Rules

House Keeping

(WBA) The Game: This league will use the Fast Break Basketball 2013 Engine found at www.greydogsoftware.com to simulate all games. Updates will be applied as available, and the league began using Fast Break Basketball (FBB) 2013 Version 3.0.22. Ownership of an FBB 2013 game license is mandatory and purchase of the game will grant 2 licenses. All League and Team data is viewable on both the WBA internet site, as well as within the FBB 2013 program, but Team data is only editable through the FBB program.

The WBA Season is 80 games.

Game time will be simulated or advanced differently throughout the season. During the regular season, the time will be simulated 3 game days at a time. During coach signing, free agent, and the playoffs, the time will be simulated 1 game day a time. Game time is generally simulated every week day, usually in the A.M., with the coach signing, free agent, and playoff periods sometimes being run multiple times a day. Any changes to the frequency or timing of the simulations will be posted to the WBA Facebook group page.

It is recommended that all roster changes be in by midnight (12:00 AM) the day prior, as all coach updates and changes will be downloaded immediately prior to running that day’s simulations.

The commissioner is currently Rondall Reynoso. The commissioner’s duties will consist of but not limited to the overseeing of the league and ruling in a manner that is not a detriment to the leagues future. The commissioner is responsible for all simulations, and roster updates. The commissioner is also responsible for updating the WBA league web site, running all drafts and meetings, and maintaining order in the league in general. Although not all possible rules can be written, the commissioner will always reserve the right to take any required action on anything that could threaten the integrity of the league.

The editor in chief is currently Pedro Alcaraz Sanchez. The editor in chief is responsible for updating the GSPN Web Site with new articles and editorials.

New GM/Coaches

(WBA) All new GM/coaches, after joining the league, are restricted from trading with any team for a period of no less than one week. Any team that completes a trade with a new owner before their introduction period is over will have that trade turned down and be fined, along with the new GM/coach’s team, their currently highest ranked #1 draft pick in the upcoming season. For draft purposes, the teams will draft the worst listed available person, who will be cut immediately after the draft is completed. Any GM that violates this rule a second time faces the possibility of being removed from the league immediately. If there is a case where a team has no current #1 Draft pick, they will be fined 2 million dollars in salary for 4 years.

Participation

(WBA) Attendance and participation are mandatory in all league events and functions. Prolonged periods of inactivity or absence from events and communication attempts are grounds for removal from the league.

All drafts and other similar league activities will be held in an on-line chat format, currently within Facebook.

Polls will be posted on the Facebook group to gain consensus on various topics. Voting is mandatory and will be rewarded with a small amount of reward points, while not voting will result in a small penalty with a small amount of rewards points being removed.

Attribute Style

Player attributes are displayed using the letters A-F scale for player attributes. Player potential will also be displayed as an A-F rating.

Scouting

Scouting adds an element of uncertainty to player ratings, as the quality of the ratings will depend on the quality of your scout when viewed through the FBB 13 program.

On the WBA website, all ratings are based on the league’s default scout, and are the same across all pages. The league scout is a below average scout, with skills approximately around 40 in each skill. The same league scout is used when there are no human teams but scouting is on. Consider the WBA website ratings to be the general perception of the player as opposed to a real scout’s opinion. The scouting for each team is based only on the reports of the scout himself. The scouting ratings for the other staff members do not currently have an effect. Players’ attributes do not change throughout the season, rather the scouts update their ratings throughout the year, getting more accurate as the season progresses.

The color ratings are based on set numbers and are not an indication of the talent in the league itself, and could be considered similar to cliff notes. This means that there is not a minimum requirement of blue players in the league at any time. The colors are determined by comparing the individual skills to what the program believes to be important at each position and is personalized somewhat by the selected preferred attributes that were picked when you set up your GM/coach.

As far as building a team, you will have more success focusing on the ratings themselves.

On overall ratings, a player is rated based on what position is better for them, so you may see a blue/blue player who is a PF but may be playing SG on your team and still show as a blue level player. It is better to go off a player’s skill set rather than what their overall rating is. In other leagues, teams with 1 blue level player and 4 green players in their starting lineup have won 2 championships because the players played well together.

