Free Agency talk

[Minnesota Timberwolves]

Here you can post your thoughts about the upcoming offseason, what should we do and what we shouldn't. Make your recommendations here if you want. I state my opinion couple months ago, so to start off with something:

I actually didn't plan to include the credit points for the upcoming free agency. What I thought was that we would do the free agency in 2 steps. First there will be bidding on the top (10?) free agents, like LeBron, Wade, Bosh etc. Everybody would put up their offers and explanation, why his team would be the best suit etc. Then after all the offers have been made, the entire Committe would see the offers, maybe discuss, who should go where and after that vote for the team, where the player should go (no voting for own teams). Then after the upper FA has been passed, there will be a regular free agency, where players would be divided into groups, each committe member has one group and will decide by themselves, where each would go (something similar what was in 09' offseason)

[Charlotte Bobcats]

yeah i think this can be a good idea.

[Detroit Pistons]

I concur

[Sacramento Kings]

Good idea

Edit: I think we also should do this: www.theleague2010us.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=rules&action=display&thread=234

[Minnesota Timberwolves]

Agreed on that.

[Sacramento Kings]

I just saw that our salary cap is at 67,5 mio this year and supposed to be 70 mio next year, and I think we should seriously consider lowering our cap to around 60 mio. Because the real NBA salary cap is projected to be at 55 mio and there is no way our cap should be that much higher.

[Minnesota Timberwolves]

As the salary cap increase was released very long time ago, I will stick to this this year, but after that the cap will start to decrease, probably by the same amount.

[Sacramento Kings]

Well your call. Still think it's kind of ridiculous and not really good for the league.

[Detroit Pistons]

I don't agree with the Sacramento that the cap should be dropped to 60million immediately but I dont think it should be increased to 70mill as well. I think for this offseason its a little special. With all the upcoming "Big daddy" Free agents, tons of teams will want to get them sgined to their team. However, increasing the cap to 70million seems unrealistic because that way, you have A LOT (and i mean A LOT) of teams who can sign them.

I think the cap space should be dropped to 65million (and this should be the highest it should ever go) because: 5million decrease makes the offseason a little less troublesome. Imagine 10 teams that can offer max salaries to the elite FA class would be impractical and somewhat stupid. It's a hell of a workload and it doesnt reward teams that intentionally acquired players for the expiring contracts.

Firstly conditions for FA should be as such

1) Max offers start at $12million & increase by 11% each year up to the 6th (something thats done last Offseason & should be continued to keep things realistic)

2) Salary cap should not be higher than $65Mil, because the extra 5million is only going to cause bidding wars and this DOES NOT help at all trust me. Those who've "sacrificed": lets take my case for example. Ive acquired Ray Allen for Monta Ellis, CJ Miles & etc. It makes no sense for me to do that trade honestly considering how darn well Ellis was playing at the time. Absolutely no sense at all. But I need to try my hand at the offseason which is why I took that risk, a risk that may not even pay off if no superstar is signed to my team. So all i'm trying to say is that how can teams who actively acquires expiring contracts be treated unfairly (in a way) when the whole league gets an extra 2.5mill to spend and resulting in several more unwanted max offers to already VERY STACKED Teams?

3) With less teams able to offer max contracts, it allows for a better decision making process (& much less tedious). 5million can do wonders.

4) I hope we can really come to a conclusion on this. being a SIM league, we shouldnt even be that far off as compared to te real league. Even 65mill compared to 57.5mil is very very different (70mill is just outright CRAZY & out of this world). So I implore other CMs & GMs to think hard for whats best for the league.

[Minnesota Timberwolves]

I actually agree with pretty much every point there. I'll put on a vote whether we should increase or decrease the cap.

[Minnesota Timberwolves]

The poll is up.

[Charlotte Bobcats]

I say 57 mil is pretty good. Less crazy offers, more thinking.

[Sacramento Kings]

Good analysis Detroit. I agree with you for the most part but I still think the cap should be at 60 mio because at 65 mio there will still be at least 10 teams that can offer a max contract starting at 12 mio. With that being said I think it would be better if a max contract starts at 14 mio & increase by 10% each year, because less teams can offer max contracts and the total money would still be somewhat moderate and lower than in the NBA (with 55 mio cap):

1. 12,000,000 | 13,320,000 | 14,785,200 | 16,411,572 | 18,216,845 | 20,220,698

=> 5 years 74,733,617 and 6 years 94,954,315

2. 14,000,000 | 15,400,000 | 16,940,000 | 18,634,000 | 20,497,400 | 22,547,140

=> 5 years 85,4714 and 6 years 108,01854

[Detroit Pistons]

max contracts at 14million could work too

[New York Knicks]

I'm all for lowering the cap, because i look at some of the contracts given last summer.and they were ridiculous. It will also make the league more active, as teams will have to try to deal their bad contracts more.

But the MAX is going to have to stay at 90 MILLION, because LAL and denver are just under that for next season.

[Charlotte Bobcats]

Its better to lower the soft cap and have less people bidding for top free agents, or we can increase the max starting year contract but decrease the amount it can increase by.
Although I say if there's a committee to monitor the offers and when the committee decides the offers are as high as they should be then it'll just be a question of how well the team suits the player etc etc, then we can have a slightly inflated soft cap...

[Detroit Pistons]

agreed. Perhaps we could work around either:

1) a 65mil / 62.5 mil soft cap, with 1st year 14mil <11% increase
or
2) 60mil soft cap, with 1st 12mil & 11% increase every year.

At this point in time, I prefer option 1. But if everyone doesnt mind, option 2 works equally well anyway.

& Hard cap will remain at $90million of course.

[Minnesota Timberwolves]

The 1st option seems the best one so far. In my opinion that's the most reasonable.

[Detroit Pistons]

Seems like we've reached something close to a consensus (at least the 5-7 team GMs over here). So I'm sure Minny could set the FA signing rules for the Max contract at:

$14Mill first year & 10% increase every year?

year 1 : $14,000,000
year 2 : $15,400,000
Year 3 : $16,940,000
Year 4 : $18,634,000
Year 5 : $20,497,400
Year 6 : $22,547,140

So last thing to confirm: $62.5mil or $65mil soft cap? Right now I prefer 62.5 honestly speaking