GRINCHNOSY'S TEN TRADING COMMANDMENTS
Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2018 2:45 pm
Now that I'm no longer in the commissioner's chair, I can exude a little more salt. And for the past few seasons, I've been wanting to write the following article. Here are the ten commandments of trading because I'm in the mood to Grinch on some expectations I've seen for the past few seasons.
COMMANDMENT ONE: YOU OVERVALUE YOUR OWN PLAYERS
We get it. You drafted a guy and have watched him grow up so you are attached to him. Maybe you even renamed him to a guy you like. Maybe you found a diamond in the rough in Free Agency - you were the clever one who could see what nobody else could and now it's time for you to get some return on investment.
News flash: nobody cares. Nobody cares that you've carefully nurtured your rookie, feeding him trainings to help him grow into a solid player. They're annoyed with all of the lavish praise you've heaped on him and they can't wait to drop a max contract on him in RFA so you have to overpay him... or better yet, watch you kiss a hundred points of training goodbye by not matching that bad contract. In fact, it brings joy to their frozen little hearts to make you pay that guy way more than you know in your heart of hearts he's worth. Nobody cares that you could see what other people overlooked in that productive free agent. In fact, they're a little bitter at you for being able to find what they couldn't. They still think he's crap, and even if you think his 20 ppg proves he's not, they're going to try to underpay you because they're not about to let you get over on them twice - once in Free Agency to find him and then again when trading him away. No sir, all the joy your players have brought you have sewn the seeds of hatred and jealousy in every other owner in the league in even greater measure, and when you put a guy on the block you find that out fast.
COMMANDMENT TWO: ONLY THREE TYPES OF PLAYERS ARE EVER ON THE BLOCK
Trade blocks are pretty much useless any more. Look at every single trade block in the league. You will notice "star player on reasonable contract" is never on the block. Even "decent player on reasonable contract" is never on the block. No, even if you can't bring yourself to admit it, when you put him on the block, the rest of league knows why a player is put on the trade block - it's because he falls into one of these three categories.
1. "Vet mins for points" - these are the guys that might be your 8th man and that you know you will never really use and you are just hoping you can get something more long-term than the 7 minutes per game for this season you're getting... because you know you can plug in pretty much any other player in the league and you'll get exactly the same production and you're hoping someone else won't realize that and will hand you some points.
2. "Still-productive but just-over-the-hill stars on bloated contracts." You know these. You see them every year. Some idiot gave a guy a supermax when he hit UFA for the first time at 28 and now the player just turned 30, got hammered in TC, and the owner realizes he's stuck with a contract that cripples his cap for THREE. MORE. YEARS. They're hoping a championship contender - preferably one with cap space - will give them 50 cents of talent on the dollar and 25 cents of salary on the dollar. Of course, this usually ends up with the owner sending the player off to one of the teams that has plenty of cap room thanks to being in tax purgatory, but has to attach either a first round pick or 10 points just to get that team to take the player. Why are you crapping up the trade block bumping these guys? Just go message that tax-smacked team already and don't bother the rest of us.
3. "Blue-potential rookie who isn't even producing as well as a vet mins for points guy and is about to hit RFA." When you put this guy on the block, you're hoping everyone looks past the "no production," drools over the "blue potential on rookie deal" and doesn't finish that sentence with, "that's expiring so I'm about to have to hand him max money even though he can't play" and offers you a high draft pick or a blue-potential guy who's actually producing. This usually doesn't work out, so this ends one of two ways. The way it SHOULD end is with the owner backing down and taking a late first or a green-potential player that actually produces so he doesn't get stuck with an awful contract. If it doesn't end like that, at LEAST it should end with the player getting a max RFA deal and the owner realizing, "that's a horrible deal, I should walk away and let the other poor slob get stuck with the tax bill." Of course, what usually DOES happen is that the owner doubles down and matches that max RFA deal... and continues to suck because now not only does he have an unproductive player, he has a huge amount of salary committed to said unproductive player. And he spends the next four years in mediocrity or worse learning his lesson.
COMMANDMENT THREE: THERE ARE ONLY THREE TIMES OF THE SEASON PEOPLE WILL EVER TRADE
Owners in this league want to shop around to get the best possible deal they can get, which means the only way to get them to stop shopping and pull the trigger on a deal is to have a deadline. This is why you'll only see trades:
1. During the draft. When your pick and all of its magical potential ("it could be ANY of the guys on the board!") undergoes the probabilistic collapse into a single actual player that comes when the pick is made, almost all of its value is gone because now it only represents one player instead of dozens. Draft day, with its deadlines every couple of hours, is a great day for getting things done. And of course, the Trade Moratorium Deadline, which locks in peoples' RFA budgets, is another great incentive for getting late trades done that have nothing to do with picks.
