Volume 2 Issue 49 November 1998
FROM COMMISSIONER SCOTT ELLIS, 2ND AMER. BASKETBALL LEAGUE
Who's trading?
Heat sends L. Johnson & Douglas to Deerfield for B. Russell and L. Wright.
This deal takes effect with games played beginning Dec. 31. The proper way to make the adjustment on your official SABL league (the "1998-99 S" league) is this:
1. The teams making the trades should not adjust their rosters until all their games prior to Dec. 31 are played. Also, the trading teams cannot send out any game plan (disk) instructions for any games from Dec. 31 on until their rosters are adjusted and until all their games prior to Dec. 31 are played. This is for SABL league statisitical reasons. TRADING TEAMS, YOU'LL HAVE TO BE ON THE BALL OR IT WILL CAUSE ME EXTRA WORK! YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING THIS HAPPEN, NOT ME. CONTACT LATE COACHES TO GET THE JOB DONE. LET ME KNOW IF THEY AREN'T COOPERATING. THIS IS THE PRICE YOU PAY TO TRADE DURING THE SEASON.
2. If you have any games with these teams before Dec. 31 (like I do), do not trade these players until after you've played those games.
3. After you play those games, or if you don't have any games with these teams before Dec. 31, you can go ahead and trade those players.
4. DO NOT DELETE OR CLONE THESE PLAYERS! YOU MUST USE THE TRADING FUNCTION TO MOVE THESE PLAYERS FROM ONE TEAM TO ANOTHER. IF YOU DON'T IT WILL MESS UP OUR OFFICIAL LEAGUE DATABASE AND COULD MESS UP STATS OR GAME PLAN INSTRUCTIONS AN OPPONENT WOULD SEND TO YOU OR YOU WOULD SEND TO AN OPPONENT. IT WILL ALSO CAUSE ME A LOT OF EXTRA WORK AND COST YOU PENALTY POINTS.
You can send game files to me anytime!
Just because the constitution says you should send stats to me once a month doesn't mean you can't send them earlier. In fact, if it's more convenient for you to email me results at the same time you email results to your opponents, go ahead! That would be great!
Changes on instruction and result due dates
These are excerpts from our SABL Consitution with regards to when instructions should arrive at your opponents's place. It basically does away with "block" terminology and pegs everything to the actual date the games should be played. If you are a week late, you get penalty points unless you have a darn good excuse.
"SCHEDULE
Instructions should reach a coach by the day the games are scheduled to be played.. If
they don’t, coaches must phone the opposing coach to find out what’s happening.
If no instructions are received a week after that, the coach should contact the
commissioner, who must notify the coach within another week on how to proceed. Every time
a coach is a week late with instructions, he receives one penalty point. Accumulation of
21 points means expulsion from the league.
If a coach gets a month behind schedule, unless a special circumstance exists, he will be
expelled from the league. The commissioner must authorize autoplayed games or whatever it
takes to keep the SABL running on time. It is the responsibility of coaches to inform the
league and commissioner of circumstances which may cause lateness. It’s not the
responsibility of the commissioner to nursemaid coaches."
"STATISTICAL REPORTING
It’s the responsibility of each coach to keep his own team stats and mail them to the
statistician by the 21st of each month during the season. Individual game files (.gfl) and
box scores (.prt) must be sent. They are due to be in the statisician’s hands by the
1st of every month, during the season. If you don’t send in or are late with your
stats, you won’t be listed in the league leader reports and you’ll get three
penalty points. If you’re late three months in a row, you’re expelled from the
league. Accumulation of 21 points means expulsion from the league.
Also, it’s the responsibility of each coach to get series stats to his opponent within two weeks of the day the games are scheduled. Individual game files (.gfl) and box scores (.prt) must be sent. If an opposing manager has not received results within one week, he should call the opposing manager to see what’s happening. At this time the offending coach will receive 1 penalty point. If he still hasn’t received results within another week, then he should call the commissioner, who then must notify the coach within another week on how to proceed. The offending coach also will receive another penalty point.. It is the responsibility of coaches to inform the league and commissioner of circumstances which may cause lateness. It’s not the responsibility of the commissioner to nursemaid coaches."
Additionally, coaches can use any players obtained in trades made on or before Nov. 8 from now until Dec. 30. Any players obtained in trades made between now and Nov. 30 can be used on Dec. 31 and in the month of January.
The NBA isn't playing, but the SABL is!
