For New Owners

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

So you are a WBA Franchise Owner.

So now WHAT?

(Part I Getting Started)

By James Borbath C.E.O of Toronto Dinos

Well you our excited you have your own pro sports team and unlike NHL owners you don't have to deal with a lock out or labor war. But I suggest to you that this game should give you a new respect for the owners and gms of your favorite sports teams. The first thing you should get a handle on is where your team is at. Did the guy before you bail just cause he couldn't win? Maybe he just got yelled at to much for playing by his wife and had a great team. When you look over your team and evaluate it here are some factors to consider. But before I get into that I suggest that you read and understand all the rules first. If you don't get something people are for the most part willing to help you understand the rules. I would not have them evaluate your team for you though. Opinions of your team sure but at the end of the day these are your competition in the league. So make your own decisions and you will be much more happy with the results and if your not you can understand that it was a mistake that you made. This is YOUR team so never lose site of that. Now back to our evaluation process. Here our some factors you should address before you do anything with your franchise.

1. Draft Picks- Does your team have draft choices. You can find the info out on main site under Draft and than Future Picks. There our certain rules that protect your draft choices for example no team can have no first round picks for two years in a row. So even if the guy before you was an idiot you will still have some assets to work with. GCBA is where all the players come from and most of our owners have came through the GCBA. But once you decide to leave GCBA for WBA don't forget about GCBA. In fact I would recommend having a team in both. This will make your draft days less of a headache as you have an idea of what players skill sets our coming out of GCBA. Although free agency can be a way to make your team better faster (if you are smart about it) the draft still is important. Try to draft players that fit a need. I mean if your team has four centers why get #5? Unless you plan on making a move in realationship to taking that player. That is a good general point to remember with most things in this league on decision may lead to another decision. But you must make sure if you make choice A that you are able to make choice B. Im other word using our example of Centers, If I do draft a Center and i'm overloaded I better have the plan to deal with getting rid of another center locked in stone. Think of it like Dominos successful moves will flow just like dominos falling in a row. But I still say if you have need fill the need even if the guy is not as skilled. Remember to keep in mind when you our thinking abou trading picks where your team is and REALISTICLY evaluate what that pick might be. Same in the other way. If another team is offering you a pick see where that team might be. A first round pick from a team sounds great but who is that team? If they our a constant contender than this picks value is not as good. Be smart with draft picks they our the only guarntee you have in building your team.

2.Contracts- I personally had two huge contracts fall into my hands with my franchise. The natural reaction is these players must be good. However it might be the were ONCE good. So use the Pre- Season to learn if they our worth the money. The WBA works under a cap so managing contracts is key. Two biggest factors our Amounts and Length. See where your team is at in both regaurds. Do you have a lot of guys long term contracts? Understand what players our long term and short term assets for your club. The ones that our long term should be your focus when using reward and training in the offseason. If you don't see a guy staying with you than why build him up for someone else to grab and using free agentcy. Having Flexiblity with your cap is vital to turning things around or if your good already helping you be able to make trades and roster moves. Value the money that you have and max out it's potiental. If you our good with these skills than you will not be scrambling around trying to get your team under the cap before the season starts. Anytime you are in a panic or a rush is when the percentage of making of mistakes goes through the roof. Don't be intimidated by others about making deals relax evaluate it and make a sound choice.

3. Roster- Several things you should look for right away before you even look a if a guy can shoot or rebound or whatever. Positions what do you have depth at and where are you lacking. I mentioned this in draft choices. There our own 48 minutes in a WBA Game. Finding time for four players at same position is close to impossible. Second thing you should evealuate is the age of your team. Our you an aging vetren team or would your team have trouble getting served at the local bar? A player will generally be productive until around the age of 30. After this is a gamble what will happen. So if you have a bunch of players in late 20's try to find a way to get younger. Through trades or the draft. Even a good young guy of waviers may sereve you better in the long run. Now after these two things can these guys play? Ratings to me our like potiental ratings I look at these along with a players stats and combine that with his age and contract to establish if he is worth having. Also establish who you see can be dealt from your roster. Guys who may indeed be good but may not get much time to play because of player in front of him.