Financial Information

The WBA has multiple exceptions to the salary cap. Exceptions allow you exceed the salary cap in order to resign your own players or free agents. Players who have not changed teams via free agency for at least three seasons are considered to have Bird Rights. You are allowed to offer them any salary up to the max salary in order to resign them. The WBA will also allow you to have a Mid and Low exception for signing free agents. These exceptions will be given to you at the start of the free agency period if your team is over the salary cap. The WBA uses the full finances option, which adds an additional team budget specified by your owner. Ticket prices and attendance are more important as total income helps determine your team budget.

Contracts are guaranteed at 50%. If a team cuts a player the team still pays 50% of the contract and it counts against the cap.

The Salary Cap, Luxury Tax, and Total Budget for the current season are listed within Fast Break Pro 13.

Teams must stay under the salary cap to make any trades or sign any players (exceptions in both cases exist).

Salary Cap: Any team over the salary cap cannot bid on players except for minimum offers and exceptions. Any team under the salary cap will be able to bid on their own players up to and not exceeding the amount they are below the salary cap.

Teams can make offers for multiple free agents that were their own players if they are under the tax level and over the cap, but can only make 1 offer. If the offer is reset and your team is over the cap, then you can no longer bid.

If a player offers to re-sign at the end of their contract, a team may accept the players offer, even if they are over the tax or the offer puts them over the tax.

Contract Negotiations

During the season you may have the option of whether or not to accept or decline player options as well as the option to offer players extensions. This is done by going to Negotiations under the player profile screen. Players that were drafted in the 1st round will have team options for the third and fourth years of the player’s contract. If you wish to decline the option on a rookie contract it must be declined before November 1^st, otherwise, it will be automatically accepted. Regular player options must be declined before using the End Season option after the playoffs or they will also be accepted. During the season you might also get an email stating that a player would like to sign a contract extension. The Negotiations section will show their desired contract and give you the option to offer an extension. Contracts can be offered either using the contract generator or by typing your offer into the salary boxes in the grid. The option year drop down will give you the option to offer either a team option or a player option. This affects the last year of the contract. For a player option, the player will decide whether or not to exercise the option while the team must exercise the option for team options.

On the salaries page, team options are displayed in Green and player options are displayed in Red. Players under contract as first round picks will have team options in seasons 3 and 4. These must be declined by November 1st of the previous season or they will automatically be accepted. Regular team options must be declined by the end of the season or they will be accepted. You will get emails during the season reminding you which players are eligible for which type of extension.

Player options are decided by the player when you end the season. You will get an email letting you know whether or not the player used his option or not.

Trade Rules

The Trade Committee is responsible for monitoring the trades made in the WBA to assure the integrity of the league. All trades are to be submitted to the Trade Committee (with a brief explanation of the reasoning for the trade) and will be forwarded to the Commissioner after the Trade Committee has approved them. A trade requires majority approval.

Trades can take place between 2-4 teams and can be made during the offseason or at any point before the trade deadline during the season. The main limitation on the number of players traded is that a team cannot go over the absolute maximum roster size of 20. Teams can make any trade that leaves them under the salary cap. If a team is over the salary cap, then the salaries they are receiving must be no more than 125% of the salaries they are trading away plus 1/55th of the current salary cap. Teams that are over their team budget also may only increase salary by the minimum salary. Players that are traded may not be traded again for 60 days.

Minimum Salary Players: Minimum salary players have a special exemption in trades. Their salary counts as outgoing salary for the team that is trading them but it does not count as incoming salary by their new team.

Teams may not trade picks if it leaves them without a first round pick in consecutive seasons: This rule in in place to ensure teams aren’t hurting their future by trading away all of their draft picks. Since FBB only tracks draft picks for the next three seasons, this rule prevents a team from making a trade that leaves them without a 1st round pick in either future years, two or three years out.

Players may not be traded again for 60 days after signing as a free agent or being traded: This rule is meant to discourage signing players with the intent to trade them immediately. Players signed during the free agency period are eligible to be traded after December 15th. Players signed or traded any other time must wait 60 days before being traded again. Players that are resigned by the same team during free agency are eligible to trade immediately.