Our season has opened as defending the South Division champion St. Lucie Aces defeated Steve Walters' Galactic Thunder in the first two games of their schedule, 132-123 and 143-106. In Game 1, Galactic held a 102-90 lead going into the last quarter, but the Aces then outscored Galactic 42-21 in the fourth quarter to win. Chris Crawford scored 36 points in Game 2 for Steve, while Gary Grant nailed 20 points in in 18 minutes in Game 1 for Walters. In Game 1 for the Aces, Alan Houston scored 12 points in 3 minutes and in Game 2, Gary Payton tallied 31. WOW, WHAT FUN!
Check out our new compact schedule. You can have as many as 24 games in the first month! Also, please note that some teams (such as the Galactic Thunder) have NO GAMES SCHEDULED IN MARCH. Some teams schedules finish in February and some teams have a few games in March. Most teams finish most of their schedule in February.
And some of these early contests may well decide some divisional crowns. Galactic takes on St. Lucie right away and if you think Galactic is down from last year, check 'em out again. In the playoffs, they will be just as tough.
Garden City did get Duncan and Foyle may come around for next season, but otherwise, the Heat should have no trouble dispatching GC. New Deerfield Coach Doug Crandall inherited the best team in the West Division and should Finney, but the Longhorns could win with draft pick ups Maurice Taylor and Brevin Knight. And don't forget a guy called MF for Finney.
In the East, Akron is looking real good against Royal Conference Champ Blocher. The Blimps finally have the big men to compete, getting Ilgy, Michael Stewart and Ben Wallace in the draft. They've always had everything else. However, Nick team still has Kemp and Reggie Miller, and Nick Anderson's guard is dynamite. A close one, too. Defending World Champion Brooklyn faces a Great Lakes team building for the future. The Magicians had a magical draft, selecting the youngest player in the NBA last season, Tracy McGrady. Combine that with Tim Thomas, Derek Anderson and Chauncey Billups and WOW! Look out next season! Also building for tomorrow is Meade, who starts the season vs. a Richmond. team that could take it all in the Royal this season. Meade's pick ups of Ron Mercer, Tony Battie and Jacque Vaughn look sweet.
In the Classic Conference, the South divisional title could be decided right off the bat as Galactic takes on St. Lucie. I traded off all my draft picks, but Steve Walters did and just like always, he picked up two of the best cards in the draft, Chris Crawford and Gary Grant (Marko Milic had the other one, but he wasn't drafted.). My teams' good, but Steve's will be just as good in the playoffs. Chapel Hill will be led to the slaughter vs. new Coach Cody Beard's Carolina Roughnecks. Cody's franchise has had oodles of talent the past three seasons, but bad coaching has led it nowhere. Hopefully, that will be different this year. The Feeney - I mean North division gets started as Bettendorf battles the Dazzlers. Bobby Jackson was a great first round pick for Davenport and with Barkley, the Dazzlers should tromp the rebuilding Druids. And another divisional race could be decided in the Miles-Memphis match up. Keith Van Horn transformed the Blues into contenders. In the other season-opener, Tulsa and Tri City are pretty evenly matched.
Have fun everyone, and don't forget to send both game files and box scores to me for every game you play this season! Please don't forget to do this or you will give me a lot of extra work and slow the league down! AND YOU'LL ALSO GET PENALTY POINTS IF YOU DON'T!!!!
Also, another reminder to follow our 25% rule - No player can play more than 25% of his season total NBA minutes. That means if player had 1000 NBA minutes, he has 1250 SABL minutes. However, there are no minute per game restrictions in the SABL.
How to import game plans & files, etc.
For all our new coaches, here's brief instructions on how to import & export game files & plans:
TO SEND INSTRUCTIONS AND RESULTS:
Step 1 - Attach the file to an email message. Your email program should have a paper clip
icon or words that say attach or insert file. Look in your SOMBK\LEAGUES directory for
files that end in .gfl and .gpl. GFLs are game
files (box scores/stats) and GPLs are game plans (computer instructions).
Step 2 - Send them to your opponent and send the game files only (box scores and stats) to the commissioner (ME).
TO IMPORT GAME FILES AND PLANS FROM OPPONENTS:
Step 1 - Save the attached gfls and gpls to a floppy disk.
Step 2 - For .gfls, start the SOM game and go to Statistical Functions, then Process Game Files, then Import the game file. For .gpls, start the appropriate League Game and then import the game plan under your opponent's lineup.
WARNING! Don't delete players!
When folks get traded during our season this year, USE THE TRADING FUNCTION TO TRANSFER PLAYERS FROM ONE TEAM TO ANOTHER. DO NOT DELETE PLAYERS OR YOU WILL MESS UP EVERY GAME PLAN (gpl) AND GAME FILE (gfl/box scores/stats) THAT YOU SEND OUT FROM THEN ON. IT WILL COST THE LEAGUE A LOT OF TIME AND ME A LOT OF EXTRA WORK AND YOU MAY GET PENALTY POINTS FOR IT. IF I IMPORT A MESSED-UP DISK FROM YOU INTO OUR LEAGUE STATISTICAL DATABASE, IT WILL MESS IT UP AND I'LL HAVE TO REDO EVERYTHING, SOMETIMES MANUALLY!!! IF YOU SCREW IT UP, I MAY BE LOOKING FOR A NEW STATISTICIAN, YOU!!!!!
