Rules Proposal: Rookie Contracts

[George Gervin]

Ian Noble, one additional item raised in the Discord by several GMs that needs to be added to this proposal for the RFA portion is on Qualifying Offers. Initial outline is below on the language:

• A RFA Player Agent may, with a majority consensus amongst the RFA PAs, elect to take a one year, Qualifying Offer worth 150% of the player’s fourth rookie year salary in lieu of a long term contract in the event financial terms are insufficient for the player to sign an offer sheet

[George Gervin]

Ian Noble, to recap the rule changes here in anticipation of Restricted Free Agency and Rookie Contract Changes. I split this up into two posts on Rookie Contracts and RFA to help track easier:

First Round Rookie Contract Changes:

Effective the 2022 D5 Draft, first round selections will have four year contracts in accordance with the structure outlined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement of two guaranteed years in Years 1 and 2, followed by two Team Options in Years 3 and 4 that are at the discretion of the D5 General Manager to 'elect' to pick up that player's option. 

Structurally, there will be one 'super-class' of first round rookie free agents in the 2026 offseason where 2021 draftees -- the last class with the old five year rookie deal -- and the 2022 draftees will come due for Restricted Free Agency. 

D5 GMs who held draft picks in future years beyond 2022 were given notice in this thread of the impending change and, with near unanimous support, elected to implement the rule change effective the 2022 draft class.

[George Gervin]

Ian Noble , second half specific to Restricted Free Agency, including further details on how this can be executed. I know we had all thought implementing it with the 2017 D5 draft class would be sensible, but actually ironing out how this process needs to be completed, it makes sense to push it to the 2018 D5 draft class next offseason as the inaugural bunch. 

Restricted Free Agency: 

Effective the 2018 D5 draft class (aka the Luka/Ayton draft), all first and second round rookies will be subject to Restricted Free Agency (RFA). RFA will be a three stage process aligned to the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) approach: Filing Qualifying Offers (QO) (Basic or Maximum), Bidding Period, and Match, Decline, or take QO.

Filing Qualifying Offers.

Prior to the commencement of the RFA period, GMs will be required to make one year Basic Qualifying Offers to their rookie scale free agents in order to retain full matching rights. Basic Qualifying Offers will be based on the draftees selection range from their draft. For example, under the CBA, when Zion Williamson comes up for RFA, his Qualifying Offer must be 130% of the value of the fourth year in his contract. However, Ja Morant's Qualifying Offer as the second selection from that same draft class would be 130.5% of the value of the fourth year in his contract. The percentages scale the deeper into the draft a player was selected, until it is capped out with the 30th selection (as well as all Second Round selections) at 150% of the value of their last year in their contract. For the sake of implementation simplicity, Basic Qualifying Offers will be stratified by the draft range a player was selected versus trying to exactly match the CBA table which is super onerous. Tiers will be as follows:

• Draftees selected from the 1st pick through the 10th pick: 130% of the fourth year value
• Draftees selected from the 11th pick through the 20th pick: 140% of the fourth year value
• Draftees selected from the 21st pick through the 30th pick: 150% of the fourth year value
• Draftees selected in the Second Round: 150% of the third year value

GMs will be permitted to make two Qualifying Offers to each rookie scale free agent they have: a Basic Offer and a Maximum Offer. The Basic Offer parameters have already been explained above as tiered, one year offers that an RFA can take in-lieu of a long term contract should the RFA Player Agent deem market offers to be unacceptable. If a player elects to take their Basic Qualifying Offer, they will become an Unrestricted Free Agent in the subsequent offseason.

A Maximum Qualifying Offer is, as it sounds, a full bore offer to a rookie scale free agent. Maximum Qualifying Offers must meet three components: 1) It is the maximum allowed salary and length with yearly increases permitted relative to heir years of service in the League. For D5, that would be a 5 year deal (first round selections) or 4 year deal (second round selections) that is the maximum with 7.5% step raises each year and worth 25% of the salary cap in Year 1; 2) there are no options of any kind (Team or Player) in the deal; and 3) a rookie scale RFA cannot solicit bids from other GMs during the Bidding Period and later accept the Maximum Offer. If a player accepts the Maximum Qualifying Offer, they do not enter the Bidding Stage for RFA and instead are resigned to their incumbent team. 

