Garbageman's Guide to UFA
Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2023 12:36 am
Garbageman’s Guide To UFA
Another UFA has come and gone (well, at least round 1, and probably round 2 by the time this gets finished and posted), and it still astonishes me to see seasoned GMs make some of the same bidding mistakes year in and year out. Granted, they’re probably not the GMs who read my articles, but nonetheless, for all you relatively new GMs out there, bookmark this article for next season. And for Dr. Kavarga, you keep doing you, because every season, I see the Bobcats (or Knicks) sign 8 guys I haven’t heard of on UFA day 1, and every season, the Bobcats fail to replicate the success they had in their first two seasons, having come onto a team led by 3 of the leagues best rather than a ragtag group of scrappy roleplayers who have won a combined 2 playoff series in the last 27 seasons. They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting results, but they also haven’t met Dr. K, because they could simplify that definition with a picture of him.
But enough about Dr. K. Let’s get to the dos and don’ts of UFA…NOW WITH REAL WORLD EXAMPLES!
1. Maxing players
This UFA, only six players got maxes. Two of those got supertaxes. Four were resigns. Leroy Johnston and Angelo Romero went to new teams. If you have max cap space, you should at least take a couple shots at the big guys. Teams that have been poorly run are more likely to lose players.
Luckily, I don’t foresee this happening, but if teams that have cap space didn’t go after the top dogs for long enough, the best teams could go risky and start getting their best talent back for cheaper. It’d be an intense game of chicken.
On that note, don’t go the cheap route. False9 famously lost out on Kory Manley a handful of seasons back by using the 7.5% bird right raise percentage to offer him more money overall than a standard max, but since the first year was slightly lower, Manley decided to sign with IamQuailman’s Bucks.
Also, know the signing order. Wig pointed it out many times in many places, and I’ve parroted this (others have too): superstars will sign first. Don’t count on being able to sneak in signings before bringing your purple potential guy back on a max…or even your blue guys. Guys who get max offers aren’t going to wait and see if better offers come in…they just have to decide which team to sign with. I don’t have a lot of data on this, but all the maxes this season were signed on 7/19 and 7/20. Everyone else waited until at least 7/22.
And when you do max players, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Have backup plans and spread out your bids. The maxes will most likely sign first (just look at the order on the boards). One team that struck out took 4 big swings at max guys and then two mins on guys who went for much more than that. They had max cap space, so they could’ve gotten some value out of round 1. But they didn’t put any more strategic bids out there. Unless you’re offering a guy a significant amount more than their desired contracts, they’re not going to sign before a max. Strategic bids could’ve saved this GM from striking out, although, striking out in round 1 isn’t the end of the world until you overpay in round 2, but we’ll get to that later. For now, did someone say…
2. Desired Contracts
Posting the desired contracts on the Free Agency board in the forums is a real game-changer, and I think since new folks tend to use the forums more often than legacy folks, they’ve really taken to using the desired contracts wisely. But here are some points that everyone should adhere to:
-First and foremost: pay attention to the desired contracts
-As time goes on, players’ desired salaries go down. Not by a HUGE amount, but as free agency rolls on, players are more likely to sign for less than their original desired the more likely it looks like they won’t get what they want. Mamba might not always post desired contracts for round 2 because it is a pain in the ass for minimal benefit. There is no benefit to posting after UFA 3.
-If you’re going to offer a player a significant amount less money than they want, they definitely don’t want less money than they asked for for the next 4 years. In most cases, they’d prefer a vet min and a shot at a big contract next offseason. I don’t know how xist managed to sign Daishen Nix for 2 years for 16 million under his asking, but there’s a whole plethora of bids below guys’ asking prices for multiple years that were laughed off…probably about as many as guys on low dollar one year contracts that have you scratching your head on why such a good player would sign for so low.
3. UFA Round 2
I know it’s a little early to start talking about round 2, but I brought it up a couple sections ago, so while it’s fresh on my mind, here’s what I got:
Usually in round 2, there are still a handful of blue potential players left. They might not be the greatest players. They might not be spring chickens either. But still, without fail, there are teams with a shit ton of cap space who throw huge sums of moneys at these guys. The Suns paid Carmelo Williams $45 million dollars last season in UFA round 2.
