Off-Season Free Agency Regulations

[Josh Barber]

Off Season Free Agency Regulations

• Re-signings and Free Agent signings must not take your team above the salary cap for the first year of your player's contract.

• Contracts may only exceed the salary cap if a player has not moved from their team for three seasons or more (see 'F5 Bird Rights' below).

• Contracts cannot be longer than 5 years in length.

• The maximum an offered salary can increase/decrease per year is by 11% of the initial offer or the league minimum salary.
  For instance, if a team offers a $10,000,000 contract, the most they may offer in the second year is $11,100,000. The most they may offer in the third year is £12,321,000 ($11,100,000 + 11% of $11.1m) and so on.

• You may include Player Options and/or Team Options in the contracts you offer.

• If a player is promised a certain role during contract negotiations (such as a starting lineup position) and this promise is not fulfilled, the player may seek a trade from the team he joined.
  
  • The team's GM will be warned that the player is unhappy with his situation and to rectify it.
    
  • If a month passes and nothing is done, the GM is given 1 month in which to trade the player.
    
  • If that month passes and the player has not been traded, the player is benched onto the Injured Reserve indefinitely and a contract buyout will be reached, leaving the player to join free agency.

  
  

• The only time players can be re-signed is during the Off Season Free Agency and Re-signing Period allotted to re-signings and off season free agency.
  
  
• Since a signing must not take your team over the salary cap, offering multiple contracts which take your team over the salary cap is done at your own peril. If one player signs with your team and you then do not have the space to sign the other player, you will miss out on the other player.

• In the event that Player Agents mis-communicate and allow a team to somehow sign two players within quick succession of each other, and if those two signings combined take the team over the salary or roster restrictions, the team's GM must decide themselves which player to keep.

• Players signed during Off Season Free Agency cannot be traded until December 15th of the regular season following their signing.
  
  

Franchise Five - 'Bird Rights'

A team is given the 'Bird Rights' to one of their players if that player has not changed teams for three seasons or more. Bird Rights allow teams to exceed the salary cap when re-signing players. In order to use bird rights, a GM must elect to receive those bird rights at the beginning of the offseason that the player becomes eligible (see below for more explanation).

• If a player is lost to free agency and signed again by a team, the teams Bird Rights to that player are forfeit.
• A player may be re-signed for contracts up to 6 years in length using Bird Rights.
• A team possesses the bird rights to a player if that player has 3 years left on their contract when they join the team.
• Bird Rights carry across from real-life into Franchise Five. If you have not traded away a player and they have played for your team for at least 3 seasons you will still have their Bird Rights.
• At the beginning of each offseason, a GM will be able to elect which players he or she wishes to exercise bird rights on. If a GM chooses to exercise bird rights benefits, the team will be subject to a salary cap hold (see below). If a GM chooses not to exercise bird rights benefits, the team will not be subject to a salary cap hold.
  

Cap Holds

• At the beginning of each offseason, a GM will be able to elect which players he or she wishes to exercise bird rights on.
• If a GM chooses to exercise bird rights, the team will be subject to a salary cap hold.
  
• Cap Holds are as follows:
  • $5,000,000 for a player coming off of his first contract in the NBA (i.e. a rookie contract)
    
  • $7,500,000 for a player coming off of any other contract

• Cap Holds will count against the salary cap only during the offseason in which the GM elects to exercise bird rights on a player.

• Cap Holds are removed from a team's salary cap when the respective player signs a contract with a team.
  

• The purpose of cap holds is to mitigate the possibility of a team gaining an unfair advantage by signing bird rights players after already signing other free agents with available cap room.
  

  
  

Sign and Trades

Expiring players cannot be traded and re-signed players cannot be traded until December 15th of the following regular season. For this reason Sign & Trades cannot happen.