GMs will have a specific window to file Qualifying Offers to retain matching rights -- similar to how Team Options and Bird Rights are currently done in D5 -- to ensure each cap hold can be appropriately applied to the Salaries page. GMs are not required to extend a Basic or Maximum Qualifying Offer; however, failure to extend any QO will result in losing matching rights (and effectively Bird Rights) to the player.

Bidding Stage.

Once all GMs have declared their Basic and Maximum Qualifying Offers, the RFA Player Agent has assessed Maximum Offers and determined which to accept or decline, and RFAs who had no Qualifying Offer extended are demarcated, the Bidding stage of RFA can begin. GMs will be able to extend Offer Sheets to RFAs provided they have ample cap room to honor the offer if it is accepted; for example, a GM would not be permitted to extend an Offer Sheet that would exceed their available room under the cap for the purpose of inflating the match required to be made by the incumbent GM. 

Offer Sheets will be tendered by GMs all in the same period of time (Note: Still TBD on how long) so that, once the Match or Decline portion begins, there are no instances where a player is still receiving offers that reset the Match/Decline clock. Once the bidding period is over, incumbent GMs will be required to assess the offers received and make express, unambiguous indication of 'Match' or 'Decline' (see below for more details). 

Should a player receive zero offers during the bid window, and provided they were extended a Basic Qualifying Offer, the RFA PA can immediately accept said offer to ensure the player is signed to a contract. 

Match, Decline, or take the QO.

Once the bidding stage is complete, incumbent GMs for RFAs will have a defined window to determine if they will match the highest offer made, decline to match (and therefore lose the player), or receive indication from the RFA PA that the Basic Qualifying Offer will be accepted in-lieu of any offer sheets. Under the CBA, teams have 48 hours to match offer sheets tendered to RFAs. Given this is no one's full time gig, it makes more sense to have a longer window for matching offer sheets. Five days seems reasonable but I will defer to you Ian Noble on making the call for an appropriate matching window. As stated above -- this is critically important -- GMs must make very clear, express intent on matching or declining the offer sheet extended. It is also the responsibility of the GM (incumbent or poaching) to ensure they understand offer sheet ramifications (i.e. if an extended Offer Sheet would put the incumbent or poaching team over the Hard Cap during the lifetime of the contract, matching would result (absent any trades) in that GM losing a draft pick due to the Hard Cap penalty). 

Once an incumbent GM has indicated they will match or decline, the transaction will then be processed as any other FA signing would. If the offers tendered during the bidding stage are deemed to be 'below market' by the RFA PA, they may elect to intercede and indicate the player will accept their Basic Qualifying Offer to become an Unrestricted Free Agent the following season. The RFA PA will have a window to make this indication and once that window has passed, the PA cannot object to the conclusion (e.g. accepting the highest bid tendered) for that player.

[Jerry West]

This is to much for what is already sometimes a lot to juggle for D5 agents. I think RFA and a 72 hour period to match is good enough to make significant changes and improvements to the current system.

[Steve Nash]

That all sounds great to me. I don't think adding RFA is all that complicated. We had it in D720 with no issues. However, in that league, there wasn't negotiations with the PA for RFA. Only single blind bids, then a match or decline by the current team. Worked well.

We could even simplify the process slightly by eliminating the QO proposal. Perhaps when a GM posts that they are claiming BRs on their RFA player, they also extend the QO by default? Unless the QO and the BR cap holds are significantly different or for some reason someone would want their BRs but not extend a QO (not sure if that would ever happen).

[Ian Noble]

4 year rookie deals is fine.

RFA though, what's the purpose of RFA when the players can just go into the OSFA pool and Player Agents can do their jobs like usual? Whatever we do needs to be a balance between NBA realism and minimising the hassle of running D5 and it seems unnecessarily complicated...

RFA Summary from what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong GG):

Max RFA Offers
1. GM makes max claim

2. committe decides whether player accepts
- if Yes -> re-signed
- if No -> enter OSFA?

Basic RFA Offers
1. GM claims
- 130/140/150% size contract depending upon original draft position.

2. Other GMs make bids
- if no bids, player signs for 1 year deal
- if bids happen - help me out here GG?

No RFA Offer
1. Player enters OSFA

[George Gervin]

Jun 2, 2022 12:18:14 GMT Ian Noble said:

4 year rookie deals is fine.