Sure, it feels good to outbid everyone else when you have the cap space, but if you’re rebuilding, you can’t trade a weak blue player who costs way too much, and they’re either going to eat up your cap space to take on bad contracts or spoil your tank. A young team with two mediocre blue players making a ton of money isn’t winning any rings, it’s only potentially making your pick worse.
What can you do instead? You can either figure out the market and offer the remaining blues reasonable contracts (make sure you know what everyone’s cap situation is in terms of who can outbid you and who can buy from you) or you can take fliers on young and interesting y/g players who could jump in TC. You don’t have to pay them much…you can usually lock them up for multiple years (with a team option, hint hint) for 10 million a year or even less. Then, you can hope they jump in TC, train a potential in training camp, or if all else fails, drop them for a point or two next season if you’re looking to turn things around and maximize your chances. IamQuailman is pretty good at this, and does this even when he’s competing. Watch Zike get trained to blue (even though slime is green (sorry, couldn’t help myself)).
4. Know your rights (bird and early bird)
One of the things that surprised me this season was that the Wizards didn’t resign Taken Horton-Tucker or Charles Bojorquez. They had bird rights on Bojorquez, and because you can offer anyone who was on your team last season—for only one season, even—120% (or something like that) of their previous season’s salary. I know if the Wiz re-signed one of these guys early, they might have missed out on one of the many wings they offered 27mm too, and that’s perfectly valid.
But like the Bobcats, xist2inspire is another GM who oftentimes defies what I consider to be logical choices. Unlike the Bobcats, xist is able to guide his teams to success year in and year out. It should be noted, however, that both GMs have the same amount of rings.
Anyway, the UFA thread has a lot of info about bird rights and early bird rights. I know it’s a long read, but if you’ve gotten this far in this article, you can handle it. Bringing guys back has huge value implications for your team. If you’re rebuilding, you can ship them out—immediately—for points or future value. If you’re competing, it’s a good way to (responsibly—I’m looking at you, champ) be able to avoid getting cut off by the salary cap. If you’re looking on the trade market, you can pick useless guys with bird rights up to trade them. RPF resigned Ruben Clapp using his early bird rights (I think 1/13th of the cap?) on a 2nd rounder who just hit free agency to make up salary to get Alfredo Menendez.
5. You can get better players on vet mins than the players you’re going for (and it’s not only drkavarga)
K100 is in tax jail and was able to land two b/b players using only vet mins. Meanwhile, we’ve got teams without cap space being too cautious and setting their expectations too low. There were a handful of blue players that didn’t receive any bids at all (Charles Bojorquez and Moses Moody among them) that any team with a vet min spot could’ve grabbed.
Furthermore, a vet min might work if there are other bids on a player that get cancelled when the team putting those higher bids loses cap space on other signings.
Here’s what I look at when deciding on vet mins:
- Will the previous team resign them?
A lot of people will go after players who were previously on teams with unreliable GMs or GMs in tax jail. However, look for players on teams that are either doing something way different or underperformed on a bigger contract to disappoint previous GMs.
- What is their desired contact?
If their desired contract is higher than anyone wants to pay them, they could be a good min candidate.
- Are they under the radar?
It’s obvious who the best players in free agency are, and it’s only slightly less obvious who the fake blue players are. You should be able to get one of these players on a min, though there might be some competition. However, there are also players who are slightly above that level who aren’t on a lot of folks’ radars. Get better at identifying these players, and throw some mins at them because you could luck out (unless everyone reads my next section on MLEs).
No matter who you get, as long as they stay blue past TC, someone will give you points for them during the season no matter how fake blue the player actually is. Even teams with plenty of space might be well served to set aside a bid or two to try to get a stealth min.
6. MLE
MLE is the newest part of free agency, but it’s been around long enough for people to have figured it out.
First, on a non-MLE note, find out what the MLE is, and if you have cap space, bid no less than just above that on mid-tier blue players you’re looking to get. That kicks out a lot of competition in bidding wars.
