Official BGMA Rulebook

BGMA Genera Introductionl
BGMA is a multiplayer simulation in Basketball GM. The concept is simple. Each member will control an NBA Franchise as they compete against 29 other members to build a dynasty and etch their names in the record books. The season is up-to date and beginning in the current real life year, the 2017-2018 NBA season.

If you are completely new to Basketball GM, here is a good beginners start-up guide to the game itself.

How It Works
The way our league operates is simple. Simulations will be held twice a week. We will sim a total of eleven games each sim resulting in twenty-two games a week. The only exception will be the seventh and final sim of the regular season, which will be ten games. After the eighty-two game regular season is completed, sims will be held three days a week for Playoffs in which we will sim one round at a time. You can find the official league schedule here to find which days sims will be held.

Admins and Moderators will work together to complete each sim, as well as processing every move throughout the week and upload league files for all members to download. These exports can be found in the League Operations thread here.

Member Activity
Taking on a BGMA franchise is a great responsibility, and we expect each member to make an effort to be as active as possible. We’re not asking you to be on 24/7, but try and check in a few times a day to respond to PMs, contribute to discussion, discuss trades, and to see what is going on in the league. We want to create a fun atmosphere that everyone wants to participate in, and by everyone keeping active then the league will become high successful and entertaining. If a member is inactive for more than three days, they will receive a warning. If a member is inactive for six days or more, we have the right to remove any inactive member from their duties immediately and will look for a replacement GM. If you cannot be on for a period of time or need to take a Leave of Absence, please PM an administrator and post in the general discussion thread. This will allow us to find a soft replacement for the period and/or keep you from getting removed as GM.

Salary Cap
The salary cap is $99M. This is the soft cap mean you can go over this cap with certain exceptions. Within that cap, you are allowed to trade any players on your roster. If a trade puts your payroll over $99M, you can do the trade as long as the salaries you're taking back are not over 125% of the salaries you're giving away.

I.E. if your payroll is over $99M and you want to bring a player with a $1.25M salary, you must trade away at least $1M in salaries.

The luxury tax limit is set at $100 million, where you will have to pay 1.5 times the amount you are over. The hard cap is set at $130M. There are absolutely no exceptions that allow you to go over this limit.

You can read about more exceptions in the Free Agency section.

We recommend you playing out these trades in your Basketball GM file as you discuss them with the other GM. By doing this, you both can efficiently check salaries as you are making the deals.

Trades
As the General Manager of your franchise, you hold complete control over roster structure. You can trade any member of your team that meet the salary cap restrictions. Members are encourage to utilize both the trade discussion thread and Private Messages to discuss and negotiate trades. As soon as a deal is reached and both members have agreed in principle, the trade must be posted in the Pending Trades thread by one of the GMs. Once it is posted, both GMs must "confirm" the trade. After both GM's have confirmed the trade, the trade will be moved by an administrator to the Processed Trades thread where it becomes official.

Trades must meet salary and roster limit restrictions, otherwise will be voided and not processed. At this point, both GMs will be notified and they can rework the deal amongst themselves or choose to let the deal fall apart. Any deals that are made after the original trade was posted that involves one of the traded pieces, will also become void. Please be aware of salary cap and roster limits while making deals as this will help things run much more smoothly.

If a member is found abusing the salary cap or roster limit at any time, or continuously mistreats the entire trade process may be removed from their duties as GM.

Draft
The annual rookie draft occurs once a year. Each franchise will make two selections in each draft, unless they no longer own picks due to trades. All draft picks can be traded away, at any point during the season and off-season. GM’s are allowed to trade up picks for up to three years from the current season. I.e. If it’s the 2017-2018 Season, you can trade draft picks from 2018, 2019 and 2020.

After the conclusion of the regular season and off-season, we will hold the Draft Lottery and the Official Draft Order will be posted. Each member must generate a list ranking their top prospects  and send to an administrator. Failure to generate a draft prospect list will result in your pick being auto-picked by Basketball GM.

All rookie contracts are non-guaranteed. Thus, you may cut rookies without their salary counting against the cap until the first game of the season. All rookie contracts become guaranteed once the season starts.

Free agency
Free Agency will utilize player tiers in which certain overalls will get their own thread for Owners to bid on. The tiers will be as follows:

Tier I 70+ overall
Tier II 65-69 overall
Tier III 60-64 overall
Tier IV 55-59 overall
Tier V < 54 overall

When bidding on a player, GM’s must include a free agent pitch as to why that player should sign with their franchise. There are many factors that go into players decisions including:

Money and length of contract
Current state and direction of franchise
Player role
Team depth at position

Restricted Free Agents: GMs have 24 hours to match any offer they get. If you renounce bird rights of one of your RFAs, the player automatically becomes a UFA.

When a teams RFA is offered, they will be notified and given 24 hours to reply. If they fail to reply or match the offer, the player is free to sign with the offering team.

There are a few exceptions for going over the soft-cap of 99M:

Bird rights: This rule entitles teams to re-sign any player who has spent at least 3 seasons on with the franchise, to any deal up to the player maximum, even if it may put your team over the salary cap.

Early Bird Exception: Teams wishing to re-sign their own free agents may use this exception to sign them for 175% of the player's previous salary or the NBA average, whichever is greater.  The contract must be for at least 2 seasons but no more than 4 seasons.

Mid-Level Exception: The current mid-level exception allows teams that have no cap space to spend a maximum of $5M for four years as long as the team did not pay the luxury tax in the previous season. If the team is over the cap and did pay the luxury tax the previous season, the mid-level exception is only $3M for 3 years.

Minimum Salary Exception: Any player can be signed for the league minimum of 0.75M per year with no penalty even if the team is over the soft cap.

Team/player option contracts, partially or non-guaranteed contracts, and no trade clauses are all prohibited in BGMA as it would be extremely difficult to keep track of these details.

There are no exceptions for going over the hard cap of $130M.

Max contracts
Below are max contract you may offer players.

22.5M/yr for players with less than 6 years of experience
27M/yr for players with 7 through 9 years of experience
31.5M/yr for players with more than 10 years of experience

A fifth year may be added if you own a players Bird Rights.

Lineup Settings
Each team must set a starting lineup consisting of Point Guard, Shooting Guard, Small Forward, Power Forward and Center positions. Each team has a roster limit of 15 players. You must accommodate for this limit at the start of each season. You are allowed to release players at any given point of the season to create roster space, however their salary will still count against your teams cap.

Each owner must set their rotation instructions when they post/update their roster. The top five players on your Basketball GM lineup are considered your starters. On Basketball GM, you are allowed to set playing time for each player using the guidelines below:

0 No Playing Time
- Less Playing Time
    Let Coach Decide
+ More Playing Time
++ Even More Playing Time

In BGMA, we are strictly prohibiting franchise’s from using the No Playing Time feature for any given player. If you wish to play that player less, use the Less Playing Time option. Rotation instructions will be taken from your team’s roster thread, therefor if you fail to list instructions then we will play each player at the Let Coach Decide option.

We would like to thank everyone at r/BGMLL/ as we have adopted and reinterpreted multiple guidelines based off their success.