2. Day 60 (bewteen sims 3 and 4). The reason so many trades get done here is partly because suddenly a lot more players come available, but mostly because you need to get the trade done before 5 pm on Sim 4 day because doing so lets you change your mind and trade a player again just before the trade deadline. Dawdle too much and you're stuck with a guy the rest of the season.
3. The Trade Deadline. Duh. It's your last chance for the season.
You might occasionally see trades at other times, but most GMs drag their feet until we get close to a deadline.
COMMANDMENT FOUR: THE LEAGUE THINKS HE WHO BLINKS FIRST LOSES
Honestly, this seems like a huge barrier to getting things done. There seems to be an unwritten perception around the league that the GM that proposes a trade and admits he wants a trade is negotiating from a position of weakness. Since most trade talks aren't public, there's no way to measure this, but my sense is that the amount of trade talks is WAY down from where it was at the beginning of the league, when GMs seemed to bounce ideas off each other all the time to try to gauge player value.
The problem comes in those rare occasions when a solid player on a fair contract is put on the block. Nobody wants to "blink first" and negotiate from a position of weakness so nobody makes an offer. Finally some enterprising owner puts together an offer that's under-market and the owner who put the player on the block is desperate for change, has gotten no other nibbles, and makes the trade. This inevitably kicks off the drama machine of "how come you sold him for so little?" "well if you wanted him, why didn't you make an offer?" "well, if I knew it would be that cheap I would have!" and feelings get hurt all around... leading to fewer trade conversations.
COMMANDMENT FIVE: EVERYBODY WANTS THE SAME THING - WE ALREADY KNOW WHAT YOU WANT AND YOU'RE NOT GETTING IT SO BE MORE REALISTIC
Save us the time. We all know you want "multiple guaranteed lotto picks and superstar players with three seasons left on a rookie contract" every time you put something on your trade block. Everyone wants that. Sometimes they try to get cute by calling it a "rebuilding package." Well, look, you're not getting that, so STOP EXPECTING IT. Be honest, and tell us what you will REALLY accept in return because while it's nice to dream, you'll get a lot more done if you are actually honest about what you really want back.
COMMANDMENT SIX: NOBODY WILL TELL YOU WHAT THEY *REALLY* WANT
See points 4 and 5 above. Nobody posts in their block what they're really willing to accept because it will put them in a position of weakness by blinking first and because if they put a realistic offer out there, they know they're not going to get their dream offer.
Every time I make a trade proposal, I have tried to think about what the other side might potentially want that isn't unrealistic and tried to offer something that might fit those needs - even if imperfectly - before I make the offer. Sometimes I get back, "that's not enough" which is fine. Sometimes I get back, "that's not what I'm looking for." Nobody in this league reads minds. If you want a decent offer, tell people what you're REALLY willing to accept (yes, it means you're blinking first - but hey, it might actually get you what you want).
COMMANDMENT SEVEN: BLOCKBUSTER DEALS COME OUT OF NOWHERE AND ARE HARD TO CATCH
When a blockbuster happens, it's usually either with no warning at all ("dude, I didn't even know your star was on the block - you should have asked around") or with very little warning ("dude, your block has been up for six minutes, couldn't you have at least waited for more than one person to see it?") and generally happen because someone is in an impulsive state of mind where they want to change up their league experience. There really isn't a way to see it coming, and so don't get upset when it does that you missed out. But more importantly, don't expect to be able to "wait" on someone and get one of these deals done. These are much more like earthquakes than hurricanes - you can't see them coming, there's no warning, and they'r over fast.
COMMANDMENT EIGHT: OWNERS DON'T WANT TO COUNTER-OFFER UNLESS YOUR FIRST GUESS WAS 95% RIGHT
This kind of goes back to commandment 4, where people don't want to be the first one to admit the terms of a trade. If your guess was close, there might be some haggling over "which minimum salaries to include to make the salaries match" or some haggling over the number of points or the exact year of a draft pick. But rarely do you see someone say, "well, I'm not really interested in X, but I would be interested in totally different Y." You may not be ready to give up Y but at least that might have led to a fruitful discussion about Z that's somewhere in between. But nope, everyone expect you'll read their mind (or give them that magic "rebuilding pacakge") and if you didn't, well, you're not worth talking to further.