But back to MLE…the great thing about it is that it makes UFA a little more fun for teams that would’ve otherwise not been able to participate beyond vet mins. If you find yourself in this spot, you can either throw your full MLE at one player or try to split it up. Both are valid ways to do it, it just depends on who you’re going for. Remember what I said about vet mins? The same concept applies here with 1 year contracts on full MLE guys. Note how MexicanMamba got Lyle Galloway this season and Frank Daily last season by using his full MLE.
If he wanted to, he could’ve combine early bird rights to retain Frank Daily, but he’s paying way too much as it is for a team that’s light years ahead of its next closest competition.
If you need depth, you can split that MLE up. The Nuggets did a great job getting Luigi Leathers and Raiquan Grey for less than 10 million apiece. Granted, now they have so many beefy bigs that it’s luring Nick Malone back to the game like a pie on a windowsill in a cartoon, but that’s a good problem to have (too much talent, not Nick coming to steal your pies). He can hit the trade market and swap bigs for backcourt depth.
But MLE is a use it or lose it thing. There are plenty of teams with access to the MLE who didn’t throw out any MLE bids. The max MLE is generally tradeable for 3 vet min contracts, so even if you’re over the cap, you can go after guys you know will be both gettable and desirable and be able to churn some points out of it.
Another note about MLE is that it’s better on UFA Rd 1 where there’s a lot more noise. Once things get whittled down to UFA Rd 2, it’s pretty easy for the remaining teams with cap space to pick off the best remaining names.
In Conclusion
Anyway, that’s about all I got here. I feel like UFA is one of those areas where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer based on information. Players like signing with good teams. Supermax and max players sometimes leave for greener pastures, and if your pastures ain’t green, you’ve got to be really savvy to work your way to the level of a well oiled machine like the Lakers, Nuggets, or dare-I-say, Bulls (top 3 in power rankings after day 1, each signed/re-signed 3 or more blue potential players). The Grizzlies signed 3 as well and they’re in the 6th spot, even with NO ABILITY TO OFFER MORE THAN A MAX TO FREE AGENTS.
So read up and start using these tips and tricks. If a team in tax jail is signing more blue potential players than you are, you might want to take a step back and reexamine your strategy to make sure you’re not missing opportunities.
Another UFA has come and gone (well, at least round 1, and probably round 2 by the time this gets finished and posted), and it still astonishes me to see seasoned GMs make some of the same bidding mistakes year in and year out. Granted, they’re probably not the GMs who read my articles, but nonetheless, for all you relatively new GMs out there, bookmark this article for next season. And for Dr. Kavarga, you keep doing you, because every season, I see the Bobcats (or Knicks) sign 8 guys I haven’t heard of on UFA day 1, and every season, the Bobcats fail to replicate the success they had in their first two seasons, having come onto a team led by 3 of the leagues best rather than a ragtag group of scrappy roleplayers who have won a combined 2 playoff series in the last 27 seasons. They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting results, but they also haven’t met Dr. K, because they could simplify that definition with a picture of him.
But enough about Dr. K. Let’s get to the dos and don’ts of UFA…NOW WITH REAL WORLD EXAMPLES!
1. Maxing players
This UFA, only six players got maxes. Two of those got supertaxes. Four were resigns. Leroy Johnston and Angelo Romero went to new teams. If you have max cap space, you should at least take a couple shots at the big guys. Teams that have been poorly run are more likely to lose players.
Luckily, I don’t foresee this happening, but if teams that have cap space didn’t go after the top dogs for long enough, the best teams could go risky and start getting their best talent back for cheaper. It’d be an intense game of chicken.
On that note, don’t go the cheap route. False9 famously lost out on Kory Manley a handful of seasons back by using the 7.5% bird right raise percentage to offer him more money overall than a standard max, but since the first year was slightly lower, Manley decided to sign with IamQuailman’s Bucks.
Also, know the signing order. Wig pointed it out many times in many places, and I’ve parroted this (others have too): superstars will sign first. Don’t count on being able to sneak in signings before bringing your purple potential guy back on a max…or even your blue guys. Guys who get max offers aren’t going to wait and see if better offers come in…they just have to decide which team to sign with. I don’t have a lot of data on this, but all the maxes this season were signed on 7/19 and 7/20. Everyone else waited until at least 7/22.
