Deciphering FBB's Free Agency process
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 2:47 pm
The following is based on my observations of many years of observing FBB's free agency process. There may be errors below but I think the general principles are correct and hopefully this will help explain "why did Guy X sign with Team Y?"
1. TOP POTENTIAL GOES FIRST
FBB has its own internal rating system of which players are "best" (this is, of course, reflected in the "color ratings") and when Free Agency comes around, there is a "pecking order." When the "Sim Day" button is pressed, the free agent with the highest potential (not current) rating is processed first (i.e., he looks at his offers and decides whether to sign with a team), then the next highest, and so on down the line. This means purple potential players are processed before blue, blue are processed before green, and so on.
How does this affect you? Well, it means you can try to anticipate the order in which players will sign - more specifically, if you have cap space to play with and a player with Bird Rights, "how good" that player is will probably decide if he signs before other players (and eats up your cap, invalidating your other offers). This means if you have a purple potential player with Bird Rights and are offering the max, odds are good he will sign before that blue potential player you have your eye on; expect it will be tough to sign both... but if you have a green potential guy you're offering big Bird Rights money to, a max offer to a blue player will probably come first, allowing you to bag both.
2. PLAYERS IGNORE LONG-TERM LOWBALL OFFERS
Players have a sense of what they are worth - they will not lock themselves into a long-term contract under market value. Generally, a 3- or 4- year offer needs to be close to (or more) than what they expect. You can sometimes but not always get away with a 2-year offer for somewhat under market value (not super low like 25% of what he wants though). Make a multi-year offer that goes too low, and the player will say the offer is unacceptable and will totally ignore it.
How does this affect you? Players will not ignore one-year offers regardless of the amount, so if you're going to lowball, make sure it's a one-year offer. If you're offering the league MVP a one-year deal for 20% of a maximum contract, that's going to be looked at but a four-year deal for 50% of a maximum is probably going to be ignored.
3. EVERY TIME A PLAYER SIGNS, THAT TEAM'S OFFERS ARE RE-CHECKED FOR SALARY CAP VALIDITY
As soon as a player signs with you, all of your outstanding offers are doublechecked to make sure they are still legal under the salary cap. Obviously, veteran minimum offers are always legal, but any non-minimum offer you made to Player Y with cap space will be deleted as soon as your cap space falls below the amount of your offer... unless you have Bird Rights. If you do have Bird Rights, that offer is "re-offered" as a Bird Rights offer. This happens based on the pecking order so your offer might become illegal "early in the day" if someone near the top of the pecking order signs with you.
4. PLAYERS LIKE BIDDING WARS
Very rarely will a player sign the very first day you offer them a contract - in FBB, free agency lasts 30 days and when you offer a player a contract, he will give you feedback - either tell you that it's unacceptable (i.e., going to be ignored), tell you he likes your offer best, or tell you that another team have given him a better offer (presumably in the hopes you'll raise your offer). If you have an offer that was the "highest" and another offer comes in to beat it (remember how offers made with cap space are "re-offered" as Bird Rights offers when cap space dries up? This counts as a new offer...) If a player suspects he can get a bidding war started, he'll often a few days wait before signing. Note that we sim 6 days in Phase 1 of Free Agency and 7 days in Phase 2 (and the other 17 in Phase 3) so this process doesn't take forever. This means that "bidding wars" often happen for us between Phases 1 and 2. Rarely do they happen between Phases 2 and 3.
This has two practical effects. First, it means that most players that are offered max contracts sign quickly (after all, a bidding war can't raise what they're going to be offered). Players that have only one "acceptable" offer will also tend to sign. Players with multiple offers that are close (but not maxes) will probably not sign right away in hopes a bidding war will ensue. Second, it means if you offered a player a reasonable contract in Phase 1 and he doesn't sign, that probably indicates someone else offered him a contract that was close. Note that offer might not appear if someone "worse" signed on the last day and caused that offer to become invalid, because your player already checked his offers (before the "worse" player took the money and thus the cap space, but before you checked results).
5. OPTION YEARS
Players generally tend to prefer a Player option in the final year over a guaranteed contract. They generally prefer a guaranteed contract over a Team option.
