Unwritten Rules of the Game

You know what really boils my blood, when people try to pull shady tricks in order to get ahead. Look, I might be the Thief, and sure as anything I'm gonna steal as many players as I can during the season. But that's between me and the other manager, that's about my view of the future and his view of the future. That's the very essence of trading, there's ALWAYS a winner and a loser.

But at the end of the day, I play by the rules. Whether they be the written rules or the unwritten rules, I follow em. Sure, every now and then I'll toss out a little trick here or there. Such as sending a manager a seperate trade offer instead of a straight counteroffer, that way if he rejects, I can still take the original deal. That's the game, that's all fine and dandy.

But when I hear (from one of our readers) that he was going back and forth with a manager trying to snag a deal on CP3, and they had an outstanding trade offer the other manager was sitting on, and once the CP3 injury news dropped, the trade was accepted and our boy was stuck. That's plain bunk. There's simply no excuse for it, and as a commissioner I certainly wouldn't stand for it.



Look if you push a deal across to another guy because you both know he's injured, but one of you thinks the injury not serious, or won't take as long to heal, that's fine. But when someone is making an offer based on all the relevant current information, and gets snaked because a news story drops and he wasn't fast enough to cancel, well we call that a no - no.

Sure it isn't written into the rule book, and people are free to bend the rules are far as they like, but this is what I would call a gentlemen's rule. Ya just don't do that sort of thing. At the end of the season, we want to look back and say we were the smartest, had the most foresight, knew the right players and executed. Not that we won because we pulled off a snake move on an unsuspecting opponent and screwed them.

In my football league this year I had a similar issue. I was atop my division, battling hard with the kid in second. He caught wind through the grapevine that I was working out a deal with a third manager for Frank Gore (a tier 2 player). In order to negate my deal, he began to send offers to Gore's owner, ridiculous offers like his best two players for Gore. He included a note with the offers (he sent three total) saying 'hey, don't deal Gore to The All-Starz (my team), I'll offer you more'. Of course, as soon as he sent the deals, he'd cancel them. This way Gore's owner would be intrigued away from dealing with me, and the other kid strung him along for a good two weeks (an eternity in football).

That's not how WE win. We win by correctly valuing the players other managers are too emotional to hold onto. We win by using our team analyzer to disect our squad and target those areas we need help in. We win by staying on top of team trades and playing time and streaks. Let them try to win using shady tactics and operating in the gray area.

Alright, I'll get off my soapbox now.

One more thing, they still haven't given a timetable for CP3, nor have they confirmed the type of surgery he'll need. Pay close attention to the situation and don't make any moves to acquire or deal him until we get some more clarification. I might be being foolishly hopeful here, but it could be less than what we've heard.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to play some NBA Live before they update the rosters for CP3's injury...

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