And when you do max players, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Have backup plans and spread out your bids. The maxes will most likely sign first (just look at the order on the boards). One team that struck out took 4 big swings at max guys and then two mins on guys who went for much more than that. They had max cap space, so they could’ve gotten some value out of round 1. But they didn’t put any more strategic bids out there. Unless you’re offering a guy a significant amount more than their desired contracts, they’re not going to sign before a max. Strategic bids could’ve saved this GM from striking out, although, striking out in round 1 isn’t the end of the world until you overpay in round 2, but we’ll get to that later. For now, did someone say…
2. Desired Contracts
Posting the desired contracts on the Free Agency board in the forums is a real game-changer, and I think since new folks tend to use the forums more often than legacy folks, they’ve really taken to using the desired contracts wisely. But here are some points that everyone should adhere to:
-First and foremost: pay attention to the desired contracts
-As time goes on, players’ desired salaries go down. Not by a HUGE amount, but as free agency rolls on, players are more likely to sign for less than their original desired the more likely it looks like they won’t get what they want. Mamba might not always post desired contracts for round 2 because it is a pain in the ass for minimal benefit. There is no benefit to posting after UFA 3.
-If you’re going to offer a player a significant amount less money than they want, they definitely don’t want less money than they asked for for the next 4 years. In most cases, they’d prefer a vet min and a shot at a big contract next offseason. I don’t know how xist managed to sign Daishen Nix for 2 years for 16 million under his asking, but there’s a whole plethora of bids below guys’ asking prices for multiple years that were laughed off…probably about as many as guys on low dollar one year contracts that have you scratching your head on why such a good player would sign for so low.
3. UFA Round 2
I know it’s a little early to start talking about round 2, but I brought it up a couple sections ago, so while it’s fresh on my mind, here’s what I got:
Usually in round 2, there are still a handful of blue potential players left. They might not be the greatest players. They might not be spring chickens either. But still, without fail, there are teams with a shit ton of cap space who throw huge sums of moneys at these guys. The Suns paid Carmelo Williams $45 million dollars last season in UFA round 2.
Sure, it feels good to outbid everyone else when you have the cap space, but if you’re rebuilding, you can’t trade a weak blue player who costs way too much, and they’re either going to eat up your cap space to take on bad contracts or spoil your tank. A young team with two mediocre blue players making a ton of money isn’t winning any rings, it’s only potentially making your pick worse.
What can you do instead? You can either figure out the market and offer the remaining blues reasonable contracts (make sure you know what everyone’s cap situation is in terms of who can outbid you and who can buy from you) or you can take fliers on young and interesting y/g players who could jump in TC. You don’t have to pay them much…you can usually lock them up for multiple years (with a team option, hint hint) for 10 million a year or even less. Then, you can hope they jump in TC, train a potential in training camp, or if all else fails, drop them for a point or two next season if you’re looking to turn things around and maximize your chances. IamQuailman is pretty good at this, and does this even when he’s competing. Watch Zike get trained to blue (even though slime is green (sorry, couldn’t help myself)).
4. Know your rights (bird and early bird)
One of the things that surprised me this season was that the Wizards didn’t resign Taken Horton-Tucker or Charles Bojorquez. They had bird rights on Bojorquez, and because you can offer anyone who was on your team last season—for only one season, even—120% (or something like that) of their previous season’s salary. I know if the Wiz re-signed one of these guys early, they might have missed out on one of the many wings they offered 27mm too, and that’s perfectly valid.
But like the Bobcats, xist2inspire is another GM who oftentimes defies what I consider to be logical choices. Unlike the Bobcats, xist is able to guide his teams to success year in and year out. It should be noted, however, that both GMs have the same amount of rings.
Anyway, the UFA thread has a lot of info about bird rights and early bird rights. I know it’s a long read, but if you’ve gotten this far in this article, you can handle it. Bringing guys back has huge value implications for your team. If you’re rebuilding, you can ship them out—immediately—for points or future value. If you’re competing, it’s a good way to (responsibly—I’m looking at you, champ) be able to avoid getting cut off by the salary cap. If you’re looking on the trade market, you can pick useless guys with bird rights up to trade them. RPF resigned Ruben Clapp using his early bird rights (I think 1/13th of the cap?) on a 2nd rounder who just hit free agency to make up salary to get Alfredo Menendez.
