OK Cat had to leave so I am posting this. After completion of the draft and draftee signings only 2 teams had cap room Pistons-198k Clippers-40k The problem is that the good FA's wanted more than they could offer or in most instances would not sign with their teams. So the dilema is this. How can we make a fair FA common type draft. There have been 3 suggestions so far all with pros and cons. I will list them below for your perusal. 1) Have a common draft based on previous years record. This in theory would be the best idea if Free Agents would sign with any team. However this punishes teams that get below the cap. Teams like the above 2 traded away good players so they could make a run at Free Agents only to find out there were none to sign and then find out that since they were not the teams with the worst records they cannot sign the top FA's and teams with no cap space are going to get them for next to nothing. 2) Have a common draft based on salary cap figures. Example being. The team with the most cap room gets first pick in our case Detroit picks first, Clips second, etc... Flaw is this. The pistons, hypothetically would select Mike Bibby, he would get a minimum contract from them. They could chose not to try and resign him thus making him an FA again. Then they would still be 198k under the cap barring any other moves. Unless another team gets this far under the cap(unlikely) they would have the top pick again. There is a work around to this where teams are prohibited from selecting guys again in another draft. EX. Pistons select bibby now. Next season they would have to sign him or select someone else in the draft. If they sign him they would most likely not be the team with the first pick at the next draft. 3) The third suggestion would be to disperse remaining free agency in a different manor than a draft. It would be a compensation type dispersal. For instance i will use Mike Bibby again. For a team to recieve Bibby they would have to offer their first round pick for the next season. Where as several teams would like to have him there would probably be several teams that offer for him. In such cases the team that is losing the player, in this case Sacramento would be the recipient of the pick. Therefore they would be allowed to choose what team would get him. Flaw in this system: Using the Pistons as an example say i they offer a first round pick for Bibby and Bovie accepts their offer over others. They could decide to sign Mike at the end of the season or let him become a FA. If he becomes an FA they could then decide to auction him off like Bovie did and recieve a draft pick. So what we would have is renting players to get better draft picks. This would give lottery teams incentive to not sign free agents and hinder the better teams from possibly acquiring Free Agents. These are the three suggestions that have been made. If you have any other ideas or prefer one of the above, post it. However, the salary cap cannot be done away with and the cap ammount cannot be changed. Also players cannot be forced to sign with a team for a certain ammount(ex. We can't make Bibby sign with Detroit for 198k. He wanted 216k from several teams he would sign with but they could not afford him). We can force them to sign minimum contracts with teams after FA is finished and the season starts. Castor
What we have now is #1, and the problem with this is as stated that the way this game handles everthing teams with a low cap get nothing back for it. Another problem is that picks traded still counts against the cap of the original team until after this period is over as Cat will have to make the changes later. As an example - say that I (76ers) were under the cap with 200k and had traded away my picks. As my pick ended up being #1 the contract for this rookie would have counted agains my cap for the free agency leaving me below 100k. (I dont know how much #1 + 2nd rounder adds up to but it is over 100k). So if I had one player I wanted in FA that would sign for me for 175k I would have lost the option to sign that player. What I want is that salary Cap matters. (I'm 421k over, so I'm not doing this as it is an advantage to me) Option 2 have salary cap mattering. I do see the flaw with this system, but suggestions should come to find the best way to work around this. I also like option 3, but the salary cap will not matter in that option either - if in anyway we could combine these two it would have been great. If losing a first round pick equals what you get in FA, could be discussed too - not many very good in this FA pool, after Bibby.