Teams can make any trade that leaves them under the salary cap. If a team is over the salary cap, then the salaries they are receiving must be no more than 125% of the salaries they are trading away plus 1/55th of the current salary cap.

Trades are permitted until the 99th day of the season.

Trades with ownerless teams are not allowed.

Future consecutive first round picks may not be traded. If there is a questionable trade the deciding factor will be whether the FBB program allows the trade. It has internal checks to validate trades and will be the ultimate decision maker. This also allows people to ‘test’ their trades before posting them.

When trades are completed FBB automatically resets your roster to its liking to prevent invalid lineups. Know that the computer will mostly likely not set your team up the way you would want it to, so don’t submit a trade unless you have the next day’s game simulations off (no games scheduled) or are willing to play the next scheduled games with the computer lineup. Trades are typically processed after the days simulation to allow GM’s the most time to submit a new line-up. Also, if there are injured players the computer will not put them on your depth chart, so even if they are healthy later in the sim they may not play until either a coach/GM updates their settings or another roster change causes the computer to reset your roster.

Waivers

The number of days on the waiver wire for the WBA is set to 0 during free agency. This means that players will go straight to the FA pool when cut (waived). However, during the season, the waiver wire is set to 10 meaning the player will be on the waiver wire for 10 days before going to free agency. While on the waiver wire another team can pick them up under the terms of their previous contract.

It is important to note that immediately before the season, as teams are attempting to get to 12 men, that the WBA waiver rule is set to zero days. The order is first-come-first-serve. Suggestion: Make minimum bids on players during Free Agency so that you are at 12 men rather than hoping someone good is still on the waiver wire. Players waived as a result of a trade may not be picked up by either team participating in the trade.

Finance Definitions

Salary Cap: The maximum amount teams can spend on players without using any exceptions.

Luxury Tax Threshold: The amount teams must spend in order to be charged luxury tax. Currently, the tax will be equal to the amount the team is over the threshold.

Mid Exception: The maximum starting salary for players signed to the mid exception. This value can be split between multiple players.

Low Exception: The maximum starting salary for players signed to the low exception. This value can be split between multiple players.

Max Contract Length: The maximum contract length that you can use when signing players from your own team.

Max FA Contract Length: The maximum contract length that you can use when singing players from other teams.

Max Yearly Raise: The maximum raise you can give each season when signing players from your own team.

Max FA Yearly Raise: The maximum raise you can give each season when singing players from other teams.

Waiver Length: The number of days players that are waived spend on the waiver wire. The WBA waiver length is currently set to 10 days during the season and 0 days during free agency.

Revenue Sharing: Teams share a percentage of their revenue with other teams.

Season Stages

There are eight stages to each season. They are in the following order:

Offseason: This is the period where it is possible to change league rules as well as expand/contract teams using the league editor. Any changes for the upcoming season must be complete before moving on. The offseason concludes with the draft lottery.

Staff Hiring: The staff hiring period will proceed until all teams have a full staff. This includes a General Manager, Head Coach, 3 assistants, and a scout. There will be no stealing of another team’s coaching staff by human players. Occasionally, there will be a computer controlled development team that has open coaching spots and will be able to randomly steal from a human team.

Draft Period: The draft period is when dispersal, expansion, and rookie drafts will take place in that order. There are 2 rounds to the amateur draft, so teams only have two rounds of picks to trade. Scouting potential rookies has many inherent challenges. As a result there is a chance that the scouts misjudge a players potential (10% for first round pick and 25% for second round pick). Adjustments will be made to the players accordingly.

There is a 50/50 chance that the misjudged player is better or worse than scouts believed for first round players and a 75/25 percent chance in the second round. Adjustments are 1-20 points in each statistical category. There is a 10% chance that each adjusted rookie will have a 2-40 point adjustment to each category.

Draft Picks: Teams may not make a trade that leaves them without a 1st-Round pick in consecutive future seasons.

International Players: In addition to players coming to the WBA from the GCBA (Global Collegiate Basketball Association) they also come to the WBA from the IBF (international Basketball Federation). The IBF is a lower tier of professional basketball leagues. But, all the greats dream of playing in the WBA!

