate who you want at a price predetermined and nobody bids on that player. You do that two times through so everyone has the two rookies. Once that is done then the rest of the NBA players are up for grabs.

I actually never thought about holding onto draft rights. It might be the easiest to just say hey you draft them, either cut them, cut somebody else, or trade to get down to the 13 players. If you cut them you still incur the penalty like you would cutting somebody else. I really don't see this being a big issue right away, but it could be in a scenario that I don't see fully right now.

When it comes to trades, I am pretty sure that if you are getting more than going you nominate a player to drop if the trade is accepted.

With trades and waivers. ESPN does not keep up with the salary cap, that is on the managers. All of that info and formulas that people can use will be in the doc so that you know if you will go over or not. I have already started working on it and have the salary penalties for dropped players added in and I will add a Trade Machine so that people can mess around with it before they send or accept a trade so that they know it is cap friendly. I'll have the same thing for waivers claims and if it is salary cap friendly for you to pick up this person and drop another person.

For future rookie drafts, the picks will go worst to first, tie breakers will be decided by who had the lowest fantasy points that previous year between the teams that are tied.

[BlackOutBuzz]

Like I told Fats when I signed up, this has a lot in common with the football dynasty league I run, we just started year 2. We also used the auction draft to determine salaries/simulate FA, a two-round rookie draft, two weekly free-agent auctions (though we don't use the set amounts ESPN assigns, just as long as you have the space we let you bid on it), and other similarities, couple thoughts:

Roster size - We use 24-man rosters (with 4-IR spots) instead of the typical 16 for football leagues. Reason being, it adds incentive to keep on more young players with potential instead of just going with guys for the here and now. I'm not saying go to 24-man rosters (lord knows that auction draft took forever), but maybe an increase to 16 or so players would work better. Consider this: you're asking 12 guys to keep 2 rookies per year when they've only got 13 roster spots. In the two leagues I've drafted so far, both with larger roster sizes than this one (16-man leagues), only 12 different rookies were drafted between them (top 13 minus McCollum). But we're gonna have to double that each year. So if you win the championship, you MIGHT get a roster-able rookie at 12 the next year, but then have to waste your precious 13th spot on a Mason Plumlee or Tony Snell. You'll be left defending your championship with 11 roster-able players for your 10-man rotation.

Playing the wire - Year 1 we had no guaranteed contracts since it was a learning year for 11 of the 12 members. For the most part it went off without a hitch, but we quickly had to close a loophole. Granted, under this system, it will only be a problem with one-year contracts, but we ran into the issue of guys purposely overspending for the trendy waiver-wire pickup of the week, dropping them when their stock wasn't as high, and then immediately picking them back up at the next free agent auction at a discounted rate. To combat this we instituted the rule that, if you drop a player, you cannot bid on him at the next auction. So if he were worth anything then someone would pick him up before you got another shot.

Cap sheet - Good call on the Google doc, I've been updating an Excel spreadsheet weekly and posting it to mediafire for the members to download. Though their copies are mainly for reference, I make all official changes to the spreadsheet.

IR players - This won't be as much of an issue as it is for football, with the amount of injuries, but one thing we do is offer salary relief for players you lose for the season. It stinks to spend $50 on Love (for example), only for him to be injured and because of his albatross of a contract you can't even field any decent replacements. That's just a matter of preference, though.

I agree with lumping rookies in with the rest of the players this year, it's what we did, and it just keeps things simple. Our first rookie draft this year was snake though. I wanted to do it your way but each pick had assigned values and with a snake draft everyone was guaranteed to have the same amount spent on rookies.

One problem we found was that ESPN wouldn't let me add the already drafted rookies to their teams prior to the auction draft. Any other player was fine, but you couldn't with rookies. So I assigned "dummy players" (guys who wouldn't be drafted, some already retired) with the rookie cap hits to each team, and just hope to avoid the rookies during the auction draft. This was, of course, impossible; with full rosters already, most of the top guys in the auction draft were the rookies, and having a few guys on autopick meant those were the first to go. ESAL's proposed idea could work, but with so many timezones and schedules in play, one person being on autopick could throw a wrench into the whole thing. Once the draft was over I just went in and switched out the dummies for the rookies, also having to remove a few from the autopicking teams.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts, but for now that's all I've got.