Send players up and down by the series
You can only have 12 active players on your roster per series. You have to let your opponent know who is on your roster via your instructions. Include player names and real-life NBA teams. If you send a computer game file, of course, all this stuff is already on it and you don't have to send written snail or email instructions with it.
You can send players up and down by each individual 2, 6 or 8-game series, but you can't do it by individual games.
Program your team to win!
As you examine our league disk, you'll notice that all the players on your team are exact clones of their NBA counterparts - except for one team: mine. If you look at my team, you'll see an example of how to legally program your players.
Strat programs players and NBA teams to try and ensure that they finish about the same as they did in the previous real-life season. If you decide to let the computer run your team, to make your team play better, you'll most likely have to rearrange the minutes played so it will substitute as you wish. You can even program in how you want your players to shoot and whether or not to shoot on the fastbreak.
Just remember - you can never play a guy out of his carded positions and you can never add more total minutes per game to his profile.
Pre-season trading is over, rosters freeze
The Nov. 8 pre-season trading deadline has passed. All further deals in November will take effect Dec. 31.
Our League Disk is ready for download
I'm in the process of emailing this file (sabl.exe) to all of you, but if you need to download it, you can click on the link above to download it. The schedule is included and it starts Dec. 1. All games are set to hold, so you have to set your team's games to manual on the days that you play.
After it's downloaded, just double-click on the "sabl.exe" icon and the file will automatically install itself into your "C:\sombk\leagues" directory. Then, start your game up and abracadabra! You have a brand new "1998-99 S" league all ready to play your 1998-99 SABL season with.
You must use this league disk. All games must be played, imported, etc., on it and you have to send all results to me via disk or emailed files. See our recent newsleters and constitution if you have any questions on how to do this, or phone or email me.
If you don't use this league disk, I can't import your stats into my official SABL database and it will cause me and your fellow coaches a lot of extra work. SOM Basketball's stat program is not like SOM Baseball's stat program. The computer basketball game' s stat program sucks. It will not let you edit stats or add individual stats to a running total. It will only let you import games as a whole. That's why we have to do it this way.
Please make sure you create and save all your game files and print out box scores for every single game you play, because this game will lock up on you and sometimes scramble your stats. You have to have a paper backup of everything to be prepared when this happens.
Just one more thing: GET STARTED NOW AND STAY ON TIME OR YOU WILL GET PENALTY POINTS AND YOU WILL LOSE YOUR DRAFT PICKS NEXT YEAR!!!!
Let the games begin!
Doug Crandall takes over Calgary Condors
Let's all welcome new Coach Doug Crandall who is taking over the Calgary Condors franchise and renaming it the Deerfield Kings. Doug's address is P.O. Box 161, Deerfield, KS 67838. His phone is 316-355-7532 and email is dcrandal@pld.com
Doug's a good friend of Charlie Dillingham, so you know he would welcome your trade inquiries.
Guards are guards, can play both places
Couple of coaches have asked me this, so I'll let everyone know in case you're confused: If you are rated as a guard on your card (or in the computer, whether it's point or shooting guard) you can play either guard position in the SABL. This is what we did last year and it's what we'll do this year.
Next year, however, I'm thinking of doing what was done in another computer SOM basketball league that I was in a few years ago - letting anybody play anywhere, just like what happens in the real life NBA when everybody runs around and gets all scrambled up.
Even though this was allowed in the other league I was in, nobody ever did it. Why? Because you'd get killed if you did. I experiemented once by playing Manute Bol at point guard vs. Mugsy Bogues. Mugsy penetrated and fouled Manute's lights out.
Let me know what you think of my latest "radical" idea.
SABL will have full season in 1999-2000
We will have a full season next year, even if the NBA doesn't. We'll do what I did one time in an SOM baseball league in the 1980s when those guys were on strike for several months - hike our 25% percentage to whatever it takes to get up to 82 games. Right now, we're already at 30% for next year. If we lose December games, it'll go to 35%. If we lose January games, it'll go to 40%.
Who's trading?
Aces trade G. Robinson, Sprewell & Jayson Williams to Great Lakes for Webber, Closs & Blount..
Heat trades Outlaw & Delk to Galactic for Harrington & Slater
Heat trades Ward & Schrempf to Tri City for Douglas & L. Johnson.