Restricted Free Agency | Activity Check

[Celtics GM (Jose)]

Hi everyone,

Just a quick message to put you all up to speed with where we’re at and what’s going to happen next. The Draft is going on right now and Restricted Free Agency is will begin in August. Also, there's an Activity Check to be voted on until the end of July.



DRAFT
The 2nd round has just started and the 33rd was the 1st missed pick in the draft. Jesse, you can pick whenever you want, but other GM's may go on picking players.



RESTRICTED FREE AGENCY
Just a clarification on where we are regarding the RFA and how everything will process using the addendum that was created during last season:

"Teams have to declare their intents to submit a qualifying offer to a player until the trade deadline, by making a thread with that info in the Contract Committee-Qualifying Offers forum. If they decline that possibility or miss declaring their intents, the player will become an UFA at the end of that year."

All done regarding this part of the process.

"If a team declared they want to submit a QO, then they'll have until the end of the season to submit an offer for at least 3 years starting at the already stipulated value or a higher one of the owner's choice."

This has to change since it is yet to happen. GM’s will have until 23:59pm ET of the 31st of July to submit an offer different from the one indicated in the file (if you don’t submit any offer, the offer we will consider is for 3 years, starting at the stipulated price)

“This offer will remain closed until the end of the RFA period for that player and will be compared with the blind-bidding offers submitted for the player in question. If there is none above the 20% higher threshold, than the player is signed.”

Offers from GM’s will have to be public (thanks to Jola for pointing out the paradox that the rules created) since we need to consider those bids against every owner’s cap space and guarantee that when they bid on other RFA’s they have the appropriate funds to do it.

“If there are still standing offers, then the owner has the possibility to sign the player to the best offer submitted by other teams.”

No changes on this.


So, how will this work?

- Current owners will make an offer until the 31st of July for their players

- On the 1st of August the first player will be released blind bids can be sent to an account created for this purpose

- After 24 hours, we’ll open the account and check every offer for that player

- If there is still a standing offer from a team, we’ll email/pm the original owner to see if he wants to match the offer, having 24 hours to decide

- A new player will be released at the end of the day, according to the RFA Schedule (that we will post during this week)



A couple of quirks that stem from the other rules the league has and some additions we’ve made in order to make this work:

- Players that are RFA cannot be traded when the RFA period starts

- You can’t go above the allowed cap to sign a RFA. If you don’t have the cap, you don’t have the cap. That’s why the initial offers need to be public, so GM’s can’t bid on other owners’ players and then not have the money for the offers they put up for their own when their time comes

- RFA’s that are signed cannot be traded for the next 6 months



So, here is the list and the schedule:

Player	Team	Starting $	Deadline
Stephen Curry	IND	$5,31	08/01/2013 11:59 PM ET
James Harden	SAC	$7,64	08/03/2013 11:59 PM ET
Jeff Teague	TOR	$3,47	08/05/2013 11:59 PM ET
Brandon Jennings	MIA	$4,33	08/07/2013 11:59 PM ET
Ty Lawson	BOS	$3,61	08/09/2013 11:59 PM ET
Tyreke Evans	TOR	$6,93	08/11/2013 11:59 PM ET
Nikola Pekovic	HOU	$6,05	08/13/2013 11:59 PM ET
Jrue Holiday	POR	$3,78	08/15/2013 11:59 PM ET
Darren Collison	LAL	$3,34	08/17/2013 11:59 PM ET
Gerald Henderson	BOS	$4,27	08/19/2013 11:59 PM ET
Tiago Splitter	BOS	$5,88	08/21/2013 11:59 PM ET
DeMar DeRozan	TOR	$4,53	08/22/2013 11:59 PM ET
Taj Gibson	CHI	$3,18	08/23/2013 11:59 PM ET
Byron Mullens	UTA	$3,29	08/24/2013 11:59 PM ET
Shelvin Mack	WAS	$1,08	08/25/2013 11:59 PM ET
Tyler Hansbrough	BRO	$4,23	08/26/2013 11:59 PM ET
Rodrigue Beaubois	BRO	$3,27	08/27/2013 11:59 PM ET
Eric Maynor	CLE	$3,35	08/28/2013 11:59 PM ET
Jeremy Pargo	GSW	$1,25	08/29/2013 11:59 PM ET

[Deleted]

Jul 19, 2013 2:51:14 GMT Celtics GM (Jose) said:

Hi everyone,

Just a quick message to put you all up to speed with where we’re at and what’s going to happen next. The Draft is going on right now and Restricted Free Agency is will begin in August. Also, there's an Activity Check to be voted on until the end of July.



