SDL- RFA Ended. Deadline to Match 11 AM EST Tuesday

[BlackOutBuzz]

Second time I'm saying this, but "moving on..." I just felt I should respond to Chabber. I got **** over, now on to the draft.

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[EwingSweatsALot]

Finally got to read through everything.

First, I'll apologize to Blackout for agreeing to do what Chabber wanted. Not because of how it was handled, but because of the fact I did it. Blackout made a great point about checking to see if Chabber was online. He never saw him so he just assumed he had LeBron. It did not even cross my mind that you could view who was online and who wasn't. I see the point made there.

Also, I don't really have an issue with out Chabber handled it. It was within the rules and he had all the free reign in the world to match LeBron at 10:59. As the rules stood, it was a legal move. Blackout did bring up a point about just not having a deadline which would then eliminate this. I am for that if we can logistically make it work, but we were in such a time crunch to get it done because of a rookie draft that ran longer than expected, fantasy football for all of us, school for some, work for others, etc. In the future(as soon as next year) if we can start earlier then I am all for doing that. if we need to go by player to player then I am all for that. it just gets hard because we do this in the down part of the year for basketball where the board isn't hopping as much as it normally is.

I'll give my two cents on LeBron and waiting on him or what not. I never would have done it, that is me personally. I never once thought Chabber wasn't matching because he was getting LeBron for basically what he paid for him last year. Similar to how the Mavs handled Parsons and LeBron. They never had a no from LeBron, but kind of knew they needed to move on. So a semi real life scenario going on.

This situation takes me back to what Lamar said before all this started and that we really need to take a long hard look at how we handle this. We probably rushed into it this year because of the short time we had to get everything in, but it doesn't mean we can't improve on it.

Within the rules, I have no issue with Chabber matching at the last minute, but based on the situation I do believe we can make the process more friendly to all parties so something like this doesn't happen again.

[fatlever]

i am curious, how would the RFA process work if we didnt have some kind of deadline for the teams to match? i am definitely open to using this offseason as a training ground for us to figure out what works and what doesnt work so we can fix all the loop holes next offseason. we need to keep a list of things things and put them to a league vote to go into effect next year.

[BlackOutBuzz]

i am curious, how would the RFA process work if we didnt have some kind of deadline for the teams to match? i am definitely open to using this offseason as a training ground for us to figure out what works and what doesnt work so we can fix all the loop holes next offseason. we need to keep a list of things things and put them to a league vote to go into effect next year.

They'd have deadlines, but they wouldn't all overlap. The bidding on a player would end a specified amount of time after the final bid was placed ("Going once, twice..."), with the clock reseting with each subsequent bid. So the bidding on Meeks would've ended well before Duncan, who received a bid much later in the process.

Then, previous owners would have a similar structure when deciding whether to match or not. Similar, but the situation that arose today would've been avoided had the auctions ended even a few minutes apart.

It sounds daunting, but like I mentioned before we used this in my football league with 60+ RFAs and it went pretty well. Lots of sign-and-trades too.

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[amcoolio]

What about a rule that says you are locked into a RFA you sign for a full year. Because whats stopping me of bidding 40 for LeBron, claiming him to a 1 year contract and immediately dropping him after the RFA signing period and incurring no penalty. Just so I could outbid a RFA the LeBron owner was interested in.

I like this spiciness btw. I hate leagues that are boring and dry and no activity.

[EwingSweatsALot]

What about a rule that says you are locked into a RFA you sign for a full year. Because whats stopping me of bidding 40 for LeBron, claiming him to a 1 year contract and immediately dropping him after the RFA signing period and incurring no penalty. Just so I could outbid a RFA the LeBron owner was interested in.

I like this spiciness btw. I hate leagues that are boring and dry and no activity.

RFA contracts are a minimum of 2 years

Max of 3 for new team.
Max of 4 if owner matches.

This stops exactly what you are saying. It causes a guy to have to have a player on his team unless he wants to incur a significant penalty.

Now if we want to say you can't drop them at all. No matter what. Then that's another discussion.

[EwingSweatsALot]

i am curious, how would the RFA process work if we didnt have some kind of deadline for the teams to match? i am definitely open to using this offseason as a training ground for us to figure out what works and what doesnt work so we can fix all the loop holes next offseason. we need to keep a list of things things and put them to a league vote to go into effect next year.

They'd have deadlines, but they wouldn't all overlap. The bidding on a player would end a specified amount of time after the final bid was placed ("Going once, twice..."), with the clock reseting with each subsequent bid. So the bidding on Meeks would've ended well before Duncan, who received a bid much later in the process.

Then, previous owners would have a similar structure when deciding whether to match or not. Similar, but the situation that arose today would've been avoided had the auctions ended even a few minutes apart.

It sounds daunting, but like I mentioned before we used this in my football league with 60+ RFAs and it went pretty well. Lots of sign-and-trades too.

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If we could make the logistics work, then I think this could be a good way to handle it. My concern is time length between last bid and the auction for that player ending because of the lack of activity we get in the down part of the off season.

[LamarMatic7]

Blackout, your bid was $23. $3 over the high bid of $20. You have $11 in cap space after counting roster spots plus a RFA. Barring some major roster upheaval how do you think I'm going to take a $23 bid for Lebron from you? From my point of view, I thought it was most likely that you were using the rules and driving up Lebron's price to a safe zone that you thought I'd still match. Maybe I'm completely off base but that's how I saw it. At that point I was not going to match Lebron until the last minute and leave it to you to make a decision on Dragic. That is part of the risk in making a high bid with money that is not available to you currently. Your bid put you at risk to a cynical old man. If you were truly after Lebron and had some plan to make it all work, then I apologize.