Using my team as an example I had Walt Jackson as my starting SF(Drafted 1st overall Season10) than I later acquired SF Ajani Valentine(via Trade with Nebraska. Ajani was 10th pick same season). After a failed experiment with Walt playing the 4 and Ajani the 3 it was clear at best Ajani would be 6th man. So I looked at him as a tradeable asset. Sure enough eventual I found a good deal trading him to Boston for a gaurd in Juarez a young guy who had some WBA Experince already and a second round pick. So when you our looking through your roster see if you have assets like that. If you do just try and see who would be interested and establish what you want out of a deal for him and settle for nothing less and try and get more. Look at the overall picture of your roster as well. What kind of team our you? Can you defend? Can you Score? How do you score is it couple guys or team balanced? In other words see what you teams strength and weakness is. Find players that can build on the strengths or help the weakness. Despite Individual talent basketball is still a collection of the accumlated team talent and performance. Very rarely can one guy come in a save a team single handed. Good team play will lead to good individual play and more important than that consistancy that is what any franchise should have as a goal. Even before winning a title. Be consistant and you may win several titles. Cancun is proof of that.

4. Set Goals- Have a good luck at everything mentioned and sit down and set goals for your franchise. Make them realistic in nature. But still a challenge to achieve. Have short term goals and long term goals. But always remember that long term goals should always out way short term goals 98% of the time. Rare cases might come up where you may think you have a shot at winning. But if its to sneek in the back door to get a 8th playoff seed it probably isn't worth giving away your future for it. I encorage having as many goals as you can. For individuals and the team. Just make sure that they are realistic but not easy to achieve. If you do this your take great pride in having reached them. Also avoid the frustration of not getting them but knowing at the same time it was no walk in the park to reach your goal. This section is really key if you have taken over a bad team. It will take time to make your team good and patience. You don't just walk in a gym work out for a week or two and suddenly you look like HHH!!! Same thing applies here. So these goals are your own awards, M.V.Ps and scoring titles. They will also help you stay focused on the big picture.

5 Learning & Networking- You will learn many things as you go along. People will be more than happy to help you as I hope this article is. However you sometimes should seek out advice or just chat with owners of other teams peroid. Your our the new kid in the classroom so to speak. It's your job to establish who you are to everyone else. This will not only help you learn about the game, it will help you be able to find people to trade with or talk trade with. If nothing else it gives you some people to socialize with if you like that sort of thing. A side note we need more women owners, If you are a woman and reading this my phone # is..... Oh yes and having a sense of humour and having fun our also good.

That raps it up for a basic over view on what you should do now that you have a team. In the end there is no magic formula but following the stuff mentioned here will provide you a good base to start from. In the end you will get out of your team as much or as little as you put into your team. TAKE PRIDE TAKE OWNERSHIP and make this team a reflection of your personality. No one here is an expert(Although Pat's seems darn close) there is lots of ways to win at basketball and no one is more right than the other. But have a PLAN and FOLLOW your plan. If you take away nothing else from this take away that fact. If you don't have a plan than you will not have success.

The Next Steps to Running your Franchise

(Draft,Free Agents, Trades and Rewards)

Part II

Written by James Borbath C.E.O Toronto Dinos

If you have read the first article than you should have some sense of what you have and what you don't have. The next 4 topics give you ideas about how to get what you don't have without losing what you do. In WBA there are 4 ways to improve your team. Draft which we touched on in the last article. Trades which if you read part one you should have some idea what you have that may be attractive to trade to others. Free agents which also were brought up in brief and lastly rewards which is something we have yet to talk about. Remember at the end of the last artcile I stated that you only get what you put into your team? Well this is kind of the test of that expression. You may not realize this but my team is earning a reward as I write this article helping you out. Confused well lets start to explain rewards to you and how you get them and what you do with them once you get them.

