Waiting on accepted trade to fix cap situation

Made a trade that would give me $17 more cap. It was accepted on Christmas Day at 12:11pm. This would give me $67 total free cap once it processed.

Bradley Beal got dropped and was being auctioned with it scheduled to end at 10:59pm Christmas Day.

I knew I could over bid and just wait for trade to kick. I did so and then ended up with the commish threatening to cancel my trade if I didn’t cut anyone before the trade processed on Dec 27 at 12:11pm.

I was over the cap for a total of 37 hours. Now the commish and one other team would like to create their own rule to limit to 24 hours to get legal.

Meanwhile another team last week had an illegal roster from Dec. 19 until Dec 26 because they picked up Anthony Davis who was dropped, and not one word was said.

I’d really like to know where teams stand on this. My main response has just been remain consistent and feel free to take away the 27 points I earned yesterday if you really have a big issue with this.

There are a couple of ambiguities in the rules and this is one of them. The best thing to do is to have a discussion in the off-season to norm on what’s acceptable or not. Ultimately it’s a league decision about whether–and how–to enforce teams getting legal. My feeling is that if you’re going to change the rules midseason, then it needs to be unanimous (during off-season a majority is sufficient).

IMHO, there’s a penalty for having an illegal roster (i.e., frozen lineup and roster moves). If you’re willing to incur that penalty, then you should be allowed to maintain an illegal roster until it becomes a competitive balance issue (i.e., you stop setting any lineups).

Here’s the relevant language from the official rules:

If a team has more than 25 rostered players, more than $400 in salary, or not enough cap space to roster 25 players, the team will be locked out of normal activities until a player is cut or moved off the team via trade. These activities include:

Setting lineups
Offering or accepting trades
Bidding on auctions

There’s no provision for additional enforcement.

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I don’t think there’s any reason to be defensive about this. Every league has to go through a process of figuring out what people are comfortable with in terms of getting ‘legal’. I agree finalizing new rules is better in the offseason, but these issues come up in season and discussing them frankly is better than what-about-isms or picking a fight.

Trades are processed for teams that are in an illegal state because it is an accepted way to get legal. Your commissioner did not know this and reached out to me about it a couple of hours ago. The relevant post is here:

I believe with this precedent, everything done here is pretty fine - the 37 hours in which you couldn’t set your lineup was definitely cost enough to let the trades do the work of getting you legal. However, it is unclear to me if you told anyone this was your plan or ignored any messages sent your way. It is less about the rules and more about how you treat the other 11 people in the league - this is true of any other managers who are accusing you of cheating or whatever nonsense as well.

There is no way to do this, so this isn’t really a useful offer. It just comes off as combative and defensive.

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Thank you for this feedback. Frankly, the only reason I was annoyed is because of the inconsistency.

Another team was literally over the cap for a week and not one word was said.

I never told anyone my plan, because the league seems fairly inactive in communicating given that a whole week of a team being over the cap went by and no one said a word. Also never ignored any messages. I love this platform and am on it maybe a bit too much.

Thanks again for the quick response.

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Totally understand, but that is why it is good to just get on the same page with everyone now. Inconsistency is no good but one thing may rub one person one way and someone else another way, so my suggestion would be to follow @walt526’s advice and have the conversation now and get everyone on the same page and then implement whatever you choose more officially (maybe using the commissioner’s note) in the offseason.

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