Offseason Player Agent?

[San Antonio Spurs]

What do you guys think about this idea for Free Agency..

In the offseason, I can create a new account, called the Player Agent.

To make bids, you PM the PAgent with the FA name as the subject and your bid as the message.

Your bids will stay secret, so nobody can rack up your bids just to screw you. You won't know if you won the FA until there is an announcement made. Nobody will know who you are bidding on.
When the announcement is made, their salary will be announced, so you will know if something crazy happened if you offered more money, unless you did it too late.

It's not just about keeping the bids secret though. If I'm representing Dwyane Wade, and you send an initial offer of $500,000 a year for 5 years, I'm going to be furious and tell you to take your business somewhere else.
If your initial contract is for $7,000,000 a year in that case, I'll tell you thats still not in my range, I want more.

Players really won't take 5 year contracts for $500,000 a year or whatever, so I'd argue for them. I'm willing to take $500,000 for one year, maybe two, if nobody else offers me a contract.

If I'm someone like Latrell Sprewell, I'd say give me $21,000,000 over 3 years or I'll retire, I have kids to feed. If I'm someone like Ginobili or Parker, I'm willing to take a little pay cut to stay on my team.

With Restricted Free Agents, I'd PM the original team to see if they want to match.

With Unrestricted, I'd give a slight edge to the original team, as most people seem to return if they are wanted. Otherwise, I'd factor in money, playing time, and chances to win. It will depend for each person. A veteran will want chances to win and money. A younger person will want money and playing time.

I could use my best judgement, and post the logic behind each signing.

[Miami Heat]

i like this idea, but i think that if we're going to do this: 1) a non-GM has to be the agent, so that the GM's can focus on running their teams, and there is no comflict, and 2) the agent should let the teams that are interested in the player know what the highest bid is. So, if we do this, recruiting someone who will be uber-dedicated will be key.

[Detroit Pistons]

I do think a non-GM should do it, but I trust SA and believe he would make legit choices so it doesnt concern me too much. I also think the highest bid should be known, or if not the actual bid, the agent could "leak" rumors of what he has been offered for his player.

Perhaps we could break the Player Agent into several agents, to lighten the load on one person. You could go through the FA list if one is made like last years and split it into however many sections, with an agent representing the players in that particular section. Say into 5 even sections, and the last name G for Garnett falls under Agent A, you contact Agent A to offer your bid.

[Orlando Magic]

do we really want to find someone new and put them in charge of our offseason? what we have been doing works, but im open to the idea. we can try it out for a year and decide what we like better

[San Antonio Spurs]

pistons521 said:

I do think a non-GM should do it, but I trust SA and believe he would make legit choices so it doesnt concern me too much. I also think the highest bid should be known, or if not the actual bid, the agent could "leak" rumors of what he has been offered for his player.

Perhaps we could break the Player Agent into several agents, to lighten the load on one person. You could go through the FA list if one is made like last years and split it into however many sections, with an agent representing the players in that particular section. Say into 5 even sections, and the last name G for Garnett falls under Agent A, you contact Agent A to offer your bid.

Not a bad idea. Their could even be one person representing each division, but then we would need 5 people willing to do it.

Miami- I really don't want to get someone from outside this league to do it. I wouldn't trust them running our offseason, I'd feel comfortable doing it. I don't have any bad intentions from running this myself, I dont have any motives to help myself as I won't be under the cap, and I think I can control this and my team. It might be hard to keep track of everything and organize it, but if I get a plan and do it from the beginning, i think I can handle it.

I like the idea of keeping the top bids secrets, because it would make people bid a higher minimum, instead of trying to start getting everyone at 750k. Also, look at some old bids, people got in to silly bidding wars and bid way more than they wanted and more than that person was worth, also people would submit fake bids because they knew the other person would match.
however, i also like the idea of leaking news a lot. we could have a rumors section, and i could pick some randomly to say you know..
rumor has it so and so is going to sign a 60 million contract
...or so and so is apparantly coming close to an agreement with the bulls
... or so and so rejected the cavs offer for $14 million because ...,
.. or maybe even make up lies some times, not everything you read is true, make up a fake one, rumor has it detroit offered so and so 8 million a year, which would be followed by people bumping up their own bids.

In the rumors section, we could actually have everyone anonymously submit their own "rumors," by logging out and submitting messages as a guest.

[New Jersey Nets]

I'm in favor of this but we have to find the perfect Player Agent. Someone who is smart, commited, and available.

[Milwaukee Bucks]

yea i think spurs should do it, its his league

[Detroit Pistons]

I dont like the idea of not knowing the bid, but heres a solution. Perhaps you were going to do this anyway, and if not, we should take it into consideration.