COMMANDMENT NINE: EVERYBODY HAS AN AGENDA. ALL THE TIME.
No, seriously. EVERYBODY has an agenda. All the time. This is obvious in the suggestions forum, but it's also true for media articles. Articles are useful for making people aware of certain players you might want to trade. It's a way to try to pump up - or suppress if he's coming up in Free Agency - your players value. A great way to do this anonymously is with "Sources" but be aware that everyone has an agenda when posting an article (sometimes that agenda is "earn points" and maybe isn't nefarious). Even this article carries an agenda. Heck, I'll put this article's agenda right out there if you haven't guessed it yet. I've been trying to change the makeup of my team via trade for several seasons now, and I can't really get any traction with anyone other than the obligatory "salary dump trades right before the trade deadline to reduce my tax bill." I like being able to use all available avenue to build a team - I enjoy drafting, I enjoy free agency, and I enjoy trading. And to be quite honest, I've been frustrated because the last time I was able to make a trade that significantly impacted my team - i.e., not a salary dump or trade for late draft pick - was over a year ago (the Ellinger-for-Harden trade on october 8, 2017).
COMMANDMENT TEN: PEOPLE PHONE IT IN AT THE END OF ARTICLES
Just checking to see if you were still paying attention. The tenth commandment of trading should actually be "plan ahead and start making your moves early." What I mean by this is that you should know your roster and you should be able to visualize where your roster will be in a couple of seasons, including salary. Your tax status should never surprise you. When you go into the tax, you should always have a plan on how far in you will go, what season you will get out, and how you intend to collect the points you will need to pay it off. Your lineup should never be too heavy on one position and light at another - you should see it coming and be making trades before it gets to that point (as an easy example, if you already have a couple of developing talented wings, it's okay to consider grabbing another in the draft or via trade, as long as you've already started working on moving one of the existing wings for a big or a point guard - and definitely don't wait for the season a player is coming up for RFA to try to trade him if you're not willing to pay him what the market will bear). That means being proactive - you need to go out and see what trades are out there rather than waiting for them to come to you. It means you need to have a grand overall plan, but be flexible on the details. It means not becoming over-attached to any one player or any one gameplan, because doing that tends to make you short-sighted. Of course, enjoy your favorites, just don't be blind about it. And never get into a tax situation you can't pay off.
All right, that's enough from me. Points czar, gimme some points already! I'll even save you the trouble: 2563 words.
COMMANDMENT ONE: YOU OVERVALUE YOUR OWN PLAYERS
We get it. You drafted a guy and have watched him grow up so you are attached to him. Maybe you even renamed him to a guy you like. Maybe you found a diamond in the rough in Free Agency - you were the clever one who could see what nobody else could and now it's time for you to get some return on investment.
News flash: nobody cares. Nobody cares that you've carefully nurtured your rookie, feeding him trainings to help him grow into a solid player. They're annoyed with all of the lavish praise you've heaped on him and they can't wait to drop a max contract on him in RFA so you have to overpay him... or better yet, watch you kiss a hundred points of training goodbye by not matching that bad contract. In fact, it brings joy to their frozen little hearts to make you pay that guy way more than you know in your heart of hearts he's worth. Nobody cares that you could see what other people overlooked in that productive free agent. In fact, they're a little bitter at you for being able to find what they couldn't. They still think he's crap, and even if you think his 20 ppg proves he's not, they're going to try to underpay you because they're not about to let you get over on them twice - once in Free Agency to find him and then again when trading him away. No sir, all the joy your players have brought you have sewn the seeds of hatred and jealousy in every other owner in the league in even greater measure, and when you put a guy on the block you find that out fast.
COMMANDMENT TWO: ONLY THREE TYPES OF PLAYERS ARE EVER ON THE BLOCK
Trade blocks are pretty much useless any more. Look at every single trade block in the league. You will notice "star player on reasonable contract" is never on the block. Even "decent player on reasonable contract" is never on the block. No, even if you can't bring yourself to admit it, when you put him on the block, the rest of league knows why a player is put on the trade block - it's because he falls into one of these three categories.
1. "Vet mins for points" - these are the guys that might be your 8th man and that you know you will never really use and you are just hoping you can get something more long-term than the 7 minutes per game for this season you're getting... because you know you can plug in pretty much any other player in the league and you'll get exactly the same production and you're hoping someone else won't realize that and will hand you some points.