DRAFT
The 2nd round has just started and the 33rd was the 1st missed pick in the draft. Jesse, you can pick whenever you want, but other GM's may go on picking players.



RESTRICTED FREE AGENCY
Just a clarification on where we are regarding the RFA and how everything will process using the addendum that was created during last season:

"Teams have to declare their intents to submit a qualifying offer to a player until the trade deadline, by making a thread with that info in the Contract Committee-Qualifying Offers forum. If they decline that possibility or miss declaring their intents, the player will become an UFA at the end of that year."

All done regarding this part of the process.

This has to change since it is yet to happen. GM’s will have until 23:59pm ET of the 31st of July to submit an offer different from the one indicated in the file (if you don’t submit any offer, the offer we will consider is for 3 years, starting at the stipulated price)

Offers from GM’s will have to be public (thanks to Jola for pointing out the paradox that the rules created) since we need to consider those bids against every owner’s cap space and guarantee that when they bid on other RFA’s they have the appropriate funds to do it.

“If there are still standing offers, then the owner has the possibility to sign the player to the best offer submitted by other teams.”

No changes on this.


So, how will this work?

- Current owners will make an offer until the 31st of July for their players

- On the 1st of August the first player will be released blind bids can be sent to an account created for this purpose

- After 24 hours, we’ll open the account and check every offer for that player

- If there is still a standing offer from a team, we’ll email/pm the original owner to see if he wants to match the offer, having 24 hours to decide

- A new player will be released at the end of the day, according to the RFA Schedule (that we will post during this week)



A couple of quirks that stem from the other rules the league has and some additions we’ve made in order to make this work:

- Players that are RFA cannot be traded when the RFA period starts

- You can’t go above the allowed cap to sign a RFA. If you don’t have the cap, you don’t have the cap. That’s why the initial offers need to be public, so GM’s can’t bid on other owners’ players and then not have the money for the offers they put up for their own when their time comes

- RFA’s that are signed cannot be traded for the next 6 months



So, here is the list and the schedule:

Player	Team	Starting $	Deadline
Stephen Curry	IND	$5,31	08/01/2013 11:59 PM ET
James Harden	SAC	$7,64	08/03/2013 11:59 PM ET
Jeff Teague	TOR	$3,47	08/05/2013 11:59 PM ET
Brandon Jennings	MIA	$4,33	08/07/2013 11:59 PM ET
Ty Lawson	BOS	$3,61	08/09/2013 11:59 PM ET
Tyreke Evans	TOR	$6,93	08/11/2013 11:59 PM ET
Nikola Pekovic	HOU	$6,05	08/13/2013 11:59 PM ET
Jrue Holiday	POR	$3,78	08/15/2013 11:59 PM ET
Darren Collison	LAL	$3,34	08/17/2013 11:59 PM ET
Gerald Henderson	BOS	$4,27	08/19/2013 11:59 PM ET
Tiago Splitter	BOS	$5,88	08/21/2013 11:59 PM ET
DeMar DeRozan	TOR	$4,53	08/22/2013 11:59 PM ET
Taj Gibson	CHI	$3,18	08/23/2013 11:59 PM ET
Byron Mullens	UTA	$3,29	08/24/2013 11:59 PM ET
Shelvin Mack	WAS	$1,08	08/25/2013 11:59 PM ET
Tyler Hansbrough	BRO	$4,23	08/26/2013 11:59 PM ET
Rodrigue Beaubois	BRO	$3,27	08/27/2013 11:59 PM ET
Eric Maynor	CLE	$3,35	08/28/2013 11:59 PM ET
Jeremy Pargo	GSW	$1,25	08/29/2013 11:59 PM ET

I appreciate all the work being done here, but I have a number of questions regarding this process.