1 Rewards- This is one of my favorite parts of the WBA. You will notice a rewards page link on the main page. This breaks down the 2 ways you can earn rewards and the multi-options you have to do with the points earned once you have them. Earn rewards point can be broken into 2 parts. On Court awards such as having players or your organization win award points based on you performance with in a season. These our cut and dry and majority of our voted on by your fellow owners. The second part of earning rewards is off the court activities. Real they can be anything at all that contributes to the league in some way. There our basic examples given. Majority of which have a media element. I as someone who enjoys broadcasting and was trained in it enjoy that aspect. However it can be anything. This article is an example of something worthy of reward point. My best advice is find something you like to do and find a way to apply it to the WBA. Some people like doing artwork my logo was designed by a fellow WBA Owner. Whatever you enjoy and like doing will make it easier to complete projects to the conclusion and produce reward points. Reward points our just encouragement to make this league as a whole better. In return for that you can make your players better. When using a reward on a player take into account that players age and contract status. Last thing you want to do is use a reward on a player that is not part of your long term plans. So use rewards wisely. You mad the effort to earn them so don't waste your effort by using a reward in a way that won't help your team. You can only use 2 rewards in a season and only once on a given player. Another reason you should value rewards points. What you want to do is ethier improve a players strengths or improve a weak area of his game. But note if your player is rated A- or better than that area will not improve im a meaniful way. But using on weakness will speed up a players devolopment. Another time will discuss off-season training which along with rewards can be used to greatly improve to players a year. If you do not earn 500 reward points in a year and use them than in my mind your not getting or giving 100% to your ball club. This isn't the NBA no floating in this league. But if you do you'll be lucky to succeed. The great teams our lucky cause they put the work in. So use rewards and take advatage of them they our WBA's version of an assitant coach who will work on your players devlopment.

2-Trades- Here is the basic run down of how trades work. You may trade players,draft choices adnd cash up to 3 million dollars. No deal can be based on cash only. Meaning you can't just buy a player from another team. When a deal is agreed to it must first be within all the teams involved cap structure. A team can not go over the cap from a trade or if over the cap through the rookie exception rule(teams are allowed to sign rookies drafted even if they go over the cap) the team can not increase it's salary. If that is all correct than the trade is sent by the owners involved to a trade commitee made up of several vetern owners in the league. All that is needed is majority votes for trade to go through. Than the trade will be approved and processed by the leagues commisioner. You may not like the idea of a trade having to be approved at first I felt that way. But it actually will stop you from making what might be a horrible rookie mistake so see it as postive safe gaurd for you as a new owner. It also is there to protect the league from team getting an unfair advantage. There in theory is no limit to amount of teams involved in a trade. So you like 3 ways no problem if you are able to pull it off. The last thing is there is a trade cap for all teams of 10 trades per season and a trade deadline will be set at some point after the all star game. Now that you understand the rules let's give you some trade do's and don'ts. This our simple guidelines remember there is an exception to ever gudieline. Sometimes these guidlines might not fit.

Do these:

1. Research- look at all factors involved in a trade from your teams perspective

2 Remain Calm- Trades our not easy in a league with a cap for every ten trades you try u may pull off 1

3 Postive and Negative- What our the benfits short term and long term and same on negative side

4 Address needs- Does this trade met a need for your club. What is it? Don't know? Don't trade

5 Who started this- Was this you trade or an offer. If it's an offer than make certain you our getting full value.

6 Trading is not required- Remember you never have to make a trade. The best move can be no move.

Don'ts

1 Trade fever- Trading can be addictive ask espo. Only make trades to fill needs not to get you name in the paper

2 Morgage Future- Draft choices and cash have value down the line. Player has that new toy feel but value your cap and picks

3 Feel Pressure- If smeone is desparate to do a deal thats not your problem. Be smart do your homework.

4 Trust- Don't get con jobbed. If an owner is feeding you a line about anything don't buy it. After time you will have opinions on who you can trust.