2. "Still-productive but just-over-the-hill stars on bloated contracts." You know these. You see them every year. Some idiot gave a guy a supermax when he hit UFA for the first time at 28 and now the player just turned 30, got hammered in TC, and the owner realizes he's stuck with a contract that cripples his cap for THREE. MORE. YEARS. They're hoping a championship contender - preferably one with cap space - will give them 50 cents of talent on the dollar and 25 cents of salary on the dollar. Of course, this usually ends up with the owner sending the player off to one of the teams that has plenty of cap room thanks to being in tax purgatory, but has to attach either a first round pick or 10 points just to get that team to take the player. Why are you crapping up the trade block bumping these guys? Just go message that tax-smacked team already and don't bother the rest of us.
3. "Blue-potential rookie who isn't even producing as well as a vet mins for points guy and is about to hit RFA." When you put this guy on the block, you're hoping everyone looks past the "no production," drools over the "blue potential on rookie deal" and doesn't finish that sentence with, "that's expiring so I'm about to have to hand him max money even though he can't play" and offers you a high draft pick or a blue-potential guy who's actually producing. This usually doesn't work out, so this ends one of two ways. The way it SHOULD end is with the owner backing down and taking a late first or a green-potential player that actually produces so he doesn't get stuck with an awful contract. If it doesn't end like that, at LEAST it should end with the player getting a max RFA deal and the owner realizing, "that's a horrible deal, I should walk away and let the other poor slob get stuck with the tax bill." Of course, what usually DOES happen is that the owner doubles down and matches that max RFA deal... and continues to suck because now not only does he have an unproductive player, he has a huge amount of salary committed to said unproductive player. And he spends the next four years in mediocrity or worse learning his lesson.
COMMANDMENT THREE: THERE ARE ONLY THREE TIMES OF THE SEASON PEOPLE WILL EVER TRADE
Owners in this league want to shop around to get the best possible deal they can get, which means the only way to get them to stop shopping and pull the trigger on a deal is to have a deadline. This is why you'll only see trades:
1. During the draft. When your pick and all of its magical potential ("it could be ANY of the guys on the board!") undergoes the probabilistic collapse into a single actual player that comes when the pick is made, almost all of its value is gone because now it only represents one player instead of dozens. Draft day, with its deadlines every couple of hours, is a great day for getting things done. And of course, the Trade Moratorium Deadline, which locks in peoples' RFA budgets, is another great incentive for getting late trades done that have nothing to do with picks.
2. Day 60 (bewteen sims 3 and 4). The reason so many trades get done here is partly because suddenly a lot more players come available, but mostly because you need to get the trade done before 5 pm on Sim 4 day because doing so lets you change your mind and trade a player again just before the trade deadline. Dawdle too much and you're stuck with a guy the rest of the season.
3. The Trade Deadline. Duh. It's your last chance for the season.
You might occasionally see trades at other times, but most GMs drag their feet until we get close to a deadline.
COMMANDMENT FOUR: THE LEAGUE THINKS HE WHO BLINKS FIRST LOSES
Honestly, this seems like a huge barrier to getting things done. There seems to be an unwritten perception around the league that the GM that proposes a trade and admits he wants a trade is negotiating from a position of weakness. Since most trade talks aren't public, there's no way to measure this, but my sense is that the amount of trade talks is WAY down from where it was at the beginning of the league, when GMs seemed to bounce ideas off each other all the time to try to gauge player value.
The problem comes in those rare occasions when a solid player on a fair contract is put on the block. Nobody wants to "blink first" and negotiate from a position of weakness so nobody makes an offer. Finally some enterprising owner puts together an offer that's under-market and the owner who put the player on the block is desperate for change, has gotten no other nibbles, and makes the trade. This inevitably kicks off the drama machine of "how come you sold him for so little?" "well if you wanted him, why didn't you make an offer?" "well, if I knew it would be that cheap I would have!" and feelings get hurt all around... leading to fewer trade conversations.
COMMANDMENT FIVE: EVERYBODY WANTS THE SAME THING - WE ALREADY KNOW WHAT YOU WANT AND YOU'RE NOT GETTING IT SO BE MORE REALISTIC
Save us the time. We all know you want "multiple guaranteed lotto picks and superstar players with three seasons left on a rookie contract" every time you put something on your trade block. Everyone wants that. Sometimes they try to get cute by calling it a "rebuilding package." Well, look, you're not getting that, so STOP EXPECTING IT. Be honest, and tell us what you will REALLY accept in return because while it's nice to dream, you'll get a lot more done if you are actually honest about what you really want back.
