PBSL History: The Most Controversial Trade
Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 7:48 pm
The People’s Basketball Sim League quietly turned 4 years old on September 23, 2017 (September 23, 2013 was the first preseason sim) a couple of months back, a league that migrated from a simple sim league on the then Hornets Report forum. Never accepted in the community by the other posters and mods, and subsequently let down by commissioner AD23forMVP when his laptop died, we branched off into our own space to have mostly free reign over our space. After about 28 seasons of this league, we can sometimes get caught up in the motions of the same old process of the draft, RFA, UFA, training (death) camp, preseason, regular season, post season, rinse and repeat.
But even in this league, we didn’t always have RFA, it was adopted in the mid 90’s. Also, for the longer-termed GMs, remember in-season negotiations? I think I just heard Darth curse from across the state. Yes, we had in-season negotiations to retain your players without ever hitting free agency! Training camp insurance is relatively new. Training your players was a waste of points at one time. No nodes, we would have laughed at the idea just a few years ago. Here’s a good one: at one point in the first season we recorded the sims! You didn’t even have to get on Skype for the sim call, we would post a recording of it (for a very brief time). No lists page, no sortable tables in the index, the trade checker sucked and could be wrong, so much so that we had a disclaimer that it MAY NOT WORK. There was no option to add team or player options to players contracts for a good while in this league.
Point being that we’ve been doing this for a while, so it’s easy to forget at times.
But not everything is about processes. Sometimes we had some hilarious (for most) moments that happened that we reminisce about randomly. This article is one of those moments, and I want to share with our newer GMs that weren’t around, and to remind the other GMs that were around.
For this edition, I want to tell a story about, in this author’s opinion, the most controversial trade in the history of sim league. There have been hundreds of trades, big and small, non-impactful to shaping championship teams, but one in particular when I ran across it opened to floodgates to one of the most bizarre trade negotiations. Let me preface this by saying this is not an article to bash a GM and I hope my tone is reflective of that. This is merely to remember the trade, not to negatively reflect on any of the GMs.
I present to you, the Knicks/Pistons trade. I don’t want to provide a link just yet, because that would spoil the rest of this.
Well, for our newer GMs, let’s break it down by giving a background real quick.
THE BACKGROUND BREAKDOWN
First, we’ll notice that TrayWithAnA was originally the Detroit Pistons GM. Who he’s @‘ing is the star of our program. Snuglife was an original GM of this league, meaning he came from the Hornets Report/Pelicans Report sim league over to the creation of PBSL. A quick history lesson:
Snuglife originally went by SoNo. SoNo was the Minnesota Timberwolves GM in the other Hornets/Pelicans Report league, but switched teams with GM JNR, still going strong, who was the Miami Heat owner. SoNo left after just a two seasons in the new PBSL league, and was replaced with logpmess, still the Heat owner! SoNo came back as Snuglife in 1999.
A quick look at the 2000 season index, before Jason Terry was traded from the Knicks to the Pistons, shows that neither the Knicks or the Pistons were big time players competing for the championship. Actually, both teams were last in their divisions. This was during the Hawks superteam years, which I will like to write about on another date, so keep that in mind. The Hawks won 71 (!!!!!) games that season. Again, keep this in mind.
THE TRADE BLOCK
Okay, so we have a little bit of a background of the two teams involved in the trade and the situation they were in. Time to start peeling the layer on this onion.
On May 20, 2015, at 11:54 am Wednesday right before lunch, snug life created a trade block thread that was not like the others. Instead of bumping his team trade block, he created a new thread for one particular player! Yup, you guessed it, Jason Terry.
So why couldn’t Snug post the trade officially with this other team? Well, RFA moratorium kicked in! 2nd round had just been simmed and the moratorium started at the end of the draft.
So in the meanwhile, it seemed as if Snug was set to begin an auction. The first of its kind.
Of course, other GMs were interested:
Things then got quiet for a couple of hours, when suddenly a trade was posted. At 3pm, two hours after publicly informing the league what the offer to beat was, the Pistons posted up the trade. Terry and salary dump for two picks. Based on what Snug had posted two hours earlier that an expiring all star was offered in exchange for Terry and a pick, this did not line up with what was called an agreed upon trade.
So an anonymous GM was snubbed and jilted, and the controversy is over?
My sweet summer child. This is sim league, of course it doesn’t just end like that. Several hours later, at 7:44pm, all hell broke loose. After snug accepted, the following exchange happened:
FRYE
Never underestimate the rage of Quail. To Quail’s credit, he kept quiet throughout all of this. Didn’t comment in the trade block, and didn’t comment in the trade thread… until the cat was let out of the bag of who just got blindsided. An inexplicable slip-up by Snug, possibly talking to Quail in PM during that time explaining the trade, opened the floodgates of the league.