5 Close Minded- Listen to any offer. listening and doing are not the same.

6. Inflexible- Trades our give and take very few trades will go down as they are orginally presented continue to anyalis as you change elements in a trade

There could be a lot more. But thats a good overview. Try to get the maxium out of every deal you make. Thats not to say be greedy but if you can get a pick added or a nice bench player added in go for it. Worst thing that happens is your told no. But if you never push to get that extra something you'll never know if you could have got it. When you have done a trade than it is done just move forward don't look backwards. If you trade someone or something you have if you been following these guideline made a choice that has been well though out so don't second guess it. I see that as a big mistake some owners in this league make. A trade is a divorce you divorce yourself from assets. If you want to re-marry a player you should do it via Free Agency not through another trade for the same asset you gave away. That is counter productive at best. At wrost you have given up two assets to get one. One last thing about trading and talking trades. Really other than how you do drafting and on the floor this is how people will judge you. Trading is a big part of build a reputation around the league in a postive or negative way. So you owe it to yourself to put your best foot forward when dealing with other teams. Reputations can be hard to shake and it takes at least 2 people to make a deal so if you devlop a bad reputation than trading will become very diffcult for you.

3 Draft- This is the one day you'll see the whole WBA get together at one time for one event. Be nice if there was others but there isn't. The draft is a time when not only can you make your selections but a lot of trading and dealing goes on too. Have all kinds of people being social as well. When you are the new guy it can all be a bit overwhelming. When I joined the leaue i was given about a day and half notice and knew nobody in the league who was at the draft. But remember business before social. Come to the draft ready. Do your home work and unless you pick first be prepared to have option A through D ready to go. A smart owner should have made his decisions on players before the clock ever starts ticking on his team. Last second decisions have higher % of being bad ones. Understand also that a player you draft there listed skill levels our based on playing in the GCBA not the WBA and the offseason rookie camp will determin your players abilties as far as WBA is concerned. Two schools of thought for drafting neither is wrong. You ethier take the best player on the board. A wise move if you are a weak club,Or you fill a team need usually a position need or could be you want a good scorer or a big body to rebound but whatever the case this can be a wise move for a team on the rise.Once you have drafted players you will need to sign them based on the salary scale in the rules. Remember cap is not an issue to sign a rookie. However if you over the cap just after draft day you will miss out on free agents. As free agent season starts right after the last pick is made.

4- Free Agents- This is the highest risk element to improving your team. Do it right and you could see amazing results. Do it wrong however and you can set your franchise back a number of seasons. There is a system for free agentcy that will determin where a player signs based on offers made by owners. You can look at the rules to understand that. But this is to help you manage your franchise. The biggest sin of free agent peroid is over paying. there may be a player that is very talented but if you bust the bank to get him you will have cap trouble for years to come. Im addition the higher salary a guy gets the harder it is to be able to trade that guy if you want to down the line. Free agent peroid should be as much about getting value as it is about getting stars. So when you make your selections of players try to make offers that will fit within your team salary structure. Let's say after figuring things out you had 10 million to spend. Now for that amount of money you should be able to sign a better than average player. In fact maybe even a great player. But if I could use that money and get 2 or 3 above average players I maybe in a better position than you with just the one great guy. Age is also a factor when making these decisions. If a guy is 28 and you offer him a big money 6 year deal what will you be getting for that big money come year 6? Will anyone want an over paid 34 year old in a trade? See the key is to take all things into account. You don't want to be paying big money to a guy who is on the decline. Common sense is key in free agentcy those who have it will improve their clubs. Those who don't will pay a heavy price at some point.

All of the areas we have touched on have one common theme. That is common sense. Realistic goals can be achieved with common sense and good judgement. In the next Part of the series will get you out on the floor and into a season. We will look at wavier wire and pre season training as well. These articles are designed to help give you a basic knowledge and with that and hopefully your own inteligence you can create a winner. But always remember everyone has their own thoughts and ideas on everything I talk about. Another skill is being able to adapt as things happen such as injuries, league re-alignment or expansion. Lots of things can happen and how you re-act to them may be the difference between a team in the basement ot a team fighting for a WBA Title. Just if you have read this and win a WBA title don't forget to thank James Borbath.

New Owners Guide Part III (Player Demands, Focus Training, Lineups, Preseason Regular Season)

By now you have a headache from reading Parts 1&2. You also realize my typing and spelling can suck at times. But more important than that you should have a good grasp of what your team is and how to improve it. This final section will go from the board room to the hardwood of the WBA. Earlier you learned about contracts. Well every offseason you will get via email a list of player demands. After you say thos greedy SOBs you need to do some work thats where we will get started.

