The SABL BS

54. St. Lucie trades McGrady & its 2006 1st to McLean for Maggette & McLean's 2nd pick

53. St. Lucie trades Jerome Williams to Holcomb for Ely & Holcomb's 2nd pick

52. Richmond trades Eddy Curry, Michael Finley & its 2nd pick to Fort Hays for Ben Wallace, & Aaron McKie

51. Holcomb trades Voskuhl to Chandler for Mercer and Chandler's 2006 2nd pick.

50. St. Lucie trades its 2nd pick & Palacio to Bettendorf for Jerome Williams

49. St. Lucie trades Jake Tsakalidis to Chandler for Palacio and Chandler's 2006 3rd pick

48. St. Lucie trades Ron Artest to Fort Hays for Billups & Fort Hays' 2006 1st pick

THE DEALS ABOVE TAKE EFFECT JANUARY 1. THEY WILL BE REFLECTED ON THE JANUARY LEAGUE DISK, WHICH WILL BE SENT OUT BY EITHER ME OR OPERATIONS DIRECTOR STEVE WALTERS. ROSTERS WILL NOT BE CHANGED ON THE WEBSITE UNTIL JANUARY 1.

Scottsdale was severely out-rebounded, out-hustled and out-coached. Juwon Howard led the way for Scottsdale with his 1 for 16 shooting.

Atlanta wins a nail-biter as Drew Gooden draws a foul with one second left. He misses the first free throw, but makes the second one to break a tie and
win the game for the Havoc, 84-83. It was fitting that Springfield lost the game at the free throw line, since they committed 37 fouls and had starters
Al Harrington and Devean George both foul out, and 4 other players had at least 4 fouls.

In the early going, it looked like the Bulldogs would run away to their second consecutive win over the Havoc, leading by as much as 15 points, but
foul trouble took its toll. Stephen Jackson led the way for Atlanta with 26 points, while Lenard chipped in 12 and Gooden 10.

For the Bulldogs, Harrington had 21 points and 8 boards in 29 minutes before DQ'ing, Calbert "Magic" Cheaney chipped in 14 along with 5 dimes, and George had 12. Raja Bell was held to 6 points on 2 of 12 shooting. The Bulldogs were shut out on 3 pointers, missing all 14 of their heaves. Atlanta didn't
fare much better from long range, clanking 15 of 18.

By Steve Batterson
Rochester Post-Bulletin

The expansion Minnesota Chill got off to a rough start at home, getting swept by Holcomb and losing single matchups to St. Lucie and Galactic.

"We don't shoot the ball well and we don't get to the line much -- not a good combination," said Minnesota Coach Dave Barry. "We feel like Democrats in the '04 election -- not a winner in the bunch."

Jason Terry was the star in Holcomb's sweep, averaging 21 points during the four games. Brent Barry averaged 16 points, shooting 65 percent from the floor.

"The first game was our only chance," Coach Barry said. "Otherwise, we got down early and stayed down. We don't have the offensive firepower to play from behind. We could use Ron Artest, because we lack punch."

Offensive woes continued for Minnesota in losses to St. Lucie and Galactic. The Chill continued to play from behind.

Tracy McGrady and Tim Duncan each scored 22 for St. Lucie. The Chill cut the deficit to 12 going into the fourth quarter before losing by 19.

Galactic waltzed to victory behind 27 points by Allen Iverson. Gary Payton and Sam Cassell added 23 and 20, respectively.

"In all the games, we have one bad quarter, and that does us in," Coach Barry said. "We're like the Chicago Bulls."

Minnesota continues its homestand with single games against Springfield, Atlanta, New Orleans and Chapel Hill.

Rip Hamilton scores 22 to pace 6 Sky players scoring in double digits as Tucson holds off fellow expansion team 103-91.

Galactic lead by Payton with 21. Cassell added 16 with 7 assists. Minnesota lead by Miller with 16. Ostertag had 10 rebs in 28 minutes of action. Galactic won TO(9-21) and took 24(82-58) more FG's in game. Chill only attempted 4 FT's in game.

Behind the double-double of Steve Nash. The Chill had seven players in double figures but the Bucs simply had too much scoring power from its starting five. Bibby led New Orleans with 24.

Attached are result of River City at Galactic on 12-18.