1. Players in the IBF must make themselves available for the draft by December 1^st

A. Dave Williams has developed a program that takes all the players in the multiple leagues of the IBF and computes a list of players who has made themselves available.

B. Age for players coming from the IBF to the WBA is 19 – 25 as of October 1^st

C. All players must have competed in 35 games before entering into the WBA

2. Players are giving a % of a chance that they will sign and come to the WBA

A. There are multiple categories that make up a players’ mind on him signing to the WBA

Age – The closer the player is to 25 the higher his % to sign is.
Money – Even though there is a chance a player will make more money in the WBA they are entering the league on a rookie contract and some players in the IBF will be making more at the time of deciding to sign or not.
Draft Position – The higher the better.
Team – Winning is better. Losing team doesn’t hurt the chance, but not as good if the team was a winning team.

3. Random factor. The % is a good indication on whether the player will sign, but there is still a random factor (human element) that the player won’t sign.

4. Once an IBF player is drafted and has decided not to sign the team who drafted the player will continue to own the player’s rights for 3 years from the year he was drafted.

A. If that player is traded the player’s right goes with him.

B. Player’s right decision in the 2^nd year is off of the same criteria as stated above in section B.

1. Organizational Points will be added to the % chance to sign for the player
   1. Four questions will be asked by the player for the team to answer. Each question is worth up to 5 points. For a total of 20 points.

5. After three years of the IBF player not signing with a WBA team he will stay in the IBF and will not become a free agent.

*****Special Thanks To Dave Williams For The IBF Program.*****

Free Agency: Free Agency is a 30 day period near the end of the offseason where teams are able to make contract offers to any players that are not under contract to other teams. Contract offers are made by going to Negotiations under the player profile screen. Players who have not changed teams via free agency for at least three seasons are considered to have Bird Rights. You are allowed to offer them any salary up to the max salary in order to resign them. The WBA also allows a Mid and Low exception for signing free agents. These will be given to you at the start of the free agency period if your team is over the salary cap or if your current salary plus the value of the exception would place you over the cap. Unused exceptions count against the salary cap during the free agency period.

The free agency period is a 30 day period where teams can submit offers to free agents. At the end of the 30 days The WBADEV (developmental league) will run its draft out of the remaining free agents.

If all owners are finished with the Free Agency before the Free Agency is completed it can be accelerated. Teams will make bids online. GMs not making bids for free agents will forfeit their team. Inactive teams will be run by the CPU for competitiveness

Training : Players are assigned their offseason training orders in preparation for the upcoming season. Any improvements will take place once camps are complete.

Changes will not be visible immediately after the training period is complete, but will turn up throughout the season.

Training Camp groups

– Inside: Inside scoring and rebounding
– Shooting: FT, Jump shot and 3p shot
– Handling: Handling and passing
– Post defense: Post defense and shot blocking
– Perimeter defense: Perimeter defense and stealing
– Condition: Quickness, strength, jumping and stamina

The ability of the coaching staff plays into the development of the player. In addition to the collective star power of the coaches, the overall team environment, playing time received and continued contentment status all play into player development.

Preseason: During the preseason teams will play a number of exhibition games in preparation for the regular season. These will not count towards the final team records. During this time teams may carry up to 20 players.

Regular Season: Games now count and rosters must be set. Teams can carry up to 15 players with a max of 13 and a minimum of 8 active players on the roster.

Postseason: The playoffs are completed and a champion is crowned.

Team Staff
The team staff consists of the General Manager, Head Coach, 3 assistant coaches, and the team scout. Staff members are rated in the following skills:
Scouting Current Ability: Used to determine the player’s current ability.

Scouting Potential Ability: Used to determine the player’s future potential.

Coaching Inside: Affects inside scoring and rebounding.

Coaching Shooting: Affects free throw shooting, jump shooting, and 3-point shooting.

Coaching Handling: Affects handling and passing.

Coaching Post Defense: Affects post defense and shot blocking.

Coaching Perimeter Defense: Affects perimeter defense and stealing.