Player Demands:

You will get a list of demands for ALL players on your roster NOT just expiring contracts. Why you ask? Well even though a player is under contract you may wish to extend his contract. Why would I do that? Simple a guy may be young and on verge of stardom so you can get him cheaper than you would if he played out his contract. I had 1st overall pick Walt Jackson. being first overall gave him a contract of 4 million dollars for 3 years the max contract any rookie can get. Walt was rookie of the year and in many peoples mind a great talent that should become a star. So when his demand came in i made it a priorty to try and sign him He wanted 9.25 million and I was able to over slightly less at 8.99 million. Thats 4.99 Million raise but he is under an extension for 5 years locked in at that amount. Had he played out his contract and developed the way most see him he would have a much higher price tag. So you ma take a hit now but better now than bigger later especially if it is a key player on your team. If you choose to do nothing about a players demand he simply will keep his deal he has. If that deal is concluded he becomes a free agent but you still have the right to bid on him during free agentcy and will gain some advantage having been the players last team played for. The longer he was with the team the greater the advantage. However this is still a major risk to let a player hit the free market especially if he has talent. Teams tend to break the bank at times to get a guy and you may despite a slight advantage get priced out of resigning your player. For a full explanation take a look at the contracts page in the rules. That will break it all down as to how free agents make the choices of who to play for. The idea with player demands is to try and keep all the good talent you have under cotract and avoid free agentcy without having to pay to much money as a player gets older extensions are a more risky proposition. The maxium amount of years for an extension is 5 years. As with many things we have spoke of in previous thing remember to manage your cap. Ask some owners they can tell you examples of teams that didn't and the price they paid. Buyouts don't play for you they just take your money and if you don't manage cap effectively you may be forced into buy outs. The rules on going over the cap will only get more restrictive moving forward so pay attention and do your math.

Rookie Re Rates:

Nothing you can do here but so you are aware the rookies drafted will go through a rookie camp and have the re rates done on there various areas. They will all drop down some more than others. Hopefully you drafted a Lebron James type rather than a Kwame Brown. Just be aware of that as you move from draft until this is done. If someone offers you a rookie in a trade realize he still must go through this process and think of his skills as a grade lower than what you see. if anything you will under rate the players abilities. Better under than over.

Focus Training:

Automatically all players will train all areas in the off season. the improvement or decline of skills will be based on a players age. You as the owner can direct a player to train on certain areas specifically. The amount of areas you can ask is also based on age. Refer to the traioning section for a detailed explaination..The idea of focus training is to ethier improve a player in an area of strength or in an area of weakness. No focus training is allowed if a player is rated a- or better. You also have an option on players under 25 to learn a new postion if you choose this the player will forfit his focus training for that offseason. So be sure the switch is necessary. Player could end up being able to play both his orginal poition and the new position after he makes the switch. a full explanation is given in the training section. Focus training has an element of luck to it but it is an obvious way to improve a player. This is why I always get a kick out of people talking trash before this event has happened. A team that has an overall good performance in focus training can instantly become a little better than advertised. Plus some players could have rewards coming to them as well. I like to call that a double up. If you can ever double up a player do it. The result will be a much improved player from last season. So if you out of the playoffs still keep working earning reward points and you can have yourself a double up player the next season. Focus training is a big part of devloping your team take the time to make good choices it will help you down the line.