Of course, the kicker to all of this is that the trade still had to wait until after RFA. Only several hours passed since the trade block! So before I give the links, I would love to key in on some of the highlights of the trade thread.
In discussing what would make the trade illegal, since both parties had to wait until after RFA:
And what of the trade block thread? Of course that took off as well, since this is where it all began.
THE LINKS
Trade Block Thread: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=779
The Trade Thread: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=782
What’s perhaps overlooked is Wig’s popcorn gifs in both threads. Even mild mannered Wig that does not get to caught up into our routine drama had fun with this.
THE AFTERMATH
So it ended bitterly and that was the last we saw of Snug, right?
Of course not, this is sim league. We get irrationally heated only to become irrationally understanding. Here’s a fun trade thread for a bonus that involved, you guessed right, Bucks/Knicks shortly after the controversy:
Link: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=813
Of course, the original trade, which was quoted by Sources two posts down, was a 2nd round Bucks pick for 10 points to be paid by the Knicks, a kind gesture from Snug to Quail for the most controversial trade, only to be muddied by more controversy with ballsohard in the most ballsohard way of asking…
I hope you enjoyed this look back in time about 2.5 years ago. In my opinion, Snug was just holding what he thought was an innocent auction in a unique way we never saw before. With sim league being sim league, nothing is ever quite that simple.
But even in this league, we didn’t always have RFA, it was adopted in the mid 90’s. Also, for the longer-termed GMs, remember in-season negotiations? I think I just heard Darth curse from across the state. Yes, we had in-season negotiations to retain your players without ever hitting free agency! Training camp insurance is relatively new. Training your players was a waste of points at one time. No nodes, we would have laughed at the idea just a few years ago. Here’s a good one: at one point in the first season we recorded the sims! You didn’t even have to get on Skype for the sim call, we would post a recording of it (for a very brief time). No lists page, no sortable tables in the index, the trade checker sucked and could be wrong, so much so that we had a disclaimer that it MAY NOT WORK. There was no option to add team or player options to players contracts for a good while in this league.
Point being that we’ve been doing this for a while, so it’s easy to forget at times.
But not everything is about processes. Sometimes we had some hilarious (for most) moments that happened that we reminisce about randomly. This article is one of those moments, and I want to share with our newer GMs that weren’t around, and to remind the other GMs that were around.
For this edition, I want to tell a story about, in this author’s opinion, the most controversial trade in the history of sim league. There have been hundreds of trades, big and small, non-impactful to shaping championship teams, but one in particular when I ran across it opened to floodgates to one of the most bizarre trade negotiations. Let me preface this by saying this is not an article to bash a GM and I hope my tone is reflective of that. This is merely to remember the trade, not to negatively reflect on any of the GMs.
I present to you, the Knicks/Pistons trade. I don’t want to provide a link just yet, because that would spoil the rest of this.
You may be looking at this trade and wondering what the big deal was here. Two bottom-tiered teams making a trade in the offseason involving a young prospect Jason Terry and a salary dump for two picks.TrayWithAnA wrote: Wed May 20, 2015 3:13 pm Pistons get
Jason Terry
Greg Ostertag
Dikembe Mutumbo
Knicks get
Jazz 2002 1st
Pistons 2003 1st
@snuglife91
Well, for our newer GMs, let’s break it down by giving a background real quick.
THE BACKGROUND BREAKDOWN
First, we’ll notice that TrayWithAnA was originally the Detroit Pistons GM. Who he’s @‘ing is the star of our program. Snuglife was an original GM of this league, meaning he came from the Hornets Report/Pelicans Report sim league over to the creation of PBSL. A quick history lesson:
Snuglife originally went by SoNo. SoNo was the Minnesota Timberwolves GM in the other Hornets/Pelicans Report league, but switched teams with GM JNR, still going strong, who was the Miami Heat owner. SoNo left after just a two seasons in the new PBSL league, and was replaced with logpmess, still the Heat owner! SoNo came back as Snuglife in 1999.
A quick look at the 2000 season index, before Jason Terry was traded from the Knicks to the Pistons, shows that neither the Knicks or the Pistons were big time players competing for the championship. Actually, both teams were last in their divisions. This was during the Hawks superteam years, which I will like to write about on another date, so keep that in mind. The Hawks won 71 (!!!!!) games that season. Again, keep this in mind.
THE TRADE BLOCK
Okay, so we have a little bit of a background of the two teams involved in the trade and the situation they were in. Time to start peeling the layer on this onion.
On May 20, 2015, at 11:54 am Wednesday right before lunch, snug life created a trade block thread that was not like the others. Instead of bumping his team trade block, he created a new thread for one particular player! Yup, you guessed it, Jason Terry.