[BlackOutBuzz]

Re: Auction drafts

Yeah, you can pre-assign values. The problem though is when you have more than one guy on autodraft. If you say you won't spend more than $50 for say, Irving, the effects can vary. Let's assume no one wants him that bad, and won't spend over $30, and you're the only one on autopick. Because you put in a max value of $50, you'll get him for $31 since everyone else stopped at $30 (assuming you have the necessary space). What gets fun is when you have two guys on autopick, both who value Irving highly (or just didn't change the pre-draft values). When everyone else bows out at $30, autobots A and B keep up-bidding each other until one finally reaches their max bid or just runs out of funds.

The bots will spend the values their owners (or ESPN) pre-assigned them to as soon as said player comes up. For instance, autobot B doesn't care that Durant, LeBron, Harden, and Paul haven't been auctioned off yet, he's not gonna save money for them; if Kevin Garnett pops up before those guys do and the pre-assigned value for him is $17, the bot is gonna do all he can to get KG just as long as the bidding doesn't exceed $17.

Often-times you'll see the guys in the draft use this to their advantage to keep the bots away from the more valuable players. Since we pick the players to be auctioned off in snake fashion, you can manipulate the bots into spending their budgets on KG and the like and waiting to bring up LeBron until they're capped out. We can also see what the bots' max remaining bid is. So if Millsap comes up on the auction block, he has an ESPN value of $25 (purely guessing), and Bot A only has a max bid of $23 left, even if we don't want Millsap we can keep up-bidding until we hit $23 (this assumes the bot's owner didn't assign a lower value to Millsap before the draft, however), leaving the bots to a maximum of $1 bid per player remaining.

Bots will also choose to auction off the highest-rated player in their queue, so this is a decent control against keeping LeBron and co. away from them for too long. Generally, teams with a bot will end up very top-heavy with some high dollar players, but then will also have a slew of $1 guys as well.

As for draft time, I'm in class most nights and if I'm not I'm probably at work. Class nights I'm at home by 9:30 EST, so this week I could do that time tonight, Wednesday, Thursday, and maybe Tuesday, though maybe 10 might be safer Tuesday.

[fatlever]

great info blackout.

honestly, i do like the idea of possibly having a larger roster than 13. i was just thinking about this. we only have 3 bench players. its pretty easy to, at some point in the season, have 3+ players that are injured. perhaps an IR spot for guys out for the year (cap relief) and perhaps an increase in roster size to 14 or 15. shouldnt affect the auction too much.

speaking of auctions
http://games.espn.go.com/fba/mockdraftlobby

you can do mock auctions here. i just did one. that was my first fantasy auction ever. there are so many strategies at play. i definitely recommend everyone doing a practice auction to at least get familiar with the process.

one thing i didnt understand, towards the end of the auction guys would get nominated and the program would immediately assign that person to the draft that nominated them. no chance to bid. there were several teams that still had plenty of money to bid a guy up. is this normal?

i was shocked at some of the big names i was able to get for 1 or 2 dollars.

[BlackOutBuzz]

Did you switch the view from "remaining amount" to "max bid"? A guy can have $10 left but if he still has 10 spots to fill the most he can spend is $1 per. Otherwise I'm not familiar with that happening.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using RealGM Forums mobile app

[doc.end]

There is also a PASS option, I dont think that happen but maybe remaining team could pass on that player removing itself from bidding?

[doc.end]

All sounds good. I hadn't understood it like we would be obliged to keep rookies (from next off-season on) I thought we may cut them if we prefer others and let them be available in weekly free agent/waivers auctions. That was I was wondering whether we would have to make a room for them (cut players prior rookies draft if needed). Now I've realized rookies would have 2 years contracts by default, so just cutting them would be still costly, maybe the second year could be unguaranteed or something.

Also there will have to be some rule for next years auctions and length if new contracts.

I don't mind bigger rosters as long as ESAL or majority don't think it would tweak the 26years of contract per 13 roster spots in a bad way (more players, more years to distribute I guess, more 4 years contracts possibly).

[EwingSweatsALot]

Blackout, Thank you for all of that info. It definitely helps with starting this when a member has already been apart of something similar and has seen some things work and not work.