Me being the first bidder on LeBron, I have some thoughts here. I also had an idea to go after Bron, I contacted a few teams and threw them some trade ideas where I would shed salary so I would have more cap space. I also was prepared for signing him and being over my salary cap. If I ever ended up in that position (in which you probably would have thought that I'm using the rules and am bidding an unreal price), I would have made the necessary cuts to make my roster work under our salary rules.

However, no one biting on my trade proposals left me in a place where I would probably have a 9-man roster if I really would have landed LeBron. So I acknowledged that this isn't the smart thing to do and just threw out a $20 bid since I was concerned that no one else will and I didn't want you to get LeBron for a bargain of a salary.

[chabber]

Not trying to drag this out but I figured I'd reply back one more time.

Me being the first bidder on LeBron, I have some thoughts here. I also had an idea to go after Bron, I contacted a few teams and threw them some trade ideas where I would shed salary so I would have more cap space. I also was prepared for signing him and being over my salary cap. If I ever ended up in that position (in which you probably would have thought that I'm using the rules and am bidding an unreal price), I would have made the necessary cuts to make my roster work under our salary rules.

Well, one thing is I was one of the ones you contacted. You said you had other possible trades and you were trying to clear at least $7M in your trade with me so that was a factor in me not making a deal with you. So I knew for a fact that you were trying to clear cap space where as in blackouts case I'm just making my best guess.

So I acknowledged that this isn't the smart thing to do and just threw out a $20 bid since I was concerned that no one else will and I didn't want you to get LeBron for a bargain of a salary.

This is where I will ask the question, and I'm not raggin on you lamar, but is this not considered any less "unsportsmanlike" than what I did at the deadline? Lets say that the most any team can legitimately offer Lebron was $13. Is it fair to me that no one has the cap space to get Lebron's price tag to his perceived value, yet here come bids for $20+ just because no one wants me to get him at what the market dictates? I'm not complaining about the rule, however it does have it's draw backs, this being one of them. The bidder only pays the cost in this situation if the rfa is declined, hence the risk sometimes being very minute.

I had a plan in place to be under the cap by the draft, you may have noticed I had several questions relating to the various wrinkles here. In fact I contemplated upping my own bid just in case, but since you weren't online I felt safe (having someone else bid for you is a whole other issue).

Again, I'll refer to what I said. I felt the odds were higher that you were up bidding him. In my experience trades rarely happen in these leagues and you'd have had to make major cuts or trade players to make this work. In reference to the questions you asked after putting your bid in. That lead me to believe you were trying to figure something out in case I didn't match the offer. As for the way I matched the offer, I gave the commissioner of the league my decision because I couldn't make a deadline during work hours. That should be a valid option. While your monitoring of online status is a point to be noted, I don't know how much this would really have on the outcome. If I'd have had my phone you could have easily missed the window it'd have taken to post it.

Why would I make a decision on Dragic when I'm waiting on the LeBron decision (npi)? Like you said I needed cap space, and the Dragic bidding had no effect on you. I even tried to imply how I was anxiously awaiting people to decide on the FAs I bid on.

Well here is the rub.

I had a bid on Duncan (KK)
You had a bid on Lebron (chabber)
KK had a bid on Dragic (blackout)

I possibly get both Lebron and Duncan if I put my bid in at the last minute.

However, I missed Duncan being matched. I mentioned to commish in my first pm that it's possible no one makes a decision until I make one on Lebron and asked him if he'd post my decision after explaining my situation with work. Later on that night when I replied back to him I didn't notice that KK had declined Duncan's option. I didn't see that until the next day. I didn't mention this before because it sounds like an excuse and I'm not trying to make any. If I had seen it in time I wouldn't have changed it because as I mentioned before I was going to make you make a decision on Dragic as in run the risk of losing him, keep him, or get stuck with him and Lebron due to me believing your bid was false. That's all it really boils down to. I guess in the end I read you wrong so I'm sorry for that.

Everyone else was a good sport, either making timely decisions to match or just moving on.

If you believe I was being unsportsmanlike like then I apologize. I've never been labeled that by anyone before. I didn't realize this would be such an issue. My previous experience in leagues as such as this is that most people will use the rules to their advantage. Maybe I should adjust my point of view a little. I don't know if you hate me now or what you think of me Blackout but I'll tell ya what, I can't have you thinking I'm a complete ass hat. Email me through the league site on espn. Other than opening night which I've already promised my nephew, you can choose any game you'd like to go to and the tickets are on me. I promise they're not upper deckers either and they'd be worth it, since it seems you'd have to travel to go to the game.

[LamarMatic7]

This is where I will ask the question, and I'm not raggin on you lamar, but is this not considered any less "unsportsmanlike" than what I did at the deadline? Lets say that the most any team can legitimately offer Lebron was $13. Is it fair to me that no one has the cap space to get Lebron's price tag to his perceived value, yet here come bids for $20+ just because no one wants me to get him at what the market dictates? I'm not complaining about the rule, however it does have it's draw backs, this being one of them. The bidder only pays the cost in this situation if the rfa is declined, hence the risk sometimes being very minute.

i will just clarify that, yes, while one could have bid him up in what you call unsportsmanlike manner, I had made the calculations and was ready to live with that $20 contract, if you for some reason wouldn't have matched it.

as for the whole situation I can say again that I find it funny in a devious way. I had thought about these possible situations before the RFA as evidenced by my questions to ESAL about time in which you have to match and teams holding other teams hostage. at least I can say that I was ready that something like this can happen and acknowledged that it is a part of the game.