1) If the initial owner bid is public, then won't it be easy for all of us to bid over the 20% threshold?

2) Regarding the schedule..I don't see this as fair to the owners of RFAs who are bid on first vs RFAs bid on last. The RFAs bid on first will most likely get the most money, for example, OR the teams won't know how to plan their RFA because if they have to match for Curry (for example) before Lawson is bid on, how will they know how much Lawson will go for? Maybe Lawson goes for less and they ccould've won Lawson, but because of the schedule they had to match the offer on Curry.

Now I won't post a problem without a possible solution..

1) I think owners should send initial offers to one account but LMs can only check it after the player is bid on by other owners. This should fix the problem of being able to bid 20% above the initial offer with ease.

2) I don't think a schedule should be needed at all. Just go with closed bidding on all players with the ability to send in priority lists, one offer per player. This way if Pacers wants to resign Curry, but Curry ends up being too pricey, he can sign Lawson instead.

[Deleted]

I also appreciate the work LM has put in to get this offseason rolling nicely; however, I also have a few issues.

I 1000% agree with both of Landon's concerns and believe his two proposed fixes are well thought thru and sufficient courses if action.

Also, I never once proposed to have initial bids be public; I was 100% against that and 100% against LM's opening and seeing bids that others who were bidding could not see. I don't appreciate you putting my name anywhere near that terrible idea.

[Lakers GM (Renato)]

I also agree with Royce on point 1. Fairly simple to implement and totally fair for all teams involved. Now, what happens if both teams submit exactly the same offer and the RFA owner decides not to match? We move on to a second round of bidding only between those two teams? I suppose that's the way to go...

Regarding point 2, there's that small issue of teams sending offers well above their cap space. Even if they have a priority list, that wouldn't be fair. If I had 50M in cap space and I really wanted a PG, what would stop me from offering 30M to Curry and 30M to Jrue? I believe the best way is to have scheduled bidding based on player ranks.

In the NBA, almost nothing happened until Dwight Howard decided on where he was going to play. Why not have the same here? Use player ranking and start from top to bottom. Naturally the best player will receive the best offers before teams decide on moving on to the 2nd best player. Keep the scheduled bidding...

[Thunder GM (Tiago)]

The 1st idea only works IF we cancel the calendar.

Because if we maintain a RFA per day rule, someone has to know what the offer is so we can validate their offers on others RFA's as being inside their cap or above.

Example:

Boston proposes 10M for Lawson and Splitter and 5M for Henderson.

Now instead of 34M that he initially had, he only has 23M to bid on other RFA's.

If he puts a bid of 25M for Harden, we need to know that this bid is invalid, and the only option is to be aware of what his offers were to his own players.

So, about the schedule itself.

We have decided to do this format for 3 main reasons:

- It's a looooooooooooooooooot easier to control for us and less complicated for owners

- Keeps the activity and interest level higher for a few weeks

- I think that in real life, this is close to what is done. Everyone is going first after the big names with big offers. Only if they can't get those players they start to bid and try to get the smaller one (see Howard, Dwight). So that disadvantage you talk about also happens in real life and is related to having the best players.

"This way if Pacers wants to resign Curry, but Curry ends up being too pricey, he can sign Lawson instead." Our way he can do it too...


The only thing i agree is that if the offer is public that it's easy to go 20% more. But you should only make an offer higher than then standard, if you think the value you offer is high enough that no one will offer 20% more. Otherwise you will be increasing the salary which is bad for you.

I can see some players/situations in which this can make sense, but I'm sure there's not that many. Since you can match any offer, there's no reason to make this for most players in my opinion.

[Lakers GM (Renato)]

Regarding the first point, I still believe that close bidding to an account is the way to go. The best way to do this is to have the owner of an RFA bid on the same day as everyone else. Using the previous example:

Boston declared the intent to submit the QO to Splitter and Lawson. His cap is calculated based on the minimum salary he can offer to those players.

He then proceeds to make an offer for Harden based on his cap (which everyone knows) to the mentioned account. Before we move on to the next RFA, everything about Harden will be solved so by the time we reach Splitter his cap may or may not have changed. Then, he will submit an offer to Splitter to the closed account AT THE SAME TIME as everyone else. The advantage is that noone knows what his offer is and he may end up retaining Splitter on a cheaper contract...