5. You can get better players on vet mins than the players you’re going for (and it’s not only drkavarga)
K100 is in tax jail and was able to land two b/b players using only vet mins. Meanwhile, we’ve got teams without cap space being too cautious and setting their expectations too low. There were a handful of blue players that didn’t receive any bids at all (Charles Bojorquez and Moses Moody among them) that any team with a vet min spot could’ve grabbed.
Furthermore, a vet min might work if there are other bids on a player that get cancelled when the team putting those higher bids loses cap space on other signings.
Here’s what I look at when deciding on vet mins:
- Will the previous team resign them?
A lot of people will go after players who were previously on teams with unreliable GMs or GMs in tax jail. However, look for players on teams that are either doing something way different or underperformed on a bigger contract to disappoint previous GMs.
- What is their desired contact?
If their desired contract is higher than anyone wants to pay them, they could be a good min candidate.
- Are they under the radar?
It’s obvious who the best players in free agency are, and it’s only slightly less obvious who the fake blue players are. You should be able to get one of these players on a min, though there might be some competition. However, there are also players who are slightly above that level who aren’t on a lot of folks’ radars. Get better at identifying these players, and throw some mins at them because you could luck out (unless everyone reads my next section on MLEs).
No matter who you get, as long as they stay blue past TC, someone will give you points for them during the season no matter how fake blue the player actually is. Even teams with plenty of space might be well served to set aside a bid or two to try to get a stealth min.
6. MLE
MLE is the newest part of free agency, but it’s been around long enough for people to have figured it out.
First, on a non-MLE note, find out what the MLE is, and if you have cap space, bid no less than just above that on mid-tier blue players you’re looking to get. That kicks out a lot of competition in bidding wars.
But back to MLE…the great thing about it is that it makes UFA a little more fun for teams that would’ve otherwise not been able to participate beyond vet mins. If you find yourself in this spot, you can either throw your full MLE at one player or try to split it up. Both are valid ways to do it, it just depends on who you’re going for. Remember what I said about vet mins? The same concept applies here with 1 year contracts on full MLE guys. Note how MexicanMamba got Lyle Galloway this season and Frank Daily last season by using his full MLE.
If he wanted to, he could’ve combine early bird rights to retain Frank Daily, but he’s paying way too much as it is for a team that’s light years ahead of its next closest competition.
If you need depth, you can split that MLE up. The Nuggets did a great job getting Luigi Leathers and Raiquan Grey for less than 10 million apiece. Granted, now they have so many beefy bigs that it’s luring Nick Malone back to the game like a pie on a windowsill in a cartoon, but that’s a good problem to have (too much talent, not Nick coming to steal your pies). He can hit the trade market and swap bigs for backcourt depth.
But MLE is a use it or lose it thing. There are plenty of teams with access to the MLE who didn’t throw out any MLE bids. The max MLE is generally tradeable for 3 vet min contracts, so even if you’re over the cap, you can go after guys you know will be both gettable and desirable and be able to churn some points out of it.
Another note about MLE is that it’s better on UFA Rd 1 where there’s a lot more noise. Once things get whittled down to UFA Rd 2, it’s pretty easy for the remaining teams with cap space to pick off the best remaining names.
In Conclusion
Anyway, that’s about all I got here. I feel like UFA is one of those areas where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer based on information. Players like signing with good teams. Supermax and max players sometimes leave for greener pastures, and if your pastures ain’t green, you’ve got to be really savvy to work your way to the level of a well oiled machine like the Lakers, Nuggets, or dare-I-say, Bulls (top 3 in power rankings after day 1, each signed/re-signed 3 or more blue potential players). The Grizzlies signed 3 as well and they’re in the 6th spot, even with NO ABILITY TO OFFER MORE THAN A MAX TO FREE AGENTS.
So read up and start using these tips and tricks. If a team in tax jail is signing more blue potential players than you are, you might want to take a step back and reexamine your strategy to make sure you’re not missing opportunities.
