PBSL History: The Cheeks and Flemming Act of 1995
Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 3:37 pm
I had so much fun writing about what I considered was the most controversial trade in PBSL history, that I wanted to write another one. I’m already capped for the season, so this is purely for the joy of talking about the league’s history, so I hope you enjoy this one as much as the last one. There’s plenty of big time trades that are worth discussing, but I wanted to touch on not just one, but TWO trades that happened two seasons apart but are very well connected. Two trades created such an uproar that were actually several real-time months apart, that it’s our only Act this league has created in a joint effort. I’m talking about the Waiver Process for in-season free agent signing, aka, The Cheeks and Fleming Act of 1995.
For the newer GMs, I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed the sticky thread in our In-Season Free Agent Signings subforum. If you have or haven’t and you’re wondering Why, then pull up a seat and be ready to be entertained yet again. Even for the GMs that were here, it took me about 15 minutes of reading through old threads to remember what exactly happened, and you probably forgot about some of the details as well.
So first, what is the waiver process (aka The Cheeks and Fleming Act of 1995)? We’re all familiar with this rule, because every season, especially the day after trade deadline day, we are reacquainted with the Act. Basically, if a team releases a player in the regular season, that player may not be signed until 8pm CST the following day it happened. For reference, here’s a link to our forum’s thread regarding the Act:
Link: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=304
Simple enough, right? This sort of rule most likely was set in place the moment the league started, but it wasn’t! Well, it sort of was. To dive into our history, we will need to see what the actual rule was before our cleaned up and more detailed waiver process was set in place.
For the first time ever, we will need to go to the old forum.
Link: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/
Thankfully, this forum is still up with our league’s history for all to see before we switched over to this pbsl.ijbl forum. So where do we go from here? Let’s go to the Finalized Trades subforum and check out the Trade Rules thread.
Link: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/thread/33/trade-rules
And let’s pay special attention to the last rule under the Trading Players topic:
But this is sim league, it is never that simple. We have an Act for a reason. The Cheeks and Flemings Act of 1995 was only enacted in the 1995 season, but it has its roots in the 1992-1993 season.
1992-1993 SEASON: MAURICE CHEEKS
It all started pretty normally at first, but with a big trade to get the ball rolling. On February 5, 2014 at 11:19pm on a Wednesday night, the following trade happened:
It’s not detailed out, but around the trade deadline the Hawks were sending Magic Johnson, a two time Finals MVP, to the Magic for a young upcoming Rod Strickland and whoever Doug West became to be. Of course, this is a PBSL History article, so what kind of history article would this be without some background?
The Hawks with Magic Johnson had won back-to-back titles in the first two seasons of this league. Magic Johnson was the first do-everything type of player. 6’9, can score, rebound, pass, and defend with good athleticism at the time. This was a big trade for the rest of the league. Wig has been involved with sim league for years at this time, even commisioning another league. Ever wonder what the IJBL in the pbsl.ijbl was? That was Wig’s very own, older league! We are playing on the Fast Break Pro Basketball 3 game, but when we from the older PR League switched over to form this PBSL league, we were not used to this game. We were playing on FBPB 2 I believe, and trust me, there’s a big difference. So Wig with many years of experience playing on this game vs the rest of us who were new had won back-to-back championships with Magic Johnson, and he was finally traded! Finally, a real chance for the rest of us to actually try and win a championship.
I’m sorry for going a little off course there, but it serves a purpose to present how dominant Wig and his Hawks were at the time. So back to what the topic is about, where is Maurice Cheeks fit in all of this?
That’s a great question, because he doesn’t fit! It was publicly known for some reason that colts guy really wanted Maurice Cheeks, but there was no possible way for the Magic to trade for both Magic Johnson and Maurice Cheeks without adding more salary, which the Magic could not do. The Hawks initially signed Maurice Cheeks for $1,004,685, one year salary. Doesn’t seem like much, but the salary cap back in the 1992-93 season was $15,576,510, which is equivalent to approximately $5,550,397 is salary this season. That’s a good chunk of change for a backup PG, and colts guy had no way of matching that salary without giving up key pieces he needed to compete.