6. EVEN WITH ALL OF THE ABOVE THERE IS STILL RANDOMNESS!
Just because you have the highest dollar offer doesn't mean a player will sign with you - as we have seen, sometimes players turn down supermaxes for regular maxes (hi, Carlos Boozer!) - players value "greed", "play for winner," and "loyalty" differently, and these appear to be applied at the time a player views his offers with a little randomness... meaning even with the exact same players and the exact same bids, signings may turn out slightly different if the sim were to be run multiple times (at least if the offers are close). Sometimes players opt to sign quickly instead of letting a bidding war start, even with multiple close bids - and sometimes players with just one low bid will wait to see if someone else offers them something they like. And again, if the same bids were simmed multiple times, these decisions could be different even if all the bids were the same.
In addition, signing one player affects the way later players up for signing view your team, so signing that good starting SF may hurt your chances with that backup SF you have your eye on since he knows now he's not getting any playing time. You might get a message you have the best offer but if a star signs with another team first and this guy wants "play for winner" he may leave you high and dry without warning.
Veteran minimum bids especially are a often "luck of the draw" proposition.
7. NODES CAN HELP YOU WITH FEEDBACK ON YOUR OFFERS AND LOOKING AT A PLAYER'S DEMANDS
If you use a node, the "emails to owner" feature (lower-right corner) will give you feedback on your offers - it will tell you if your offer was acceptable, who else put in the "best" bid on a player, and whether or not your offer is close. You can also see all still-legal offers between phases (so you can see all Phase 1 offers that weren't accepted and are still legal - in other words, your presumable competition - by viewing a player in the Free Agency section). This will really help improve your feel for Free Agency.
You also get to see what a player desires as a contract on the nodes; this gives you a ballpark figure for what the player will deem "acceptable" and what is not for a long-term deal.
OTHER TIPS:
You can help "control" your signings a little bit by guessing who will sign first or by using bid amounts versus your cap space to filter out players or positions. For instance, if you have $15 million in cap space and really want one of three starting caliber point guards, but don't want the problem of having two or three of them to sign (so you have money to fill other spots on your roster) consider offering all three deals at $8 million - as soon as one signs, the offers to the other two will be illegal and be removed... but your $5 million offer to a backup PF hangs around and lets you pick him up, too.
Be careful with mixing offers that are high but less than a max with minimum offers if you barely have enough cap space for your high offer - if the guy you are offering to decides to delay a day or two, and one of the minimum players jumps on the first offer he sees, this can eat your cap space up and invalidate the high offer.
1. TOP POTENTIAL GOES FIRST
FBB has its own internal rating system of which players are "best" (this is, of course, reflected in the "color ratings") and when Free Agency comes around, there is a "pecking order." When the "Sim Day" button is pressed, the free agent with the highest potential (not current) rating is processed first (i.e., he looks at his offers and decides whether to sign with a team), then the next highest, and so on down the line. This means purple potential players are processed before blue, blue are processed before green, and so on.
How does this affect you? Well, it means you can try to anticipate the order in which players will sign - more specifically, if you have cap space to play with and a player with Bird Rights, "how good" that player is will probably decide if he signs before other players (and eats up your cap, invalidating your other offers). This means if you have a purple potential player with Bird Rights and are offering the max, odds are good he will sign before that blue potential player you have your eye on; expect it will be tough to sign both... but if you have a green potential guy you're offering big Bird Rights money to, a max offer to a blue player will probably come first, allowing you to bag both.
2. PLAYERS IGNORE LONG-TERM LOWBALL OFFERS
Players have a sense of what they are worth - they will not lock themselves into a long-term contract under market value. Generally, a 3- or 4- year offer needs to be close to (or more) than what they expect. You can sometimes but not always get away with a 2-year offer for somewhat under market value (not super low like 25% of what he wants though). Make a multi-year offer that goes too low, and the player will say the offer is unacceptable and will totally ignore it.
How does this affect you? Players will not ignore one-year offers regardless of the amount, so if you're going to lowball, make sure it's a one-year offer. If you're offering the league MVP a one-year deal for 20% of a maximum contract, that's going to be looked at but a four-year deal for 50% of a maximum is probably going to be ignored.
3. EVERY TIME A PLAYER SIGNS, THAT TEAM'S OFFERS ARE RE-CHECKED FOR SALARY CAP VALIDITY
As soon as a player signs with you, all of your outstanding offers are doublechecked to make sure they are still legal under the salary cap. Obviously, veteran minimum offers are always legal, but any non-minimum offer you made to Player Y with cap space will be deleted as soon as your cap space falls below the amount of your offer... unless you have Bird Rights. If you do have Bird Rights, that offer is "re-offered" as a Bird Rights offer. This happens based on the pecking order so your offer might become illegal "early in the day" if someone near the top of the pecking order signs with you.