One thing i thought of after posting. One of the concerns with #2 was that the same people would have the first choice each year in the FA draft. That is not exactly true. Teams will eventually have to resign their players to larger contracts or lose themand they will also have a better chance of signing the players they select in the draft to longer term contracts. I think if i had to make a choice i would lean towards #2. CK
I think it would be nice to incorporate the player's demands into idea #2. That way, it is a common draft in order by salary cap, BUT, you can only draft players that WILL play for you. That way if I still was furthest under the cap, which I no longer am, and I had the #1 pick, I couldn't take Bibby, as I was not on his list of 8 teams that he actually would play for. This would make everyone get players that would actually resign with them after the season, so they wouldn't be taking the player and losing them again and staying furthest under the cap forever. The order by salary cap works like a luxury tax, where there is an incentive for keeping a low team salary. It also keeps teams that tank from getting rewarded for it twice with BOTH good draft picks AND common picks. This also allows draft pick trades from the previous season to help the team's cap, since after going past actual free agency, Cat is now able to process the draft pick trades. Before he couldn't and SCF's cap for free agency took a hit because he still had the contract of his first round pick on his team salary, even though it belongs to Rimmy's Hawks. Example for this season: SCF would now have his 44k + the contracts of the rookies that weren't really his that are now removed. As for me, I used $192k of my $198k on Dickerson, and shortly after traded him and Chris Crawford ($250k) for Van Horn ($256k), leaving me exactly equal with the cap. After that I discovered that by mistake I still have Michael Curry on my roster after this trade: Pistons Trade: Corey Maggette Joseph Forte Michael Curry Sean Rooks Jazz Trade: Donyell Marshall Andrei Kirilenko You've been missing out on a star player Moe So after that is corrected, I will be $56k under + the salary I still had of my traded 2nd round pick that I took Furious Francis with (I forgot I had traded it..damn I wanted that Furious Francis ) So anyways, if the draft worked like this, SCF would have the top pick. He could take Bibby as Bibby did say he would play for the Clippers I would be next and would love to take Keon Clark, but, Keon does not want to play for me, so I would have to settle for the next guy on my list Rodney Rogers, who said he would play for me. Then after the season ends and his minimum 1 year deal is over, I would have to resign him, probably to something close to the 180k he wanted from me today. This method could result in some of the top players falling real far if he only wants to play for a few teams, all of which happen to be far over the cap...but I guess if that's what happens, then that's what happens. Sometimes in real life certain players only want to play for a few teams. It won't really matter that they're over because in a few years everyone will be over for good. I for instance would have to try and resign guys that are underpaid now like Baron Davis, Quentin Richardson, Rodney White, DerMarr Johnson, etc. I'll have to hope all of those guys take big contracts in a couple of years. Other teams will be in the same situation, signing young guys to big deals, resigning their stars for even more. It is very hard to get under the cap, and 10 times harder to stay under. Since in this league, the GM's don't have to pay millions of dollars in luxury tax to Cat for being over the cap , teams can just continue to resign their own and trade them for even more expensive guys etc. and continue to grow further and further past the cap barrier. This is just kind of like free agency, combined with luxury tax (a worse pick in the common draft in this case) for being over the cap, and rewards (top free agent signings like Orlando a few years) for being under the cap. Anyways, just an idea. Sorry for such a long post
i think option 2 seems fairest to me, then option 3 im well over the cap but it fluctuates i know and i do understand that this happens in real life with free agency, i think we do option 2 but with the jd drew rule in place, being that if a player was selected by team x in the past, they cannot select him again in a future scenario-im referencing his refusal to play for philly and he went back into the draft the next yr in baseball-its very logical
Actually SF3 your solution works to solve some of the concerns with #2. I like your idea by far the best. CK
I think that SF3's idea is definitely the best that I've heard so far. Tomorrow, I will get a list done of the 29 teams by cap order from least to the most, and post it here. I can have the draft either Friday evening around 6 or Saturday afternoon around 3, assuming it lasts for no more than an hour. Let me know which is preferable to you guys.
Tomorrow at 6 or Saturday around 3 are both fine by me. Dumb question: do second round picks count against the cap? I only ask because in the NBA, 2nd round guys don't count unless/until they are actually signed by the team (1st rounders have automatic contracts).
Sammy, 2nd round picks are automatically signed by the computer. They are signed for the mininum for 1 season so you are stuck with them for 1 year at 30k. CK
Damn, that lousy second round pick puts me over the cap then, I think (but only by 16k). Thanks for the help Castor.