Something I want to point out is this trade had almost 0 reaction at all on the forums. Only ballsohard commenting how fair it was. BSH comes into play soon.
Now, Maurice Cheeks comes into play. On February 7, 2:08pm on a Friday afternoon before our sim, the Hawks release PG Maurice Cheeks.
Link: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/threa ... eks?page=1
Then pandemonium strikes. On February 7 at 2:12pm, the Orlando Magic sign Maurice Cheeks.
Link: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/threa ... ice-cheeks
I won’t talk about the timing of the release and trade, because that had been discussed at length in the following thread I’m about to link.
On February 7 at 2:17pm, BSH signs Maurice Cheeks as well.
WARNING: This thread has a serious amount of NSFW gifs due to the playful use of the name Cheeks.
Link: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/threa ... ice-cheeks
Don’t you just love sim league? I think my favorite of all of this was colts guy telling BSH in the very first post “Too late balls.” It was obviously too late, but BSH at this moment is about the principality of the matter. I won’t comment about the timing and who I believed in this whole ordeal because I simply want to explain the Act, but of course this became a league issue.
Some highlights of the thread:
What’s funny is that Maurice Cheeks did play some significant time for the Lakers in that last sim, but only because BSH sat HoF PG Kevin Johnson due to seeding being set. Cheeks would play in just one series all playoffs against the Spurs of the first round, but didn’t play in the 7th game where the Lakers won. He played 1 minute against the Warriors and that was it, the Lakers went on to win their first championship without playing Maurice Cheeks in the conference finals or finals itself. The Magic would lose in game 7 of the 2nd round to the Celtics, who were beginning their own dynasty led by Alonzo Mourning.
Another funny thing is that during the drama, several teams posted up that they to were signing Maurice Cheeks, with the Denver Nuggets led by thesyndicate claiming that he “passes on Maurice Cheeks because he sucks”.
He wasn’t wrong, here’s Maurice Cheeks for that season:
Player Page Link: http://pbsl.ijbl.net/1992/players/player101.htm
So that’s the Maurice Cheeks story, perhaps the biggest contributor to the Cheeks and Flemings Act of 1995, but that story had nothing to do with Fleming or the 1995 season.
Well, we’ve already brought up the syndicate, so let’s talk about Vern Fleming.
THE 1994-95 SEASON: VERN FLEMING
It all started innocently (again) enough. On May 23, 2014 at 6:21pm on a Friday evening, the following trade happened:
The syndicate, only two seasons in as the Nuggets GM, traded with not1not2not3, the GM of the Knicks who was in his very first season. The Knicks were led by a prime David Robinson with a very solid cast of supporting talent that season, whereas the Nuggets were still building a team that was left a mess by previous GM kb. The funny thing about this trade is that Hot Rod Williams was not a big need for the Knicks and was mainly a backup role-player for him that season. But the star of this show is Vern Fleming.
Fast forward to May 26 at about 3:49pm. It’s Monday and before our sim day. The Nuggets would release Vern Fleming:
On May 26 at 3:49pm, the Knicks sign Vern Fleming:
It’s mentioned in the trade thread, but the release and signing was literally 10 seconds apart. Unlike the Cheeks situation, this signing was clearly in violation of the rule I posted up at the beginning that says a team cannot sign a released player that the team had traded. Unfortunately TrayWithAnA was seeing red over this and did either did not remember the rule or was blinded by rage, because the thread should have been over in a couple of posts by referencing the Trade Rules thread.
Fortunately for us, there was a lot of laughs to be had with some feelings that were initially kept in wraps being let out, most notably, the Michael Adams trade that was referenced by thesyndiate.
Link: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/threa ... ns-nuggets
Or to save you a click, it was the 10th pick of the draft for Michael Adams. The 10th pick would become Lamond Murray, who the Pistons traded to the Sonics in exchange for Benoit Benjamin, helping the Pistons win the Central division for the 3rd time in a row. Who was Michael Adams? A 32 year old G/G PG on a 3 year deal worth $4,125,000 and receiving nearly $400,000 increases. That’s approximately $18,356,779 starting salary receiving almost $2,000,000 increase each season. It was a terrible trade and the Nuggets did not forget. I mean it had only been 20 real life days.