[Deleted]

I agree with Ren on pretty much everything here. Correct me if I'm wrong but does this mean that the offer I submit for MY PLAYER(Harden) will be viewable by everyone thus giving them the unfair advantage of seeing the price they have to beat and 2 or 3 days of trading to try and get the cap room they need to beat the 20%? That's Bs IMO and frankly it would kind of piss me off. This swings things completely in the favor of the teams who will send blind bids. The only way I can see THIS method being fair is to close trading when the open bids have to be submitted. Blind bidding for all is the way to go.

[Bulls GM (Krzysztof)]

Open , public offer by owners of RFA's its a terrible rule , reason that someone need to have cap for this and thats why it have to be public for me have zero sense. If i want trade i need to have cap to take this player and his contract i need to have roster space too , thats something that we all know and its so obvious that i cant belive you really using this as a reason. This is blind bidding right ? so everyone should have equal chances and if you want to make them blind for one but public for others its not equal and it is in favor for 29 owners but unfair for one who have rights for this player. I am totally against this rule.

[Thunder GM (Tiago)]

You guys are not reading or not understanding what Jose and me wrote.

The advantage of owning a RFA players is, always have been and always will be the possibility of just matching any offer. That's it.

And that's still stands.

The bidding of a player will be closed and that's not open to any kind of discussion. We didn't talked about any kind of open bidding anywhere.

What we are talking about is how do you make your starting offer to your RFA's. It's pretty obvious that in real NBA every owner does know what the offer a player is getting from the current team.

Practically, the only way to keep your offers a mistery is like Renato said, making your own offers only the day of your RFA's like everyone else.

I personally don't like it, since gives a possibility of (using the same example) Jose bidding 25M on harden, and IF he doens't get him, bidding 25M on Lawson.

Because he didn't have to commit to his own players, he can bid much higher on other owners RFA's and this will increase the salary average in my view and unlike what you seem to think, can actually make harder for someone to keep their RFA's.

Still, that part it's open for discussion, and I have no problem in making it that way.

I would like to see more opinoins and the take on this last part from the ones that already posted.

If you can keep the "BS" from your opinions, we would appreciate it. Also,even the slightest mention of the possibility of the LM's taking advantage of seeing anything in advance (which we never proposed) really gets me angry... If anyone thinks that we have all this work and thought to put a league online and keep it, and then use the LM seat to take some kind of advantage over the other owners in this process, they clearly are in the wrong league...

[Former Spurs GM (Adam)]

Tiago, we all appreciate very much the amount of time and effort you guys put into running this league. And there are plenty of examples that make it clear things are being done in a way that's as fair as possible to everybody. I'd be surprised and disappointed if anyone has suspicions about the LMs trying to take advantage of their position.

When I first read the new rules and schedule, my reaction was exactly the same as Landon and the others. "Making the original owners' bids public will put them at a disadvantage". I still share that sentiment and think there has to be a better way than making it public.

I also think that having a schedule will do more to inflate prices than anything. If a team has only one or two open roster spots, what are the odds that they're going to be bidding on a player like Mullins, Splitter, or Hansbrough? Most teams will probably focus on the bigger names. However with a schedule, once a few teams have lost their other bids, these players will get more attention.

On the other hand, if there's no schedule and just a designated time period to submit all bids, I can definitely see the truth in what you said Tiago: "It's a looooooooooooooooooot easier to control for us" [if there is a schedule]. The LMs would probably have to sort through 200 bids and check them all against cap space and roster openings.

Personally, I'd be in favor of the chaos method: Current owners and bidders all submit offers for every player simultaneously. Each owner has to be responsible enough to not exceed his cap/roster limits. If someone is found to have submitted bids that exceed his own limits, the bids should be invalid. But this would result in 1. fewer bids being submitted for lesser players and 2. as already mentioned - a lot of work for the LMs to sort out.

Whatever the process is its fine with me, but I definitely sympathize with the RFA owners who found out their initial bids will be made public.

[Thunder GM (Tiago)]

Ok, i understand what you are saying, but i feel that it's not how the real RFA market works.