Line Ups:

You will need to download the line up editor from the site. This will have your current roster of players. Also whenever you make a chaange to your roster you'll need to download it again for your updated roster. There is a detailed explain nation of how to use the line up editor in the rules section. This is just some tips to help you. First thing you will need to do is decide the amount of minutes you want your players to play. This is a maxium amount you would like them to play there is no gaurntee they will play that entire amount. They could get into foul trouble, get injured or foul out. Players have a stamina rating and in match ups you will see listed a number of minutes a player is capable of playing. Going above that number on average will eventual catch up with that player. It may cause an injury or him to under perform. The idea of the entire lineup you create is to max out what your teams potiental is. after you establish minute you establish proirity 1 being the starter and anything higher being a bench player at that postion. Anything above 10 and a player will likely on see the floor in a case of an injury or foul out or blowout. So the higher the number the less likely that guy is called on by the coach. Once you have that there are 3 things that come next. OI(offence intensity) this is rated 1-5. 1 means a player will look to pass first shoot second and will be very careful in handling the ball and making plays. 5 is the opposite meaning the guy will jack it up all over the floor and take chances and risks. Obviously if you have a guy that shoots poorly you would not want him taking shots or at least a lot of shots. Postion also should factor into this setting. Having a PG set on 5 doesn't make much sense seeing as he is the primary ball handler and is responsible for getting the ball to everyone else. He should be set 1-3 depending on how good a scorer he is. other players at other postions are more geared by ratings if you best player is at small foward than you likely have him set at 4-5 cause you would ideally like him to take the majority of shots. A higher number also increases the chance of player picking up an offensive foul. DI( Defence Intensity) again rated 1-5. % being altra agressive taking chances going for steals and blocks but also increasing the chance of fouls. If a player as a bad foul rating this will see him hit the showers real quick. 1 is a passive defence and little risks are taken and will also avoid fouls being called on that player to a degree. Where you set it is based on ratings and when you get to know the league better the player that he will be guarding. In WBA postion plays postion your sg guards oppoents sg and vice versa. But till you get to know who is good and who isn't just stick with your defence ratings to guide your decisions. RI( Rebound intensity) This is how hard a player will hit the glass. Again rated 1-5. 5 meaning he cares windex in his shoe cause he is on the glass so much. 1 being he has no desire to rebound unless the ball comes right to him and hits him on the head. Obviously position has a lot to do with this Rating. PF and Centers should likely be set high and SF-PG lower unless they are exceptional in that area. RI is for both boards offence and defence. So the obvious reward can be some grabage points and some defence stops. But the risk is again fouls if a player agressively attacks the glass he runs the risk of fouls. You can protect your players from fouls by having it set for them to be taken out if the accumlate a certain number of fouls and save them that can be done in the last part of the editor callet FT that along with the foul trouble ratio will get a player out of the line up when he is in danger of fouling out and determin when he is put back in. a setting of 1 ususally is a smart idea for all your starters. Bunch players unless you think the guy is key or he plays a lot of minutes you can leave it 0. The last thing to worry about is the BLW numbers. This will determin when a game is considered a blowout. In others words garbage time. Each player has an individual number and there is a team winning and losing number. This just will help you rest your stars if you have a game well in hand or if you getting your butt kicked. you determin what the numbers are. So if you think a 20 point lead makes you safe than that should be the winning number. If you think you have no chance down 25 that should be the losing number. None of it is an exact science when it comes to lineups but when the results of the game come out look at the settings you had and see how each individual did. Eventually you will find what makes a guy work best for you. One last important thing I almost forgot once all your setting are done save your team file and than email it to the commish so you have the line up settings you have chosen.

Pre Season Tourny:

This is an annual event where all the teams play in a tournament format. It on the surface means nothing but it allows you to learn about your team in game situations. Lets you see what all your players can do. Gives you a chance to play with line up editor and get use to it. However do not take the results to seriously. Teams all have various approachs to this event so you may not be seeing a best a team has to offer. This is all about eveulating your team not as much sizing up you competition. After a few seasons in the league you'll understand who is doing what by if the players he normally uses see the floor a lot or is he just seeing wht is new rookies can do? Ethier way its irrealvant to me this is a simple self evalution process. But if you beat a team and it looks like they gave it there best shot than good for you.

Reg Season:

The time has come to hit the floor. with all you have learned hopefully you can guide your team effectively. Be alert to player injuries and adjust your line ups try to have your players go harder in games you fill are winable games. Praying for some good old fasion luck is alright as well. That just about does it. If you every want any further thoughts feel free to get in touch with me. I'll be happy to help.

James Borbath

Dinos CEO