The skills of the coaching staff will have an effect on both player performance during games as well as development of skills. For each coaching category you can assign up to three staff members on the staff window. You will get a rating based on your coaching skill of one to five stars. Scouting of players is done by the scout only. The scout will rate players multiple times per season and will adjust their evaluations of the players based on a combination of previous scouting results and the current evaluation.

Roster Management
Roster management is done from the roster screen. During the offseason and preseason teams can carry up to 20 players on the roster. Once the regular season begins teams can have a maximum of 15 players on the roster with 13 players active. There is a minimum of 8 active players. If the waiver wire is enabled, any player that you release may be claimed by another team. You will not be responsible for any of the contracts for players claimed by other teams. For anyone that you release that is not claimed by another team, 50% of the salary that you owe them beyond the minimum salary will continue to be counted against your salary cap for all remaining seasons of the contract. Players making the minimum salary can be signed and released with no penalty. Any player younger than 26 may be sent to the developmental league for a chance to appear in games. Players may be sent to the developmental league and recalled at any point during the regular season. All roster transactions must be completed prior to the playoffs, and only players who have played 40 or more regular-season games in the development league can participate in the development league playoffs. Once the playoffs begin, rosters are locked and players can no longer be transferred between leagues.

Rosters

All teams must have 12 players on their rosters at all times. Players are allowed to play out of position. Many players are versatile in the WBA.

The only way to change a player’s position is by playing them at the desired position, this is determined by where they play the majority of their minutes.

Rosters for both leagues are frozen on the first day of the playoffs. Players are no longer allowed to move between the WBA and development league. Even though computer-controlled teams may activate and deactivate players, there is no benefit to this as the rosters are locked. If you want to rest your players, you can change your lineup not to include them.

Player Attributes
Inside Scoring: Helps determine the player’s ability to create all shots as the ability to get inside will open up outside shots as well.

Jump Shot: Affects how likely a player is to make shots away from the basket.

Free Throws: Affects how likely a player is make a free throw.

3-Point Shot: Affects how likely a player is make a 3-point shot.

Handling: Affects how likely a player is to commit a turnover

Passing: Affects the quality of a player’s passes.

Offensive Rebounding: Affects the player’s ability to get offensive rebounds.

Defensive Rebounding: Affects the player’s ability to get defensive rebounds.

Post Defense: Affects the player’s ability to defend inside shots.

Perimeter Defense: Affects the player’s ability to defend outside shots and prevent drives.

Stealing: Affects the player’s ability to steal the ball.

Shot Blocking: Affects the player’s ability to block shots.

Quickness: Has a small affect on driving, rebounding, creating shots, and defense.

Strength: Affects play near the basket including rebounding, shooting, and defense.

Jumping: Helps determine the player’s ability to get to the basket with drives.

Stamina: Determines how quickly players get tired during a game. Tired players will have decreased performance.

It is possible for a severe injury to decrease skill.

Defense ability is a combination of Perimeter Defense, Post Defense, Stealing, Blocking, Quickness and Strength, with height also a factor.

Jumping is purely related toward offense/rebounding.

For forwards/centers, Post Defense, Blocking and Strength are more important.

For guards, Perimeter Defense, Stealing, and Quickness are more important.

Height plays a significant role in shot defense, as well being able to shoot over taller defenders. Weight’s affect is very small.

A player’s status can change to unhappy when they are unhappy with their playing time. They will request a trade if the situation doesn’t improve, and will always test free agency.

Depth Chart
The depth chart allows you to set your starters as well as the order players should be used off of the bench. The legal positions section allows you to set which positions a player can play during a game. If there are no eligible players that can play the position, the game will place what it determines to be the best available player at that position in the game. The playing time setting allows you to set the desired number of minutes for each player. The setting is most important for starters as any unassigned minutes will be filled by players from the bench. Players set with no legal position or no playing time are not a part of the normal playing rotation. They will be used only when it is not possible to fill the lineup with rotation players or if too many members of the rotation are in foul trouble.

Game plan

The game plan your team is running can make a huge difference and should not be overlooked.

Pace: A higher setting means your players will push the action more. This will increase the number of possessions in the game while also tiring players faster. It is most linked to your team’s quickness ratings. If your team has high quickness ratings, then it might benefit your team to set the pace setting higher. If not, especially from the back court players (PG and SG), then your team might benefit from lowering the pace setting.