And also, if what Landon said was implemented, I could bid in every RFA the same.
I would make a bid with priority and would do:

Harden 25M
Curry 25M
Lawson 25M
Teague 15M
Pekovic 15M
Jrue 15M
etc...

What you are defending is a bit different if I understand it right. You are saying that I can only bid a TOTAL ammount that I have of free cap in ALL my RFA offers. Is that it?

That would be boring, and every team would essencialy only really bid in 1 player or else they didnt stand a chance of winning any rfa.

Again, in real NBA the current owner makes an offer that everyone knows about, and then the other teams pitch their offers. and they all do it to the better players first.

So, with this we would have a 1 week tops of bidding and then 1 month with nothing scheduled. Keeping the league interesting and active is another concern in our minds.

And like I said, even that week would be boring because each owner only will bid in 1 player (maybe 1 star and another 1-2 role tops).

To me, this is the worst case scenario for the multiple reasons that i stated above.

The owner of the RFA ability to keep him is only a % of all of the things we have to think on this matter.

So, if you all think that open offers is a bad thing then the Renato's method is an alternative that (even if we don't like it) works and solves that problem.

[Former Spurs GM (Adam)]

"What you are defending is a bit different if I understand it right. You are saying that I can only bid a TOTAL ammount that I have of free cap in ALL my RFA offers. Is that it?"

That's correct. I don't expect this to be implemented because I agree with you - "It's boring" and severely limits what teams can do with the RFA market. The big advantage is in price control.

I understand though if the goal is to retain participation and interest of all owners through the offseason. In which case, yes, I would also endorse Renato's idea of keeping the schedule, having current owners bid as they go, and have all bids be private.

Anyway, thanks for looking at the variety of opinions.

[Deleted]

So, I would like to elaborate because my last post was on my iPhone - so here are some extended explanations of my concerns.

1) I fully agree that all RFA bids should be closed (AND NOT PUBLIC). For many reasons that have been stated by other GM's.
- I also believe that all initial bids by the GM owning the RFA rights be sent to an account and the LM's open it only AFTER all bids for said player have been turned in.
- I don't see why the calendar would need to be cancelled if there are closed bids, one GM mentioned that the owning GM simply submits his bid for his RFA along with all bids from other GM's - then all bids for said player are opened at the same time. If no bids exceed the 20% of the AAS of the owning GM's bid then the owning GM will sign his RFA at his contract offer. IF there are bids that exceed the 20% threshold, then the owning GM has the right to match the highest bid. This would allow the GM the opportunity to submit whatever bid they feel is fair, while at the same time avoiding the over-bidding their available cap.

For example, my RFA Teague is proposed early in RFA schedule - and if I bid and win RFA's prior to him... then I would obviously be limited in what I could offer or match on Teague.

I think the way to avoid the overbidding is for the bid to not apply to my cap until I make the offer, which would be the SAME day all offers are made to Teague.

I think Renato makes a good point on this front,

Regarding the first point, I still believe that close bidding to an account is the way to go. The best way to do this is to have the owner of an RFA bid on the same day as everyone else. Using the previous example:

Boston declared the intent to submit the QO to Splitter and Lawson. His cap is calculated based on the minimum salary he can offer to those players.

He then proceeds to make an offer for Harden based on his cap (which everyone knows) to the mentioned account. Before we move on to the next RFA, everything about Harden will be solved so by the time we reach Splitter his cap may or may not have changed. Then, he will submit an offer to Splitter to the closed account AT THE SAME TIME as everyone else. The advantage is that noone knows what his offer is and he may end up retaining Splitter on a cheaper contract...

But even better, I think simply declaring the RFA intention thru the QO should give right to match and NOT be deducted from the cap available until that player is scheduled to be bid on.

For example, Teague's QO of $3.4M AAS should not be deducted from my cap until Teague is up to be bid on... if you look at my team page... my cap available represents my cap not considering the QO offers... but when it comes to Teague (which is my first RFA) my available cap would be reduced from $42.1M to $38.8M if I stick with the QO offer or if I bid say, $10M AAS that $42.1M would be reduced to $32.1M, and so on.