COMMANDMENT SIX: NOBODY WILL TELL YOU WHAT THEY *REALLY* WANT
See points 4 and 5 above. Nobody posts in their block what they're really willing to accept because it will put them in a position of weakness by blinking first and because if they put a realistic offer out there, they know they're not going to get their dream offer.
Every time I make a trade proposal, I have tried to think about what the other side might potentially want that isn't unrealistic and tried to offer something that might fit those needs - even if imperfectly - before I make the offer. Sometimes I get back, "that's not enough" which is fine. Sometimes I get back, "that's not what I'm looking for." Nobody in this league reads minds. If you want a decent offer, tell people what you're REALLY willing to accept (yes, it means you're blinking first - but hey, it might actually get you what you want).
COMMANDMENT SEVEN: BLOCKBUSTER DEALS COME OUT OF NOWHERE AND ARE HARD TO CATCH
When a blockbuster happens, it's usually either with no warning at all ("dude, I didn't even know your star was on the block - you should have asked around") or with very little warning ("dude, your block has been up for six minutes, couldn't you have at least waited for more than one person to see it?") and generally happen because someone is in an impulsive state of mind where they want to change up their league experience. There really isn't a way to see it coming, and so don't get upset when it does that you missed out. But more importantly, don't expect to be able to "wait" on someone and get one of these deals done. These are much more like earthquakes than hurricanes - you can't see them coming, there's no warning, and they'r over fast.
COMMANDMENT EIGHT: OWNERS DON'T WANT TO COUNTER-OFFER UNLESS YOUR FIRST GUESS WAS 95% RIGHT
This kind of goes back to commandment 4, where people don't want to be the first one to admit the terms of a trade. If your guess was close, there might be some haggling over "which minimum salaries to include to make the salaries match" or some haggling over the number of points or the exact year of a draft pick. But rarely do you see someone say, "well, I'm not really interested in X, but I would be interested in totally different Y." You may not be ready to give up Y but at least that might have led to a fruitful discussion about Z that's somewhere in between. But nope, everyone expect you'll read their mind (or give them that magic "rebuilding pacakge") and if you didn't, well, you're not worth talking to further.
COMMANDMENT NINE: EVERYBODY HAS AN AGENDA. ALL THE TIME.
No, seriously. EVERYBODY has an agenda. All the time. This is obvious in the suggestions forum, but it's also true for media articles. Articles are useful for making people aware of certain players you might want to trade. It's a way to try to pump up - or suppress if he's coming up in Free Agency - your players value. A great way to do this anonymously is with "Sources" but be aware that everyone has an agenda when posting an article (sometimes that agenda is "earn points" and maybe isn't nefarious). Even this article carries an agenda. Heck, I'll put this article's agenda right out there if you haven't guessed it yet. I've been trying to change the makeup of my team via trade for several seasons now, and I can't really get any traction with anyone other than the obligatory "salary dump trades right before the trade deadline to reduce my tax bill." I like being able to use all available avenue to build a team - I enjoy drafting, I enjoy free agency, and I enjoy trading. And to be quite honest, I've been frustrated because the last time I was able to make a trade that significantly impacted my team - i.e., not a salary dump or trade for late draft pick - was over a year ago (the Ellinger-for-Harden trade on october 8, 2017).
COMMANDMENT TEN: PEOPLE PHONE IT IN AT THE END OF ARTICLES
Just checking to see if you were still paying attention. The tenth commandment of trading should actually be "plan ahead and start making your moves early." What I mean by this is that you should know your roster and you should be able to visualize where your roster will be in a couple of seasons, including salary. Your tax status should never surprise you. When you go into the tax, you should always have a plan on how far in you will go, what season you will get out, and how you intend to collect the points you will need to pay it off. Your lineup should never be too heavy on one position and light at another - you should see it coming and be making trades before it gets to that point (as an easy example, if you already have a couple of developing talented wings, it's okay to consider grabbing another in the draft or via trade, as long as you've already started working on moving one of the existing wings for a big or a point guard - and definitely don't wait for the season a player is coming up for RFA to try to trade him if you're not willing to pay him what the market will bear). That means being proactive - you need to go out and see what trades are out there rather than waiting for them to come to you. It means you need to have a grand overall plan, but be flexible on the details. It means not becoming over-attached to any one player or any one gameplan, because doing that tends to make you short-sighted. Of course, enjoy your favorites, just don't be blind about it. And never get into a tax situation you can't pay off.
All right, that's enough from me. Points czar, gimme some points already! I'll even save you the trouble: 2563 words.