Motion: A high setting means your team runs a very structured offense. This is beneficial for teams with good passing skill but is harder on players who are good at creating for themselves. The main skills associated with motion are passing and handling. If your team has highly rated passing and handling skills, especially the back court players, then more motion will try to get the ball to designated scorers more often. A lower motion will almost always have the first or second player to touch the ball shoot. More motion gets the ball to the better players but the risk of turnovers is higher, which is why good passers and ball handlers are needed to run a higher motion offense.

3p Usage: Affects the likelihood that your team will look for 3-point shots. If you have just one good three-point shooter, one of two things would be prudent. 1.) Run a slower motion offense and assign only him to get the ball, although this is risky because the offense won’t have other options. 2.) Assume that the opponent may double team him, allowing you to set this low to try to get the ball inside to an open man.

Focus: The general preference for where you would like to shoot the ball. Players will be less likely to shoot if they are outside of the preferred region.

Crash Boards: How much your team should focus on getting the rebound as opposed to getting back on defense or trying to get easy baskets on offense. If you are good at rebounding then you can focus on it less and more on getting back on defense. Basically, one or two good rebounders will pick up the slack for everyone else.

Offense: Setting this too high will increase the chance of more offensive rebounds, at the expensive of making it less likely to stop fast breaks. Setting it to high means guards and other players are less likely to get back on defense quickly as they are trying to “crash the boards” and help get the offensive rebound. This gives the other team more of an opportunity to convert a fast break into points.

Defense: Setting this to high will increase the chance of more defensive rebounds, at the expense of less fast breaks. Your team will not have the guards or other players setting up for an outlet pass and looking to push the ball because they “crash the boards” to help on securing the defensive rebound.

Defense: Teams may specify up to two defenses that they will use. The usage settings will determine how likely you are to use each defense. If they are equal then you will use them equally. If one is 10 and one is 1 then you will mostly use the defense set to 10. Having a quick team with high defense ratings would benefit from more man to man defense. A slower team could benefit from more zone.

Full Court Press: How often your team will run a full court press. This will create turnovers at the expense of more fouls and extra energy use.

Key Players: Up to three key players may be selected. These players get more touches on offense, especially at the end of the game.  Having a bench player as a key player is fine because they would lead the 2nd unit when they are in with no other key players.

Cohesion

Effectively, each team has a base value signifying that team’s culture. After each game, the players on the team will move closer to that value. The importance of each player to the overall cohesion value depends on how talented the player is, as the better players carry more weight. Changing the “end of the bench players”, for instance, should cause the least amount of change to the overall value. Trading between certain teams may have only a small effect on cohesion while trading with others may be a larger hit. If you made no changes to the roster at all then the team would most likely have perfect cohesion within a few seasons

Cohesion builds over time so it is likely to be lower for everyone in a league that is just starting. Depth only tells you if you have a legal lineup or not so it will only say OK or Fix. Talent looks at overall talent but it won’t know that you have nobody who can shoot for instance. Basically, that falls under the team that plays the best isn’t always the one with the best players.

Exporting Team Files

Team files are exported under the team setup section. Use this option to automatically upload the team file to the league FTP server. The recommended order of operations for this is to Save any changes, select Setup from the in-game left-hand menu and select Export to FTP.

 

 

Rewards

The rewards program is a big part of the WBA. Make sure to read through the rewards page to understand how to develop your team through the most effective use of rewards.

Random Events

There are random events in the league which are designed to help simulate a more realistic game environment. The majority of the random events have a positive effect on the team or player. However, there are also some significant negative events.

WBADEV
The WBADEV is the developmental league for the WBA. Each WBA team has an associated developmental team which can be left as computer controlled or can be controlled by the WBA franchise. The Developmental league is an excellent way to develop young talent.

The playoff roster for the WBADEV may only have players who have played at least 40 games in the developmental league that season. WBA teams may not move their young stars down to the WBADEV to help them win a championship if the player has not played at least 40 games in the WBADEV for that season.

Notes for signing and cutting players just off the waiver: