Lineup Infractions Proposal

[Phoenix Suns]

The main goal here is to make sure tanking teams who add their lineups are no longer punished for playing by the rules.

At a 5th infraction, the Commissioner can either remove the GM from the league, or if he feels appropriate, keep them in the league and apply the loss of a first round pick.

Like the Penalty system with fines, these punishments apply to the GM in question, not the franchise.  New ownership will not be burdened.

If a tanking team does not own their current pick, Blazers suggested the penalties apply to their next year's pick.  Whichever year incurred more infractions, would be the penalty applied to the pick.  So if a tanking team in 2018 doesn't own their 2018 pick, commits 3 infractions, then in 2019 commits 2 infractions, the 3 infractions from 2018 would be applied to their 2019 pick, which is locked and which they definitely own.

If a team loses their pick and remains in the league, the rest of the league benefits and everyone behind them in the draft moves up one spot.

The current Penalty System with fines would remain in place.  It incentivizes competitive teams, and gives tanking teams some immediate negative consequences, even though they are less affected by fines than competing teams.  This Lineup Infraction system would be in addition to the current rules, not a replacement.

If that GM leaves the league, the infractions are NOT applied, and the new GM would not suffer the consequences.

The only exception is a pick that had +1, +2, or +3 on it that was already traded to another team.  It was fairly valued when moved to the other team, and the penalties on it would remain in place permanently.

These proposed changes would go into effect next season.

[murg]

Personally, I'm definitely in favour of this. Absolutely. The penalty of losing cap space for a season for tanking teams is irrelevant. And I think your solution really gives a reasonable solution to this.

I don't think there is a need to change too much about this proposal. Although...

Personally, I think the 5th infraction penalty is too harsh. Perhaps, simply moving their 1st round pick to the last pick of the 1st round would suffice. Is something I think would be a bit better.

[Minnesota Timberwolves]

Pretty much what Pelicans said. I haven’t bothered to respond until now to this because I don’t think I have a lot to add, outside of a couple of points:

•We need to find a way to use whatever penalty system we have with a little bit of understanding. The season is long, and life things happen. Outright ignoring your lineup is one thing, but setting things a week in advance and then missing a morning-of announcement is another in my opinion.

•The other thing is that I strongly dislike the situation that popped up a couple of times this past season where a fine dictates that a team has to trade away assets to get under the cap. We shouldn’t be making bad teams worse. Switching over to a pick penalty like the one proposed could help, although depreciating these assets might not be the most friendly option towards teams at the bottom either. If we choose to stick with fines, another way we could avoid forcing asset dumps by having fines that go over the cap roll over into the next season—this would solve the issue of “how do we do fines after the trade deadline passes” thing, too.

[Denver Nuggets]

I have a significant problem with the current lineup violation rules. I do believe that the Spurs' proposal could remedy the central problem with those rules: the fact that teams are incentivized in certain situations to intentionally violate the rules upon performing a classic cost-benefit analysis. That said, Spurs' proposal requires additional monitoring throughout the season, namely, additional qualifications and protections on draft picks (which I believe my proposal would eliminate). Furthermore, my proposal would result in the spirit of the rules being upheld, e.g., the best team that week would win every week. 

So, my proposal is as follows:

Introduction

The problem which the present proposal seeks to address is the incentive to break the league's rules. Under the current rules, a team (such as Charlotte) has to perform a cost-benefit analysis every single week to determine whether it is in its best interest to be competitive for that week or not. If a team were to so choose, it could intentionally rest players to remain uncompetitive that week, in conflict with league rules to start ones best players. The consequences of such action are  a minor (but not necessarily insignificant) fine which applies to the team's salary cap. 

For a tanking team with no incentive to win, its  decision to intentionally violate league rules comes down to whether it can withstand an additional cap charge. The benefits of doing so can be tremendous, as will be demonstrated below.

Case Study

During week 9 of the last season, Charlotte was in a position to defeat OKC coming into the final day of the matchup. Charlotte sat every one of its 6 players who had games proceeding on Sunday and went on to lose the matchup with OKC by less than 90 points. Charlotte's benched players scored more than 150, easily clearing OKC's margin of victory.

The consequences to Charlotte were simple, a 2.5 million dollar fine. For some teams, that may have been untenable, but Charlotte could withstand the charge. It ended the season with a 7-14 record (do you guys see where this is going?). The next best record in the league belonged to Vancouver, at 8-13. Under league rules, a team's position in the upcoming draft lottery is tied to their end of season rankings. Tiebreakers are decided by H-H record. Vancouver and Charlotte played one H-H game this year, during week 14. Charlotte won that game handily and prevailed by over 150 points. And would you believe that Charlotte left playable points on the bench on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of that single matchup (3 potential violations in one week!). 

Charlotte thus possessed the tie-breaker over Vancouver. Charlotte would have received the better position in the standings, and Vancouver would have taken the position that Charlotte ended up with. How fortuitous of Charlotte to identify that the real-life team its lottery fate would be aligned with, the Sacramento Kings, would jump from the 7th spot to No. 2.

Soapbox

That pick should by all rights belong to the Seattle Supersonics. Seattle may not even understand that until now. The only reason Charlotte has pick is because he intentionally violated the league rules that he himself drafted. It is a grave abuse of the system that permitted him to do so. There are several other draft shakeups that likely occurred as a result of this as well. I have not conducted all of the necessary research, but all of Chicago, Portland, and myself were involved in games where the outcome was determined by a margin which was affected by the failure to set lineups. That may have been the difference in Bulls moving down yet again in the draft and it being in what became the Nuggets position (who moved from 4 to 3). 

Solution/New Proposal

The current system for fines is fine. Mistakes happen. therefore, a warning should be permitted. thereafter, a team should be forced to deal with monetary consequences for their inattentiveness, even if inadvertent. the sanctity of the league demands it. That said, more is needed. We cannot permit teams to continue to permit themselves to intentionally acquire losses which upset the entire balance of power in the league for monetary losses which it can sustain. We have to remove the incentive for tanking teams to break the rules. 

I propose the system for fines stays in place, but since we already have a system in place for the identification of rule-breaking, we expand upon it. Create a new thread on the website under the General page for lineup infractions notifications. 

IF AND ONLY IF the failure to set lineups is "outcome-determinative," meaning that the proper setting of lineups would have led to a different win-loss outcome, ANY team may post a thread on the page which identifies with factual and evidentiary support) how the applicable team(s) failure to follow the "set your best lineup rule" led to the wrong outcome.

Once this thread is posted, the Trade committee will review it just the same as it does now for trades. If they support and/or agree with the facts outlined in the thread, then the win-loss column is changed accordingly to reflect what SHOULD have happened. 

If no one identifies the failure, then there will be no thread, and everyone will live on. We could also insert a requirement that the parties who are also affected by the failure must post their own comments concerning the failure. I do not believe that it would be appropriate to force one of the parties to the week's affected matchup to be the ones to initiate the thread, because it may be in both of their best interests to have the outcome affected the way it was. 

This rule would lead to more work for the Trade Committee, undoubtedly. However, we are talking about only a handful of threads per year. This past year had only 4 known occasions to my knowledge. In light of how many trades are made in this league, the comparative additional work appears minuscule in comparison. The advantages, however, are great. As can be seen above, a single day's calculated refusal to follow the league's rules was the difference between the Nos. 2 and 8 picks in this year's draft. The best team should win its matchup, and considering how important losses are to tanking teams, the worst team should lose as well. Any rules which alter this outcome should be rejected.

Spurs proposal also appears unnecessarily punitive. Should a team necessarily be punished by the increase in wins if their failure did not actually affect the outcome of their matchup? Perhaps, but by way of the Nuggets' proposal, the only punitive measure would be the monetary fine. 

Any questions or counter-proposals will be addressed by way of a supplemental response if deemed necessary.





 

[Boston Celtics]

I'm glad this discussion is being brought up, and is definitely something we can work on this off-season. I've been aboard the demerit train for a while now, so I'm glad someone formalized the discussion here.