- I also strongly agree with what Adam has said here,

Personally, I'd be in favor of the chaos method: Current owners and bidders all submit offers for every player simultaneously. Each owner has to be responsible enough to not exceed his cap/roster limits. If someone is found to have submitted bids that exceed his own limits, the bids should be invalid. But this would result in 1. fewer bids being submitted for lesser players and 2. as already mentioned - a lot of work for the LMs to sort out.

I also would be for the chaos method as I can fully understand how having a schedule will drive the prices up on the higher ranked, first scheduled RFA's... but having the chaos method would make it much more difficult to monitor the amount of money GM's are putting out for bid.

- With all of this being said, I would like to submit my proposal... and I would appreciate others feedback on this proposal

1) We continue to use an RFA schedule - however, rather than having the highest ranked players first, we use a randomizer, place all the RFA's into the randomizer and let that determine the RFA schedule.

2) GM's who own the rights to an RFA will submit their bids in a BLIND MANNER to the same account that all RFA bids go to - and the bids are all opened at the SAME TIME. IF no GM bids exceed the 20% threshold of the owning GM's bid (AAS) then the owning GM signs his RFA to his offer - and if their is a bid that exceeds the 20% threshold - the GM has right to match.

3) Cap space will be determined not considering the QO amounts, so it is just plain, clear, and blatant how much cap each GM has going into each and every RFA bid period. (For example, I would have $42.1M at the start of the RFA period and that number would not decrease until I submit a bid on an RFA or submit my QO or extended offer to my RFA whenever they come up for bid)

*This should help the LM's monitor the amount of cap space GM's have available to offer RFA's in an organized manner

AND

*This keeps the integrity of the rights to the RFA without exposing the blind bid to anyone, giving an unfair advantage.


Thoughts? Comments?

I will post a poll with this post and please vote if you like or do not like my proposal.

Just for an example I have submitted all RFA's into a randomizer and posted the schedule as the randomizer spit it out.

This is the website randomizer I used:
www.random.org/lists/

Here are the results:
There were 19 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Rodrigue Beaubois
Tiago Splitter
James Harden
Tyler Hansbrough
Taj Gibson
Ty Lawson
Jeremy Pargo
Tyreke Evans
Jrue Holiday
Stephen Curry
DeMar Derozan
Jeff Teague
Shelvin Mack
Byron Mullens
Nikola Pekovic
Brandon Jennings
Gerald Henderson
Darren Collison
Eric Maynor
Timestamp: 2013-07-20 02:41:22 UTC

[Thunder GM (Tiago)]

The QO offer to your own rfa has to count towards the available cap because there's always a chance noone bids on your rfa and you need to have the available cap for at least that minimum offer based on his previous contract.

Like before I am open to having the owners only making their bid on the same day as everyone else (even if I don't like it).

But having the rfa order randomize doesn't make any sense. It has to be the better players first imo. Its the only thing with logic and that relates to reality.


Sent from my tmn smart a18 using proboards

[Deleted]

I swear, it's like nobody reads before replying lol. Tiago, yes at a minimum the QO will apply to your cap when your RFA comes up for bid - at a minimum you must submit your QO when your player comes up. Just like I said in my previous post:

For example, Teague's QO of $3.4M AAS should not be deducted from my cap until Teague is up to be bid on... if you look at my team page... my cap available represents my cap not considering the QO offers... but when it comes to Teague (which is my first RFA) my available cap would be reduced from $42.1M to $38.8M if I stick with the QO offer or if I bid say, $10M AAS that $42.1M would be reduced to $32.1M, and so on.

And if for some reason I spent all my money before Teague came up for bid and didnt have even enough to offer the QO and nobody bid on him - he goes straight to UFA.

In regards to the randomized schedule, I proposed that for the GMs who were against the schedule with better players first because they don't want prices driven up on the early guys. I don't see at all what's wrong with a randomized schedule. People will still see when the superstars are up, and decide whether or not to save money for them or chase guys prior to them. If anything, I see the randomized schedule curbing enthusiasm on driving bids too high on superstars.

If we must use a schedule with better players coming first, then I think we HAVE to use the espn player rater to determine the order - as it will have each players total fantasy points from last year. (Is this how you guys determined order?)