Of course, there’s this gem from someone you may now know:
Again this was an open and shut case that may have dragged out longer than it needed to, but the fact remained that we were running into issues with in-season free agent signings revolving around released players.
On June 18, 2014, going forward into another offseason, a new waiver process was put into place, which was then dubbed The Cheeks and Fleming Act of 1995. So if you have noticed the Act before and were wondering what exactly did Cheeks and Fleming have to do with the waiver wire, now you know. I hope you enjoyed this writeup, as I wanted to pick something that we often don’t even notice anymore but had an impact around the league.
Oh, and we’ve been spelling Fleming’s last name wrong for over 3 years.
For the newer GMs, I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed the sticky thread in our In-Season Free Agent Signings subforum. If you have or haven’t and you’re wondering Why, then pull up a seat and be ready to be entertained yet again. Even for the GMs that were here, it took me about 15 minutes of reading through old threads to remember what exactly happened, and you probably forgot about some of the details as well.
So first, what is the waiver process (aka The Cheeks and Fleming Act of 1995)? We’re all familiar with this rule, because every season, especially the day after trade deadline day, we are reacquainted with the Act. Basically, if a team releases a player in the regular season, that player may not be signed until 8pm CST the following day it happened. For reference, here’s a link to our forum’s thread regarding the Act:
Link: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=304
Simple enough, right? This sort of rule most likely was set in place the moment the league started, but it wasn’t! Well, it sort of was. To dive into our history, we will need to see what the actual rule was before our cleaned up and more detailed waiver process was set in place.
For the first time ever, we will need to go to the old forum.
Link: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/
Thankfully, this forum is still up with our league’s history for all to see before we switched over to this pbsl.ijbl forum. So where do we go from here? Let’s go to the Finalized Trades subforum and check out the Trade Rules thread.
Link: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/thread/33/trade-rules
And let’s pay special attention to the last rule under the Trading Players topic:
This was it. This was the only rule regarding released players and the process to sign them, and it was simple enough. If you trade a player away, you cannot sign that player if he was later released by the other team you traded him to. Why is this significant? For the other 27 teams before the new Act, it was a complete free for all to sign a released player that was a first-come-first-served approach. It was luck and timing to get those sweet signings. So as a quick example, if we were in the regular season and I released Brandon Wright today at currently 2:16pm on November 22, 2017, it was completely legal for anyone to sign Brandon Wright immediately on the very same day! It could have been seconds after I released him. The only rule was let’s say the Bucks traded me Brandon Wright in the season and I released him, only the Bucks wouldn’t be able to sign him. [insert any other team here] could sign him at 2:17pm on November 22, 2017. Completely legal and very lucky for that team. It was a very simple system.A team cannot sign back players they had traded away and then cut by another team.
But this is sim league, it is never that simple. We have an Act for a reason. The Cheeks and Flemings Act of 1995 was only enacted in the 1995 season, but it has its roots in the 1992-1993 season.
1992-1993 SEASON: MAURICE CHEEKS
It all started pretty normally at first, but with a big trade to get the ball rolling. On February 5, 2014 at 11:19pm on a Wednesday night, the following trade happened:
Link to trade: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/threa ... agic-hawkscoltsguy wrote:Magic Johnson
for
Rod Strickland
Doug west
8 points
It’s not detailed out, but around the trade deadline the Hawks were sending Magic Johnson, a two time Finals MVP, to the Magic for a young upcoming Rod Strickland and whoever Doug West became to be. Of course, this is a PBSL History article, so what kind of history article would this be without some background?
The Hawks with Magic Johnson had won back-to-back titles in the first two seasons of this league. Magic Johnson was the first do-everything type of player. 6’9, can score, rebound, pass, and defend with good athleticism at the time. This was a big trade for the rest of the league. Wig has been involved with sim league for years at this time, even commisioning another league. Ever wonder what the IJBL in the pbsl.ijbl was? That was Wig’s very own, older league! We are playing on the Fast Break Pro Basketball 3 game, but when we from the older PR League switched over to form this PBSL league, we were not used to this game. We were playing on FBPB 2 I believe, and trust me, there’s a big difference. So Wig with many years of experience playing on this game vs the rest of us who were new had won back-to-back championships with Magic Johnson, and he was finally traded! Finally, a real chance for the rest of us to actually try and win a championship.