I have no issues with adding roster spots. If anybody has a number in mind throw it out there. One thing that we could do is just make the rookie draft one round and limit the bench spots. We have 9 starters(ESPN Standard is 10) and 4 bench spots, and with one round we could bump it up to 6 bench spots or if we keep the two rounds we could bump it up to 8 bench spots. So if you have 15 spots and one rookie round. Since rookies are under contract for 2 years and the 2nd year is not guaranteed then it would leave you with 13-14 rotation NBA players. Now if we do 2 rounds of the rookie draft and have 17 spots, then you would still have around that same amount of 13-14 guys that are not rookie or second year guys. I remember Danny Ainge saying something to the effect that after the 25th pick in the NBA draft 90% of the guys rarely ever make a consistent rotation player. With a 12 man league you are right on that border of selecting those players. So if we went 1 round of Rookies then that would alleviate getting close to drafting those guys, but if you have 2 rounds it does pay off for having that eye for talent and knowing those guys situation. It just depends on how difficult you want to make it.

If anyone has thoughts on 1 or 2 rounds and roster spots throw out your opinion. I would still like to keep the average contract on teams to start out with at 2 so there is some turnover. So even if we move to 15 or 17 players then the total years you could offer would be 30 or 34.

With the waiver wire issues that Blackout mentioned, I was thinking of possibly having a low free agent budget. For those that do not know how it works. You start off the year with a free agent budget, for example it could be $100. You bid on free agents each week and if you win the player then it deducts that money from your free agent budget. Once that $100 is gone then you cannot pick anybody else up. By doing a lower budget, I think it would hinder the over spending on one player and then just dropping him. The reason being if you only have say $75 to start with and you bid $30 on one player you put yourself in a tough spot the rest of the year. Also with the salaries that you start off with unless you drop a player that you paid a lot for you can't spend that much money on someone. Typically people get close to their salary cap and so if you drop a player that is worth $8 you probably won't be able to bid much more than that, maybe even less depending on if you drop somebody that incurs a penalty.

I like the idea of giving somebody some relief for players who are out for the season. I do not think you should get the full salary back. Tough breaks happen in basketball with hurt players every year for teams, so somewhat replicating that would be nice. I think enough salary relief to help them continue to fill out their is enough relief. What percentage of a injured (out for the year) players salary should that be I don't really know. Maybe 25%, 50%? I don't really know.

Rules will need to be set for next year's suction and contract lengths like Doc said. I don't know what that should be at this time without really seeing how the rosters this year work out. 2 year contract average for each team is only to start out with so that you don't have to worry about trading contract lengths and all that mess. That 2 year average will obviously fluctuate for teams. So depending on how that works I don't really know what the rules for that should be as of now. If anybody has any ideas please share.

[HornetJail]

Guys, I think I'm going to back out of this. I simply have too much going on.

Would be happy to join next year if this is an annual thing.

[EwingSweatsALot]

Guys, I think I'm going to back out of this. I simply have too much going on.

Would be happy to join next year if this is an annual thing.

No worries Biz. You will be at the top of the list next year when we try to expand to 12 teams.

Since Opening Night is a week from today we will shut down the search for 2 more teams and just go with 10 this year with the thought of expanding to 12 next year. I will set the league up and send out the invites this afternoon and then we can discuss a draft time. I should have everyone's info from Fats so be on the lookout for an email in the next couple of hours. Also check your spam folder, for some reason ESPN Fantasy emails tend to end up there quite often if you don't receive an invite soon.

[fatlever]

thread title changed to reflect closed registration.

hopefully, if everything goes well, we can have a two team expansion draft next summer.

doc is officially in. welcome doc.

everyone be thinking of a draft time that works. what are everyone's thoughts about a weekend draft? i am pretty much free to draft anytime between 6pm and 1am most weeknights and pretty much all day on the weekends. the season starts in a week, so we have to figure it out soon.

if anyone is worried about not being to make the draft, it seems you can still have a lot of control over the auction process by simply spending some time before the draft setting player values for any player you might want and flagging any players you dont want for a no bid. i think it might actually be easier to autodraft in auction compared to regular, provided you spend a lot of time setting values to players.