RFA though, what's the purpose of RFA when the players can just go into the OSFA pool and Player Agents can do their jobs like usual? Whatever we do needs to be a balance between NBA realism and minimising the hassle of running D5 and it seems unnecessarily complicated...

RFA Summary from what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong GG):

Max RFA Offers
1. GM makes max claim

2. committe decides whether player accepts
- if Yes -> re-signed
- if No -> enter OSFA? Correct - they enter the pool with a Basic RFA offer. GMs can extend both Max and Basic QOs, but a player may only take one and the Max cannot be taken once the Bidding stage begins.

Basic RFA Offers
1. GM claims
- 130/140/150% size contract depending upon original draft position.

2. Other GMs make bids
- if no bids, player signs for 1 year deal
- if bids happen - help me out here GG? RFA PA reviews the bids, makes a post for each player indicating "Player X has signed an offer sheet with Team X for the following terms and role (i.e. starter, Sixth Man, etc.). Incumbent GM, you have 72 hours to match the offer." The incumbent GM then can either match the terms and be held to them -- for example, if the player was promised a starting role, they must be a starter -- or decline to match and the player is then signed to the team the RFA PA selected as the winning bid. 

No RFA Offer
1. Player enters OSFA

My additions in blue above

[Jerry West]

"The incumbent GM then can either match the terms and be held to them -- for example, if the player was promised a starting role, they must be a starter -- or decline to match and the player is then signed to the team the RFA PA selected as the winning bid."

Ok this is really going in a direction I don't agree with, it shouldn't matter if you give him a starting spot or not if you matched the money, this is going overly complicated for no reason.

[Arvydas Sabonis]

Jun 2, 2022 12:53:08 GMT Jerry West said:

"The incumbent GM then can either match the terms and be held to them -- for example, if the player was promised a starting role, they must be a starter -- or decline to match and the player is then signed to the team the RFA PA selected as the winning bid."

Ok this is really going in a direction I don't agree with, it shouldn't matter if you give him a starting spot or not if you matched the money, this is going overly complicated for no reason.

I agree. I don't think you need to give same promises to the player as long as you match the money.

Otherwise it could lead to some weird things, where player could be a 6th man with high minutes in a championship contender (original team), and one of the worst teams makes an offer where they promise starting spot. It should not be a deciding factor if the money is same.

[Arvydas Sabonis]

Also I would like to propose what I also wrote in Discord regarding the cap holds:

1. If player accepts the offer from the original team, new contract will be added only at the end of the FA, and until then there will be a cap hold size of the BR cap hold.
2. If player accepts offer from another team, which is then matched by the original team, then the full new contract is put to the roster page right away

Point 1 simulates that player and team can make mutually beneficial deal to improve possibilities of signing other FAs to improve the squad. And point 2 discourages to use the strategy to just wait and see to save few million. By offering immediately market value the original team gets also advantages.

[Ian Noble]

My overarching concern here is still:

Jun 2, 2022 12:18:14 GMT Ian Noble said:

what's the purpose of RFA when the players can just go into the OSFA pool and Player Agents can do their jobs like usual?

Seems like unnecessary administration to add the entire RFA process when the outcome will be fairly similar.

[James Kay]

Ian Noble.

Looking to revive this thread a bit. I think the rule system suggested by GG, while pretty accurate to IRL, would, as you said, lead to unnecessary administration.

However, there is a sort of "unspoken rule" that rookies stay to their re-signing teams. I am against unspoken rules because I think that if it's a rule, just make it one. If it's not a rule, then some rookie *must* be able to leave, and IMO that would be incredibly unfair to that GM for relying upon a rule that was enforced for everyone else, but not for them.

I propose adding a simplified version of RFA, where we just announce that teams can match any offers made to their rookie contract FAs, and keep those players. However, to offset this advantage, slightly, rookie deals can only be 5 years if they are the max. In fact, the rule about 5-year contracts always being max contracts could be applied to all contracts, IMO, which would also make for easier implementation of this rule.


Edit:

Also Ian, I think an announcement that clarifies exactly what rule changes are upcoming would be helpful.

I think over the next off-season and beyond, rule changes that are maybe happening include shortening rookie contracts to 4 years, allowing BRs to be transferred through trade, decreasing hard cap, some sort of RFA process, some sort of waiver?

Updating all the rule sections would be great too, I can help with that if you'd like.