I’m sorry for going a little off course there, but it serves a purpose to present how dominant Wig and his Hawks were at the time. So back to what the topic is about, where is Maurice Cheeks fit in all of this?
That’s a great question, because he doesn’t fit! It was publicly known for some reason that colts guy really wanted Maurice Cheeks, but there was no possible way for the Magic to trade for both Magic Johnson and Maurice Cheeks without adding more salary, which the Magic could not do. The Hawks initially signed Maurice Cheeks for $1,004,685, one year salary. Doesn’t seem like much, but the salary cap back in the 1992-93 season was $15,576,510, which is equivalent to approximately $5,550,397 is salary this season. That’s a good chunk of change for a backup PG, and colts guy had no way of matching that salary without giving up key pieces he needed to compete.
Something I want to point out is this trade had almost 0 reaction at all on the forums. Only ballsohard commenting how fair it was. BSH comes into play soon.
Now, Maurice Cheeks comes into play. On February 7, 2:08pm on a Friday afternoon before our sim, the Hawks release PG Maurice Cheeks.
Link: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/threa ... eks?page=1
Then pandemonium strikes. On February 7 at 2:12pm, the Orlando Magic sign Maurice Cheeks.
Link: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/threa ... ice-cheeks
I won’t talk about the timing of the release and trade, because that had been discussed at length in the following thread I’m about to link.
On February 7 at 2:17pm, BSH signs Maurice Cheeks as well.
WARNING: This thread has a serious amount of NSFW gifs due to the playful use of the name Cheeks.
Link: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/threa ... ice-cheeks
Don’t you just love sim league? I think my favorite of all of this was colts guy telling BSH in the very first post “Too late balls.” It was obviously too late, but BSH at this moment is about the principality of the matter. I won’t comment about the timing and who I believed in this whole ordeal because I simply want to explain the Act, but of course this became a league issue.
Some highlights of the thread:
IamQuailman wrote:Sooooooooo, since you couldn't trade for him due to cap restrictions... So was there some under the table agreement that hawks cut him and you sign him vet min?
So how did this end? In an unprecedented amount of time we have never seen again to make a decision, on February 19th DarthVegito awarded the Lakers Maurice Cheeks. That’s 12 days! Or, in sim terms, the Lakers officially activated Maurice Cheeks in the last sim of the regular season. Darth was put in a terrible spot here in which he admitted that the circumstances seemed odd, so the wait time was necessary for cooler heads to prevail. Also, colts guy a day or two after gave up on pursuing Cheeks and posted that the Lakers could have him.WigNosy wrote:No. Coltsguy did express interest but the salary match offered was not to my liking. My decision to cut him was due to me not wanting to carry four PGs (Strickland, Anderson, Perry are all young).
Since Cheeks has been on the block for quite some time now, and nobody else expressed the slightest interest (not even offering so much as a point for him), I have to admit I am a bit annoyed that he becomes a super hot commodity the moment I release him. You all have had weeks to make offers for him and I would have traded him for 1 point plus an equivalent expiring deal.
I don't care how this shakes out and who gets him... but anyone who wants him and doesn't get him and didn't even ask me about him has no right to complain in my book. Refusing to negotiate on principle (whether it is trade embargo or you don't want to haggle over a 35 year old scrub) is cutting off your nose to spite your face. I waited as long as I felt I could hoping for offers on anyone so I wouldn't have to make a roster cut but I was going to have to cut down from 16 before the sim and probably won't be online again before lineups are due.
What’s funny is that Maurice Cheeks did play some significant time for the Lakers in that last sim, but only because BSH sat HoF PG Kevin Johnson due to seeding being set. Cheeks would play in just one series all playoffs against the Spurs of the first round, but didn’t play in the 7th game where the Lakers won. He played 1 minute against the Warriors and that was it, the Lakers went on to win their first championship without playing Maurice Cheeks in the conference finals or finals itself. The Magic would lose in game 7 of the 2nd round to the Celtics, who were beginning their own dynasty led by Alonzo Mourning.
Another funny thing is that during the drama, several teams posted up that they to were signing Maurice Cheeks, with the Denver Nuggets led by thesyndicate claiming that he “passes on Maurice Cheeks because he sucks”.
He wasn’t wrong, here’s Maurice Cheeks for that season:
Player Page Link: http://pbsl.ijbl.net/1992/players/player101.htm
So that’s the Maurice Cheeks story, perhaps the biggest contributor to the Cheeks and Flemings Act of 1995, but that story had nothing to do with Fleming or the 1995 season.
Well, we’ve already brought up the syndicate, so let’s talk about Vern Fleming.
THE 1994-95 SEASON: VERN FLEMING
It all started innocently (again) enough. On May 23, 2014 at 6:21pm on a Friday evening, the following trade happened:
Link to trade: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/threa ... ets-knicksthesyndicate wrote:Nuggets send:
Hot Rod Williams
Knicks send:
10 pernts
95 first
Eckles
Flemming
The syndicate, only two seasons in as the Nuggets GM, traded with not1not2not3, the GM of the Knicks who was in his very first season. The Knicks were led by a prime David Robinson with a very solid cast of supporting talent that season, whereas the Nuggets were still building a team that was left a mess by previous GM kb. The funny thing about this trade is that Hot Rod Williams was not a big need for the Knicks and was mainly a backup role-player for him that season. But the star of this show is Vern Fleming.
Fast forward to May 26 at about 3:49pm. It’s Monday and before our sim day. The Nuggets would release Vern Fleming:
Link to release: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/threa ... n-flemmingthesyndicate wrote:Nuggets release Vern Flemming
On May 26 at 3:49pm, the Knicks sign Vern Fleming:
Link to trade: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/threa ... n-flemmingnot1not2not3 wrote:Knicks sign Vern Flemming
It’s mentioned in the trade thread, but the release and signing was literally 10 seconds apart. Unlike the Cheeks situation, this signing was clearly in violation of the rule I posted up at the beginning that says a team cannot sign a released player that the team had traded. Unfortunately TrayWithAnA was seeing red over this and did either did not remember the rule or was blinded by rage, because the thread should have been over in a couple of posts by referencing the Trade Rules thread.
Fortunately for us, there was a lot of laughs to be had with some feelings that were initially kept in wraps being let out, most notably, the Michael Adams trade that was referenced by thesyndiate.
For reference, here’s the trade that happened on May 6, 2014 that the syndicate is mentioning:thesyndicate wrote:Well maybe if you actually participated in helping us guys out instead of raping us with giant life-size replicas of Michael Adams' green-green dick we'd be more interested.
Link: http://fbbsimleague.proboards.com/threa ... ns-nuggets
Or to save you a click, it was the 10th pick of the draft for Michael Adams. The 10th pick would become Lamond Murray, who the Pistons traded to the Sonics in exchange for Benoit Benjamin, helping the Pistons win the Central division for the 3rd time in a row. Who was Michael Adams? A 32 year old G/G PG on a 3 year deal worth $4,125,000 and receiving nearly $400,000 increases. That’s approximately $18,356,779 starting salary receiving almost $2,000,000 increase each season. It was a terrible trade and the Nuggets did not forget. I mean it had only been 20 real life days.
Of course, there’s this gem from someone you may now know:
Three and a half years later and I still laughed out loud over that post.coltsguy wrote:This is gonna be another Maurice cheeks situation, huh?
Again this was an open and shut case that may have dragged out longer than it needed to, but the fact remained that we were running into issues with in-season free agent signings revolving around released players.
On June 18, 2014, going forward into another offseason, a new waiver process was put into place, which was then dubbed The Cheeks and Fleming Act of 1995. So if you have noticed the Act before and were wondering what exactly did Cheeks and Fleming have to do with the waiver wire, now you know. I hope you enjoyed this writeup, as I wanted to pick something that we often don’t even notice anymore but had an impact around the league.
Oh, and we’ve been spelling Fleming’s last name wrong for over 3 years.