Again, no link just yet. And again, I’m not doing this to bash on Snug. Snug was an active owner who was active in trades and a nice GM to talk to. This quoted post was the OP to a new trade block thread. It was unusual to list just one player for a whole thread in a block, but the first part of what Snug wrote is probably the strangest, and what he admitted to not thinking through, is that he basically agreed to a trade with another team. Keep in mind, this is approximately 12pm on May 20th.Snuglife91 wrote: Wed May 20, 2015 11:54 am I've pretty much agreed to trade him, but until it can be made official I'm willing to listen to any offers out there.
So why couldn’t Snug post the trade officially with this other team? Well, RFA moratorium kicked in! 2nd round had just been simmed and the moratorium started at the end of the draft.
So in the meanwhile, it seemed as if Snug was set to begin an auction. The first of its kind.
Of course, other GMs were interested:
LoCo89 wrote: Wed May 20, 2015 12:47 pmSnuglife91 wrote:I've pretty much agreed to trade him, but until it can be made official I'm willing to listen to any offers out there.
Hmmm what's the current Terry deal based on?
Woooooo boy! If it wasn’t an auction then, it definitely turned into one now. At 1:00pm, an hour after posting the block, it was on.
Things then got quiet for a couple of hours, when suddenly a trade was posted. At 3pm, two hours after publicly informing the league what the offer to beat was, the Pistons posted up the trade. Terry and salary dump for two picks. Based on what Snug had posted two hours earlier that an expiring all star was offered in exchange for Terry and a pick, this did not line up with what was called an agreed upon trade.
So an anonymous GM was snubbed and jilted, and the controversy is over?
My sweet summer child. This is sim league, of course it doesn’t just end like that. Several hours later, at 7:44pm, all hell broke loose. After snug accepted, the following exchange happened:
Well.
FRYE
Never underestimate the rage of Quail. To Quail’s credit, he kept quiet throughout all of this. Didn’t comment in the trade block, and didn’t comment in the trade thread… until the cat was let out of the bag of who just got blindsided. An inexplicable slip-up by Snug, possibly talking to Quail in PM during that time explaining the trade, opened the floodgates of the league.
Of course, the kicker to all of this is that the trade still had to wait until after RFA. Only several hours passed since the trade block! So before I give the links, I would love to key in on some of the highlights of the trade thread.
In discussing what would make the trade illegal, since both parties had to wait until after RFA:
If there’s one thing no one doubts about Quail, it’s his ability to escalate any situation into talking about his dick. Remember when I pointed out the Hawks record of 71 wins? The Bucks won 69 games, leading to an incredible competition in the Central division that was unprecedented at the time. There's one thing that no one ever calls Quail, and that's uncompetitive. Especially in trades. Jason Terry could be the difference maker for his team to win the division the next season. Think about it, just two wins, and a young cheap scoring PG can be had. Quail could either reload with Terry or use him as a key bench player, giving him depth that could actually compete with the SuperHawks. This was a huge miss for the Bucks that could have had an impact on the following seasons for his team. It was strictly business.IamQuailman wrote: Thu May 21, 2015 10:55 amI'm being a little bitch isn't breaking any rules either. Here in the salt mines of Milwaukee, being a little bitch is a specialty. It's brewed for bitterness and classic angst. When the sodium and chlorine, it comes together to forum a beautiful concoction of "little bitch". Please, enjoy this free helping of me being a little bitch. It comes in 3 sizes: "Middle Finger", "Suck my dick", and "Your Momma Jokes".Snuglife91 wrote:I didn't break any rules. You on the other hand are being a little bitch right now.IamQuailman wrote:
If it happens, strictly business, baby.
And what of the trade block thread? Of course that took off as well, since this is where it all began.
Indeed it was.
THE LINKS
Trade Block Thread: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=779
The Trade Thread: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=782
What’s perhaps overlooked is Wig’s popcorn gifs in both threads. Even mild mannered Wig that does not get to caught up into our routine drama had fun with this.
THE AFTERMATH
So it ended bitterly and that was the last we saw of Snug, right?
Of course not, this is sim league. We get irrationally heated only to become irrationally understanding. Here’s a fun trade thread for a bonus that involved, you guessed right, Bucks/Knicks shortly after the controversy:
Link: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=813
Of course, the original trade, which was quoted by Sources two posts down, was a 2nd round Bucks pick for 10 points to be paid by the Knicks, a kind gesture from Snug to Quail for the most controversial trade, only to be muddied by more controversy with ballsohard in the most ballsohard way of asking…
ballsohard wrote: Sat May 23, 2015 8:58 pm What is this Fryeing trash?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I hope you enjoyed this look back in time about 2.5 years ago. In my opinion, Snug was just holding what he thought was an innocent auction in a unique way we never saw before. With sim league being sim league, nothing is ever quite that simple.