I think the system needs to be effective at punishing purposeful changes in the outcome of games while also being simple to implement. All parties here have made good points.

My proposal is two part:

1.) Implement the demerit system
2.) Slightly alter the way fines are applied


There are several issues with tanking. One, teams artificially increase their draft stock. Two, artificial changes in the standings can alter playoff seeding. Three, it shows a baseline commitment to a very in depth league that you can set your lineups. Now, I have not had a clean sheet in setting lineups, but I don't think any have ever been egregious or outcome determinant as Nuggets put it. Like Wolves said, the seasons long, life happens, so we have to make sure the system is punishing the right thing.


1.) The demerit system:

You guys have made some great points but I think it needs to be simple. Some things I agree on that you guys have stated:

- Demerits are wins applied solely at the end of the season when determining draft position within the lottery.

I disagree with demerits only applying to the offending team when they own their pick. If the demerits are given out solely on an "outcome-determinant basis" the purpose is to apply the proper value to that pick. If you traded for a pick, you know their roster composition and their GM abilities. If a team should have won, that should be the position of the pick. No GM should benefit from rule breaking, even if it wasn't them who broke the rules. There should be no advantage gained.

- "IF AND ONLY IF the failure to set lineups is "outcome-determinant," meaning that the proper setting of lineups would have led to a different win-loss outcome, ANY team may post a thread on the page which identifies with factual and evidentiary support) how the applicable team(s) failure to follow the "set your best lineup rule" led to the wrong outcome."

I agree entirely. This ties into my point above. We will get into further discouragement of tanking with the fines later on, but simply put we should only be adding wins to a teams draft stock if the team should have won.

- In case of tie in standings, team with the least demerits wins the tiebreaker.

Agreed. Changed to demerits because i'm differentiating from counting lineup infractions.

We do not need to keep track of wins attached to picks or the swapping of picks or trading back and forth. Each team will have a tally of demerits on the master roster. Thats it. If you should have won the match-up, your draft stock will be changed accordingly. That's the main goal of this system is for draft stock to fall where it should have, had everyone followed the rules. It also discourages tanking by taking away the benefit of doing so. Because we are only applying to outcome changing infractions and not all infractions we don't have to worry about another team owning the pick because the win is only applied if the team in question should have won.

A tally is all we need. (Of course with the report system)

2.) Fine Application

I have two slight alterations to the fine system that I would like to propose. We still need to instill a baseline level of commitment to the league as well as discourage tanking when it may change seeding for another team, say the playoffs, but not for the tanking team in question. 

a.) If a team is noticed to have failed to set their lineups in a significant way (more then just a one off or late injury news) just by way of word of mouth on the discord, Wolves / Mavs notices, etc. A formal warning will be given given to the GM in question by way of the forums. The team will be @'d so they will know, on record they have been warned. If the first case is determinant we jump straight to a fine.

Following a formal warning, if a team is noticed to have failed to set their lineups in a significant way as reported on the forums, 1 of 2 fines will be applied.
Non-determinant: $1,000,000
Determinant: $3,000,000
The numbers above are placeholders. I think we should have further discussion about just how much which offense constitutes.

b.) Salary fines are applied to the two years following the year of offense. Most tanking teams have boatloads of cash in the short term OR a team doesn't have the cash in the short term and we get into the situation Wolves described where a team is forced to move assets around and we have to deal with them getting under the cap for the current season. This has two implications. First, it applies negative value to the team where it actually hurts. Two, they have enough time to game plan around the fine. I also propose that these fines disappear if the GM leaves. Opposed to the demerits setting the proper draft stock value of a teams roster, the fines are meant to deter the GM's failure to abide by the rules, be active, and affect other teams standings. The fine disappears with the GM.

EX. Celtics fail to set their roster (many players left on the bench) 3 times over the course of the season. First time is non-determinant. Second is non-determinant. Third is determinant.

Celtics received one written warning, $4,000,000 in fines, and a single demerit.
The $4,000,000 are applied to the two seasons following the 3 offenses and the demerit adds a win to their draft stock dropping their pick from 4th in the lottery to 5th.