I am bidding on the free agent Paul Pierce. I contact the agent responsible for Pierce and give me bid of $36,000,000 over 3 years for $12,000,000 a year. He replies and says he likes my offer, but at the time a more lucrative deal involving more cash has been offerend. Not necessarily giving me the actual high bid, but letting me know I need to offer more.

I would be interested in being one of this offseasons Player Agents.

[Player Agent 3 [Clippers]]

I would be interested in being a Player Agent. I think we should have multiple (3 or 4) of them so that there is a reasonable amount of free agents to keep track of for each PA. Also the free agents on your list can be swapped with another PA in order to avoid the situation of being a PA on a player that you are bidding on. Also I think with more PA's there will be different viewpoints and finding out that view is vital to signing that free agent (kind of like agents are in real life). As long as there is no way for bidding on a player that you are a PA for I am totally for this.


Also I think something else we could do is make a thread for each player and perhaps outline the details of the best offer on the table? Not an indepth look at the contract but just saying a new offer is being considered as the best offer. We could even mention team names, just not the salary to let the teams that are bidding against each other know who has a better bid. Instead of leaving people out in the dark, b.c it could get really confusing. Also when placing a bid each GM should outline not only the money of the deal but also the role that the player will be looking to fill on the team. It will help give the PA more to base the decision on.

[San Antonio Spurs]

dstarrs said:

I would be interested in being a Player Agent. I think we should have multiple (3 or 4) of them so that there is a reasonable amount of free agents to keep track of for each PA. Also the free agents on your list can be swapped with another PA in order to avoid the situation of being a PA on a player that you are bidding on. Also I think with more PA's there will be different viewpoints and finding out that view is vital to signing that free agent (kind of like agents are in real life). As long as there is no way for bidding on a player that you are a PA for I am totally for this.


Also I think something else we could do is make a thread for each player and perhaps outline the details of the best offer on the table? Not an indepth look at the contract but just saying a new offer is being considered as the best offer. We could even mention team names, just not the salary to let the teams that are bidding against each other know who has a better bid. Instead of leaving people out in the dark, b.c it could get really confusing. Also when placing a bid each GM should outline not only the money of the deal but also the role that the player will be looking to fill on the team. It will help give the PA more to base the decision on.

Good ideas. Have you ever played in Dynasty Mode on NBA Live? If you try to send them different deals, they will reply saying stuff like their client wants a longer contract for added security, or my client needs a lot more money that that, or my client doesn't want a contract that long. We could just say stuff like that.
3 player agents would be a good idea, we release a list of which agents represent which players, so the GMs have to contact those agents in order to talk to the free agents. If they just send the offer to the wrong guy, they will never have a chance, and all of their information will be leaked out

[New Jersey Nets]

I really like that idea of 3 or 4 different Player Agents.

[Denver Nuggets]

Yes multiple agents i agree with

[Toronto Raptors]

I like the idea, but you have to consider what the players's specific needs are or the requirements each player is thinking off.

1. Money
2. Prestige
3. Winning a title
4. Job Opportunity
5. Playing for hometown team or any team for less
6. Highly successful team
7. Player's Morale


It's basically almost like Madden Franchise Mode, we just use those as some of the reasons why players sign with certain teams.

[Phoenix Suns]

I'd also be interested in being a Player Agent. If my team does well this postseason (i.e. winning a title), I will likely consider retiring as a GM here. If that happened, I'd still definitely want to stay in the league as something like a full-time Player Agent. If I do stick around and we have multiple player agents, I'd definitely be interested in being one, especially if the bulk of this takes place during the summer when I'm overloaded on free time.

[Seattle Supersonics]

I totally agree with all the points SAS made, except that I'd rather have only one agent, preferably SAS.

[San Antonio Spurs]

18-0, looks like we will be having a player agent for sure. Details will be worked out later.

[San Antonio Spurs]

The more I think about it, it's going to be hard to have a player agent the way I have been planning.

I don't think we should have private bids. I think we should do it similar to the fashion we did last time, public bids, and once nobody has submitted a bid after so long, maybe a day or two, the player agent will then decide which team the player will go to. What do you guys think?

[Seattle Supersonics]

I think that's great. I was wondering about how you would be able to pull off the player agent idea privately without a glitch.

[New Jersey Nets]

I don't agree. Private bids are more realistic and much more exciting. Also, a General Manager is a seller. He sells free agents to play for his team, we have to do a better job of inputing that into this league. This is our oppurtunity.

[San Antonio Spurs]

1524 said:

I don't agree. Private bids are more realistic and much more exciting. Also, a General Manager is a seller. He sells free agents to play for his team, we have to do a better job of inputing that into this league. This is our oppurtunity.

I think we can still keep the realism and get away from the actual full scale bidding though. You can come in, make your offer, sell your side of the story, and then the player agents/committee members will vote together to decide which player will join which team.