4. PLAYERS LIKE BIDDING WARS
Very rarely will a player sign the very first day you offer them a contract - in FBB, free agency lasts 30 days and when you offer a player a contract, he will give you feedback - either tell you that it's unacceptable (i.e., going to be ignored), tell you he likes your offer best, or tell you that another team have given him a better offer (presumably in the hopes you'll raise your offer). If you have an offer that was the "highest" and another offer comes in to beat it (remember how offers made with cap space are "re-offered" as Bird Rights offers when cap space dries up? This counts as a new offer...) If a player suspects he can get a bidding war started, he'll often a few days wait before signing. Note that we sim 6 days in Phase 1 of Free Agency and 7 days in Phase 2 (and the other 17 in Phase 3) so this process doesn't take forever. This means that "bidding wars" often happen for us between Phases 1 and 2. Rarely do they happen between Phases 2 and 3.
This has two practical effects. First, it means that most players that are offered max contracts sign quickly (after all, a bidding war can't raise what they're going to be offered). Players that have only one "acceptable" offer will also tend to sign. Players with multiple offers that are close (but not maxes) will probably not sign right away in hopes a bidding war will ensue. Second, it means if you offered a player a reasonable contract in Phase 1 and he doesn't sign, that probably indicates someone else offered him a contract that was close. Note that offer might not appear if someone "worse" signed on the last day and caused that offer to become invalid, because your player already checked his offers (before the "worse" player took the money and thus the cap space, but before you checked results).
5. OPTION YEARS
Players generally tend to prefer a Player option in the final year over a guaranteed contract. They generally prefer a guaranteed contract over a Team option.
6. EVEN WITH ALL OF THE ABOVE THERE IS STILL RANDOMNESS!
Just because you have the highest dollar offer doesn't mean a player will sign with you - as we have seen, sometimes players turn down supermaxes for regular maxes (hi, Carlos Boozer!) - players value "greed", "play for winner," and "loyalty" differently, and these appear to be applied at the time a player views his offers with a little randomness... meaning even with the exact same players and the exact same bids, signings may turn out slightly different if the sim were to be run multiple times (at least if the offers are close). Sometimes players opt to sign quickly instead of letting a bidding war start, even with multiple close bids - and sometimes players with just one low bid will wait to see if someone else offers them something they like. And again, if the same bids were simmed multiple times, these decisions could be different even if all the bids were the same.
In addition, signing one player affects the way later players up for signing view your team, so signing that good starting SF may hurt your chances with that backup SF you have your eye on since he knows now he's not getting any playing time. You might get a message you have the best offer but if a star signs with another team first and this guy wants "play for winner" he may leave you high and dry without warning.
Veteran minimum bids especially are a often "luck of the draw" proposition.
7. NODES CAN HELP YOU WITH FEEDBACK ON YOUR OFFERS AND LOOKING AT A PLAYER'S DEMANDS
If you use a node, the "emails to owner" feature (lower-right corner) will give you feedback on your offers - it will tell you if your offer was acceptable, who else put in the "best" bid on a player, and whether or not your offer is close. You can also see all still-legal offers between phases (so you can see all Phase 1 offers that weren't accepted and are still legal - in other words, your presumable competition - by viewing a player in the Free Agency section). This will really help improve your feel for Free Agency.
You also get to see what a player desires as a contract on the nodes; this gives you a ballpark figure for what the player will deem "acceptable" and what is not for a long-term deal.
OTHER TIPS:
You can help "control" your signings a little bit by guessing who will sign first or by using bid amounts versus your cap space to filter out players or positions. For instance, if you have $15 million in cap space and really want one of three starting caliber point guards, but don't want the problem of having two or three of them to sign (so you have money to fill other spots on your roster) consider offering all three deals at $8 million - as soon as one signs, the offers to the other two will be illegal and be removed... but your $5 million offer to a backup PF hangs around and lets you pick him up, too.
Be careful with mixing offers that are high but less than a max with minimum offers if you barely have enough cap space for your high offer - if the guy you are offering to decides to delay a day or two, and one of the minimum players jumps on the first offer he sees, this can eat your cap space up and invalidate the high offer.