Thunder catches Renegades in 4th quarter to win going away 111-105.

After trailing River City 63 to 49 at the half, Galactic Dominates in the 4th quarter(31-15).

Iverson lead 6 men in double figure scoring with 22 and had 10 assists but 7 TOs. Cassell, who was in early foul trouble, had 16 with 8 assists and 3 steals in 23 minutes of action. Thunder had 11 steals in game.

River City was lead by Q.Richardson with 34 and 6 assists. Arroyo had 10 points and 7 assists in 27 minutes but was only 5-17(29%) from the field.

Springfield gets their first win of the young season as Rodney White heats up off the bench, scoring 18 points in just 16 minutes on 8-14 from the field. The Bulldogs pound the Havoc on the boards, outrebounding them 57-38, and hold them to 30% (22-74) from the field, and just 12-50 on 2 pointers. With stats like that, you'd expect a Bulldog annihilation, when in fact, the final score was just 83-76 and it was close to the very end.

Atlanta was blasting the Bulldogs in the early going, taking a 16 point lead at one point in the first quarter. Just when the bookies were starting to give out odds on Springfield winning so much as one game this season, they heated up, thanks to White and the fastbreak offense, led by the flashy passing of point guard Calbert "Magic" Cheaney (3 assists, 8 turnovers). All in all, the transition game produced 24 points for the Bulldogs. Blemishes on the Bulldog's initial victory included 22 turnovers and 3-20 clanking from 3 point land. But they are thankful just to get that first "W" in the books, so no extra laps in the gym tonight.

Fort Hayes won a tight game over the Chapel Hill Jams 94 - 91 behind Paul Pierce's 31 points.

New Orleans took 3 of 4 from the Jams as rookie Carmello Anthony had 4 LeBron-type games with 27, 20, 36 and 22 points. Chapel Hill won game 2 104 - 93, but failed to break triple digits again in the 3 losses -- 104 - 96 91 - 83 103 - 88.

Holcomb scores 39 in first quarter and 38 in fourth quarter blowing away Thunder 133-115 on 65% shooting 14-27(52%) on 3's. Only attempted 5 FTs in game. Terry lead way with 29 and 6 assists. B.Barry had 21 with 13 assists. Heat had 7 players in double figure scoring and 41 assists on 58 FGs(71%).

Galactic lead by Cassell and Iverson scoring 60 points with 14 assists but 12 turnover in 63 minutes combined. Galactic shot 58% on FGs, 46%(11-24) on 3's and 86%(18-21) on FT's but Heat was to hot to handle.

Thunder boom to a 132-84 blowout with 8 men in double figures lead by Cassell with 36 and 11 assists. Marshall added 11 with game high 16 rebounds. Ft Hays had only 2 players in double figures Pierce with 24 and 8 rebounds and J. Williams with 16 but only 2 assists. Billups fouled out in 21 minutes of action. Gorillas were in a mist er...Thick Thunder cloud shooting only 39% with 24 turnovers (Galactic 9). Galactic attempted 104 shots (Ft Hays 79).

Atlanta wins a close one as Springfield loses a 2nd quarter 11 point lead. Springfield misses some opportunities down the stretch to win it, but the 3 point shooting of Atlanta, as well as 23 turnovers by the home team, was too much to overcome. Jackson and Lenard were the only Atlanta players to hit double figures, with 21 and 17 points, respectively. Raja Bell scored 18 points for Springfield, including 10 of 10 from the line.

Indy's march to #1 (pick that is), is officially under way. Cave Creek blows indy out 107-73, and that meant some mop up time for stiffs Cook, Wallace, Mo Williams, and Ridnour. In Byrant's 30 minutes, he managed 24 points and 11 boards. Richardson almost had a quadrouple double with 17 points, 8 boards, 9 assists, and 8 turnovers. Dampier collected 12 boards before fouling out. As for Indy, they were "led" (if thats what you call it) by Wells and his 16 points on 5-20 shooting and Taylor's 15 points on 3-15 shooting. Overall Indy shot 29% for the game.

> The final score does not begin to describe the excitement from this game. Indy played inspired ball, out rebounding and out-hustling the Twisters through much of the contest. By the 11:03 mark of the 4th Period, the Rebels led the home team by a score of 73-57. At that point, the Tulsa players got their "rears in gear."
>
> Over the final 11:03 of the 4th Period, Tulsa outscored Indy 37-21 to send the game into overtime. In making its 4th Period run, two key players in the Twisters' comeback, Jermaine O'Neal and Ronald Murray, had to sit out the last 2 minutes or so due to fatigue. Their replacements, Michael Ruffin and David Wesley, ended up playing huge!
>
> In addition to 2 key offensive rebounds, Ruffin hit an outside jumper with 35 seconds to go to bring Tulsa to within 1 point.
>
> The Rebels Kendrick Brown, with 20 seconds left, was fouled but only hit 1 of 2 free throws.
>
> Tulsa then called timeout and elected to run a play for David Wesley - their most rested player on the floor. The son-of-a-gun hit an outside jumper with 5 seconds left to tie the game. His only points of the evening. The Rebels failed on their desperation shot so the game went into overtime.
>
> The visitors from Indy were obviously disheartened as the Twisters outscored them 14-2 in the extra 5 minute period to grab the victory. Darius Miles had 8 of those 14 points. (Tulsa's 14 overtime points outpaced the measly 13 points that they scored in the game's 1st Period.)
>
> What a game!

Simpson gave this account of the game:

"Minnesota gets off to a big lead at halftime, thanks to Springfield clanking at a 10-39 rate in the first half. But then the Bulldogs come back at the end to tie it up with under 2 minutes left, but missed some critical shots down the stretch to lose Game One of the season to Minnesota..."

"We agree -- you don't totally suck," teased Chill Coach and former humor columnist Dave Barry as he greeted the wild and scantily clad throng. "But seriously -- we won, and we won on the road. This is a big day for all of Minnesota! Now, people, go put some clothes on. It's 15 degrees out, and some of you are giving me the chills."

Even game until 4 minute mark of the 4th qtr. Garnett and Duncan took over and St Lucie won going away 115-95.

St. Lucie holds on to win 97-94. Pierce missed two chances to put it in OT. McGrady leads St. Lucie with 25 pts and also gets 10 reb. Pierce gets 24 for Hays.

Good game. Hays wins 117-101. Pierce goes for 33 on 11 of 16 shooting. Billups hits for 26. Anthony has 22 to lead New Orleans.

Hays wins 101-96. Chapel Hill behind Kirilenko held a 11 pt halftime lead. Pierce has 33, Kirilenko 30.

Pierce the difference as he goes for 48 pts and 10 rebs. Billups helps Hays win 103-90 with 20 pts. Cassell has 21 and 10 asts to lead Galactic.

Heat wins 101-94. Galactic behind the play of Marshall, Cassell, and Iverson led for most of the game. Terry with 22 pts and 8 asts, Jones 21, and Barry 21 pts and 9 assists led Holcomb.

Lamar Odom came out firing and had 16 first quarter points on his way to 30 points and 13 boards. However, 3 Longshots led by Bryant's 28 points, score over 20 as well. Nene Hilario scores 23 points, and Stoudamire scores 23 points. The story of the game was the 2nd half of the Longshots, who outscore Brooklyn 70-47 on the way to a 132-111 victory. The Longshots enjoyed some home court officiating as both Bryant (14) and Hilario (12) shot 13 more free throws and made 18 more which may have been the key to the game.

Game 1: Marbury fantastic with 25 pts,17ast. Hughes 27,Magloire 19 pts,17rebs
> as Tri City wins 104-96.
> Game 2:Hays wins 104-102, Tri City overcomes Hays 16 pt lead to almost win
> game. Pierce goes for 30 pts and 10 rebs to lead Hays. Marbury again great
> with 30 pts and 10 ast.
> Game 3:What a game. Hays wins 116-113 on a Jason Williams 3 with 1 second
> left. Marbury had tied the game on a 3 ptr.Williams hits for 31 with 8
> asts. Pierce has 27. Marbury hhits for 25, but on 7 of 29 shooting.He also
> has 12 assists.
> Game 4:Hays wins 101-98. Pierce has 32 to lead Hays in a seesaw game.
> Marbury,Hughes, and Davis all have 18 for Tri City.

Scottsdale staged a furious comeback in the second half with tremendous 3-point shooting to win.

Even game until 4 minute mark of the 4th qtr. Garnett and Duncan took over and St Lucie won going away 115-95.

New York City left Tucson with the firm belief there was anything but a "neutral" court as the Expansion Sky went to the line an amazing 51 times as they handily defeated the Slammers 117-97. While foul trouble was hampering key NYC stars, Rip Hamilton put 28 points on the board for the winners. Eric Williams came off the bench and added 23. Shaq lead New York with 23 but was limited to 29 minutes due to foul trouble.

51. Holcomb trades Voskuhl to Chandler for Mercer and Chandler's 2006 2nd pick.

50. St. Lucie trades its 2nd pick & Palacio to Bettendorf for Jerome Williams

49. St. Lucie trades Jake Tsakalidis to Chandler for Palacio and Chandler's 2006 3rd pick

48. St. Lucie trades Ron Artest to Fort Hays for Billups & Fort Hays' 2006 1st pick

Game 1:

Tulsa can't hit a shot to save themselves, summed up by a late game situation where he had 1 shot followed by 4 offensive boards and no points.
Cave Creek wins 95-77 behind 24 from Bryant, 21 from Richardson, and 16 boards from Dampier. Marion leads Tulsa with 17.

Game 2:

Jermain O'neal and Tony Parker both score over 20 points, but are bested by
Kobe's 34 and Richardson's 30. Damon Staudamire almost hits a triple
double with 16 pts, 10 assist, and 7 boards and 3 Longshots get double digit
rebounds (Dampier, Hilario, Thomas). Cave Creek wins 112-108

Game 3:

A nailbiter right up to the end, where the Longshots paid the maintenance crew to put a bucket on the basket in teh 4th quarter and Tulsa scores just
12 points. Cave Creek wins 95-89, despite Marion's 24 points. Rose has
22, and Kobe has 21 for Cave Creek.

Game 4:

Replay of game 3 with more scoring, but Longshots again outscore Tulsa by 11
in the 4th to win 103-97. Richardson leads 6 Longshots in double figures
with 22.

Series recaps:

Longshots get 8.5 more boards per game and have a higher shooting % each game.

Richardson averages 22 points and 7 boards. Rose averages 16 points, 5
boards, 5 assists.

Poor Hinrich. The first 3 games he failed to play more than 20 minutes because he kept getting in foul trouble. The last game he played 30 minutes and fouled out!

You should just send the .gfl (game files), .sum (summary files) and .gfl (game files) in your results.

The report from Tiger Coach Steve Feldheim: Brooklyn wins their home opener. T.J. Ford had 111 assists in his home debut (boy I hope he gets healthy soon) Gasol and Ginobili had 18 points a piece to lead 6 players in double figures. Vince Carter led the Sun-Burn with 17, 7 players tallied double figures.

The report from Tiger Coach Steve Feldheim: "Brooklyn scores first 11 points of game and never looks back for an easy win over expansion Sky."

Please read the Operational Procedures below, there have been a few minor changes - the biggest of which is that all computer instructions for the month must be sent out the first week of the month.

This means that all December instructions should be sent out the first week of December. All January instructions should be sent out in the first week of January and so on.

If they aren't sent out in that first week, you will get penalty points for them not getting sent out.

Of course, you can't send out any instructions for a month until you get the new league file for that month, which should be coming your way from Operation Director Steve Walters at the end of each month. In effect, this gives you a week every month to do instructions - plenty of time. And if you start scouting the teams early, you have even more time! Wow!

Now, finally, for the third and last time, get those instructions out for December! PLAY BALL!!!!!

Every time a manager is late with instructions, he incurs one penalty point. For each three points that are incurred, that coach will drop down one place in the draft order. Accumulation of 21 points means expulsion from the league.

Games will be played in 4 separate blocks. (1st)Dec 6 to Dec31, (2nd)Jan 1 to Jan31, (3rd)Feb 1 to Feb 28 and (4th)Mar 1 to Mar 20th. These blocks coincide with the trading periods. All games of each team in each separate block will have the same rosters. Because of trades teams may have a different roster in the following Blocks.

DO NOT move players, delete players or tamper with League disk. A new updated league disk from Operations Director Steve Walters will be sent out to all managers before the start of each block. The updated league disk will have current stats as will as any roster changes due to trades. You can't send out any instructions for a month until you get the new league file for that month.

NOTE: You may want to record, on paper, your team's lineups and computer team instruction settings, in order to incorporate them into the updated league for your creation of away instructions.

Instructions for all games in each block must be sent as soon as possible (within first week of block). This will allow managers to play games well in advance of due dates and thus not be under pressure to meet deadline or suffer penalty points as outlined in league constitution.

Procedure for sending instructions and results:

1. Send all instructions for games to be played in each separate month/block, during the first week of the month/block. In other words, send all your instructions for the month during the first week of the month.

2. When home manager receives instructions via e-mail, the home manager will reply to that e-mail with the words 'received instructions'. This verifies, to the away manager, that his instructions were received.

A. If away manager does not receive verification of instructions within that first week of the month/block, the away manager will resend instructions and state that it is 2nd time sent, to home manager and cc to Commissioner Scott Ellis at scottiefl@bellsouth.net and Operations Director Steve Walters at myril@gate.net . This will verify that the away manager did send instructions and that the away manager's obligations regarding sending instructions are complete.

B. If home manager does not receive instructions with that first week of the month/block, the home manager will: (1) E-mail away manager and cc to Commissioner at scottiefl@bellsouth.net and Operations Director Steve Walters at myril@gate.net, to let away manager and league office know that instructions were not received. (2) One penalty point will be assessed to the late team. (3) Permission to play game(s) in question, by letting computer manager set eligible players and lineups for away game instructions, will be granted to home team, by either Operations Director Steve Walters or the Commissioner.

3. Play games and send results to away manager and cc to Steve Walters at myril@gate.net. The away manager will reply to that e-mail with the words 'Received results'. This verifies, to the home manager, that his results were received.

A. If away manager does not receive results by date game(s) are to be played, away manager will: (1) E-mail home manager and cc to Commissioner at scottiefl@bellsouth.net and Operations Director at myril@gate.net, to let home manager and league office know that results not received. (2) One penalty point will be assessed to the late team. (3)Permission to play game(s) in question by letting computer manager set eligible players and lineups for home game instructions to be played by away team, authorized by Commissioner or Operations Director Steve Walters.

Results include individual game files (.gfl), summary files (.sum), and box scores (.rtf).

Instructions can also be on paper. Coaches should follow paper instructions to the best of their ability and when instructions are unclear, to manage the team as they think their opponent would wish it to be managed. All paper instructions must have the team’s active roster and the real-life NBA team he plays for by his name. Failure to do this earns an opposing coach 1 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.

All SABL games will be played under the "Neutral Court," "No Auto Rest," "No Injuries" and "Static Fatigue" options. You must save all box scores and summary files, including the play-by-play.

Penalty points are assessed on the coach, not the franchise. If a coach quits, the penalty point slate is wiped clean for the franchise.

Please let the Player Agent Director know if the games are autoplayed so penalty points can be assessed. The Operations Director will send out the league schedule and instructions every year.

DO NOT USE THE GAME'S EMAIL PROGRAM. USE OUR WEBSITE TO GET THE CORRECT COACH'S EMAIL ADDRESS.

Any coach concerned that his instructions were not followed should do the following:

1. Contact the opposing coach to see what went wrong. This should be an honest attempt to solve things between coaches. It’s not the responsibility of the commissioner to nursemaid coaches.

2. If the matter cannot be resolved after this good faith attempt, contact the Player Agent Director to let him know what's going on and/or protest the game.

3. The Executive Committee will rule on the protest within one week of the protest.

In an effort to prevent the melee that happened this month in the real-life NBA from ever happening in the SABL, Commissioner Scott Ellis, who also owns the St. Lucie Aces, told reporters camped outside the Ace locker room today that he was authorizing a new "pre-emptive" strike policy at all SABL games.

"If it's good enough for President Bush and America," said Ellis, "it's good enough for the SABL!"

Ellis has ordered that mini-taser guns be issued to every SABL player, to be attached via nylon cord to their trunks. If a player thinks a fan is about to pelt him with a beer cup, ice, popcorn, chairs, fists or whatever, Ellis has authorized SABL players to shoot fans first and ask questions later.

Paraphrasing the President's speech before attacking Iraq last year, Ellis said, "We must take action in the stands to prevent their action from reaching us on our basketball courts."

While speaking to the Ace owner, reporters also asked to talk to new Ace player Ron Artest, who caused a stir in his first Ace practice session. Artest was unavailable for comment: Ellis had reportedly ordered Artest locked in his locker after he punched out Port St. Lucie resident Vanilla Ice for criticizing Artest's rap record at the practice.

Ice, who's real name is Robert Van Winkle, is an Ace fan and he says he was just trying to give Artest some friendly advice.

"Man, take it from me, I know how to make a bad rap CD," said Ice, while walking his pet kangaroo outside his Port St. Lucie home. "And my kangaroo can punch better than Artest, too."

For those of you that were with us last year, you might remember the game file write-over file problem.

When Strat put its new Windows basketball game out last year, it had a lot of bugs. They put out a patch to correct many of those bugs. The patch had one undocumented new scheduling feature that really hurt draft leagues – you couldn’t schedule games in blocks on one day anymore because the game overwrote the game files, leaving the last game played as the only game file.

So, you would play your four games on the day they were scheduled, but you only had 1 game file instead of four to send off to the commissioner for importation into the league database. The game now overwrote the same game file, with same name, four times, because the new scheduling system names the file by team names and date only, not the number of the game, like it used to.

Not acceptable.

Since this overwriting problem hit us in mid-season last year, we had no choice but to rename every single game file as we saved it, to avoid the overwriting. We forgot to do this a lot, causing our stats to get skewed. Because once a game is played and the game file is gone, you can only manually create one and that takes 15-30 minutes of individual box score entries. Most of us didn’t have the time to do all that manual data entry, so I ended up just “hitting the button” for you and replaying many of those “lost games” until the same won-lost result was achieved.

We hoped that Strat would change this poorly programmed scheduling system this season, but in testing today, Steve Walters and I discovered that the same overwriting is going on this year, too.

That sucks. We ain’t gonna go through this again.

The solution? Hold the SABLFinal.bbk league file - the third, official and final league file you are gonna get - until we painstakingly re-enter and re-do the entire 1,056 games of our of schedule.

The good news is that we’ve checked everything else out and it seems to check out. No missed players, the league rules are all set up correctly, etc. Really, honest, we got everything else right now.

And Steve Walters tells me he might be able to get the schedule done and the SABLFinal.bbk league file done by Monday, Nov. 22, certainly by Wednesday, Nov. 24. That’s later than now, when we wanted to get this to you, but well before the scheduled Nov. 28 deadline of when we had to get it to you. And our season doesn’t officially start until Dec. 6, so we should have plenty of time to play our games at a normal pace.

Finally, to those of you that have asked why we haven’t “locked” the league like we did last year – two reasons: It doesn’t lock anything important, like the league rules and the lock cause some problems for a few coaches last year.

Again, we are real sorry we’ve given you two false starts so far. But this last schedule change absolutely has to be made before we start league play.

There’s one more serious error discovered by Statistician Steve Walters in the sablrevised.bbk file – it doesn’t have the proper league box score and game file settings. In other words, it isn’t set to save game files, box scores, etc. A serious omission that must be fixed before we start playing games.

Steve is working on this right now. He will fix that problem today and either he or I will send out the third and final SABL league file, sablfinal.bbk, for you to use. He is also gonna test it all day to make sure we’ve finally got it right.

When you restore the league, it will be named “SABL Final”. Please use this league file, do not use the others, or you could be eligible for penalty points. And Steve won’t import any game files from you if he knows that they came from the other two league files.

As for me, since I screwed up on this, I’m giving myself a penalty point for my mistake in sending you out two faulty league files. I apologize to all of you for the confusion, but we have to get this right in the beginning – it’s our only chance. Once league play starts, the cat’s out of the bag and can’t be put back in easily.

If the game were programmed better, these errors and precautions would not be necessary. But as those of you who’ve been in our league for several years know, it’s better to be safe than sorry with Strat’s computer basketball game. I’m determined to keep our past stats and computer coach problems as few as possible.

Even if your team was OK in the first file, the schedule wasn't and a couple of teams were not.

SO LET ME MAKE THIS CLEAR. USE THE SECOND LEAGUE FILE I SENT - SABLREVISED.BBK. IF YOU USE THE FIRST ONE, YOU WILL GET PENALTY POINTS BECAUSE IT WILL SCREW EVERYTHING UP.!

This has been a SABL policy from the beginning, but since we have so many new coaches, I want to make this clear, too. From the SABL Constitution:

Penalty points are assessed on the coach, not the franchise. If a coach quits, the penalty point slate is wiped clean for the franchise and its draft picks.

However, if a coach with penalty points doesn't quit, the penalty points that coach incurs stays with his draft picks. This is to prevent a coach from "sanitizing" his draft picks by trading them off, reaping a benefit, and bypassing the penalty point system. Ain't gonna let that happen.

You always take a risk when you make a trade and this is part of that risk. So, if you trade for draft picks, be aware that they could be affected by penalty points. Make sure you bug that coach you traded with to stay on time!

Strange things can happen if you don't, to both the computer manager and statistics. So, please trust me on this one, use the league file I sent you.

If you use the league file I sent and stuff gets messed up, then it's my fault, not yours. We will fix it and make sure you are not penalized.

But if you use your own, homemade league file and stuff gets messed up, you will be penalized and boiled in oil.

It wouldn't work. Since the game forces you to pick a defensive profile and since instructions won't import if that profile is not for your specific team, emergency instructions are not feasible. You'd have to have 576 different instructions posted on our website for that to work (24 x 24).

So, instead of emergency instructions, either I or Operations Director Steve Walters will just be telling you to "hit the button" if someone is late. That simply means the computer will run the teams with no instructions, like we've always done.

I wanna thank Bucs Coach Jeff Perigoni for pointing out the infeasibility of emergency instructions. Jeff caught this first, way down yonder in New Orleans. Thanks so much, Jeff.

Steve is our Galactic Thunder Coach and Operations Director. He is compiling our official league stats this year. We all have to get used to this, so if you accidentally send results to me instead of Steve W, you will not get penalty points for being late. I'll just forward them on to Steve.

Remember - you can get penalty points for late instructions and late results. And you can get those points by not sending results to your opponent and to Steve Walters, at myril@gate.net. You should always send results to your opponent and Steve Walters. Make that a habit right away.

And most important - if you can't find the answers on our website and if you have any questions at all about anything, don't wait, don't get frustrated and don't get behind - email, IM or phone Steve Walters or me and ask what to do.

LATENESS KILLS LEAGUES. We won't be late here, but we won't let anyone get behind or penalized if they ask for help. We will never penalize someone that's trying. We will never penalize someone if they have family or work issues that temporarily slow them down. We may have to autoplay your team until you are able to run it again, because we can't stop the league for one person, but we won't give you points for it.

However, we will penalize coaches for being lazy and unaware. You are free to be the best that you can be in the SABL, and you are also free to be your worst. The choice is yours.

If you don't ask for help and if you don't let anyone know what's going on, you will wake up a few weeks from now with penalty points on your team and your drafting place downgraded. And if you get 21 penalty points, you are automatically expelled from the league.

Don't let that happen, ask for help - let us help you. And don't wait until the date on the schedule - get your entire month's instructions out ahead of time, so you won't get behind!

The SABL is one of the best basketball leagues in the country because it has the best coaches in the country. It's time to prove that again! Good luck!

Yep, the drafting and trading are all over now. It's time to take it to hoop. Our official 2004-05 SABL League disk is now emailed to you. The file's name is sablrevised.bbk. You just use the "Restore" function under the "League" menu item, click on the sablrevised.bbk and restore the league file and Voila! You have the official Second American basketball league all ready to go!

Check every day of the schedule, because you never know who you will be playing when. Sometimes you are skipped one week, too. You are responsible for keeping your team on schedule. LATENESS KILL LEAGUES. Don't be late, we don't tolerate it. Let me or Steve Walters know when you can't stay on schedule, or you will find that your team has been autoplayed and yourself with penalty points. We don't nursemaid coaches in the SABL.

YOU CAN START SENDING OUT INSTRUCTIONS AND START PLAYING YOUR DECEMBER LEAGUE GAMES ASAP!!!! RIGHT NOW!!!

Now, without further adieu, here are my annual League Disk, playing and reporting instructions, which are being reprinted from earlier newsletters:

IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE DOWNLOADING THE FILE, TRY RIGHT CLICKING ON THE LINK, choose "SAVE TARGET AS".

The best way to understand how our SABL schedule works is to print it out and study it. Then you'll know what you have to do when. I suggest doing that ASAP and highlighting your team's games.

I never mind answering your questions, especially on the bugs and things that don't work right in this first Strat Windows basketball game. But make sure you try and solve the problem yourself, by exploring the easy Windows menu bar at the top of game. I also want you to thoroughly read the game's Help! file before contacting me, too. Almost all your questions can be answered there, or on the SomWorld basketball forum, at this link: SomWorld.

All new and easier automatic methods are in the game to send and import files. The computer manager is about the same, although it has some improvements, too. Explore it all before you send out your first instructions.

Step 1 - When the game is over, a box will come up, asking you if you want to save your box score. You can save these if you want, but it's not necessary. The game saves these files automatically. The box score is saved as an .html file in the "Print" folder of the "C:\SOMBKW" folder.

Another box will come up to ask if you want to save the play account. This is not necessary because the game automatically saves these as summary files, which you can view under "Statistics, View Game Summaries".

Step 2 - Attach the following files to your email messages. Your email program should have a paper clip icon or words that say attach or insert file. Look in your SOMBK\PRINT directory for the box scores, or .html files. Look in your SOMBKW\EXPORT directory for files that end in .gfl. Look in the main SOMBKW directory for files that end in .gpl. Look in the SOMBK\SUMMARY directory for files that end in .sum. GFLs are game files (stats to import), GPLs are game plans (computer instructions) and SUMs are summary files that show you how the game evolved.

Step 3 - Send the game plans (.gpl), game files (.gfl), summary files (.sum) and box scores (.rtf) to your opponent and game files (gfl), summary files (.sum) and box scores (.rtf) to the commissioner.

Step 2 - Play a New Scheduled league game. When you click the Import button to import your opponent's computer instructions, the game will open up the SOMBKW directory. Double-click on your opponent's game plan and it will import.

Step 1 - Save the attached results/game files (gfls) to your SOMBKW\IMPORT directory.

WARNING! Don't clone, delete or trade players! You will get a new league disk every month with all the trades and stats

This is absolutely vital. If you trade, clone or delete players on your own, this game can't handle it. It will screw up stats and cause the computer coach to go haywire. And if those things happen, you'll get penalty points. Don't do it.

For those of you new to our league, please trust me on these restrictions. SOM's basketball game is a programming mess and it's not at all like the baseball game, where every manager can create their own leagues and stats and players can be easily added and deleted. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY IT CAN WORK IN AN SOM BASKETBALL PBM LEAGUE EFFICIENTLY.

A word of advice - get ahead on your game-playing schedule. You can always play all games in the current month. Get ahead.

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, 4 or 8-game series, but you can't do it by individual games.

As you examine our league disk, you'll notice that all the players on your team are exact clones of their NBA counterparts. 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 players 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. HOWEVER, A GUARD CAN PLAY EITHER POINT GUARD OR SHOOTING GUARD IN THE SABL. WHEREVER IT SAYS YOU CAN PLAY ON THE CARD, YOU CAN PLAY.

While you can't play anyone out of position on offense, thanks to the "Assign" function in our computer basketball game, you can assign anyone to cover anyone else on defense. This means that you could assign Shaq to cover Earl Boykins. I don't know why you'd want to do this, but you could.

A word of caution, however: Like a lot of other things in this game, the Assign function doesn't always work correctly. Sometimes the computer game will refuse to assign the player where you want them to go. Ditto for the Double-Team function. Have fun.

As of today, Monday, Nov. 15, our Post-Draft/Pre-Season trading period is over. All deals made from now until Nov. 30 will take effect for games from Jan. 1 onward.

Statistician Steve Walters and I are now beginning the tedious, team, individual player and schedule entries that comprise our annual official league file. We hope to have it to you all before the weekend, but every single entry, including more than 1000 league games, have to be entered separately. Strat's schedule generator is simply not up to the task. So bear with us - I know you all want that file ASAP, but it's more important to make sure the cake is baked right.

Once it's sent, I'll be including my annual laundry list of Dos and Don'ts. The biggest thing to remember is never to clone or delete players. That can send this game into the Twilight Zone real quick.

And this year, you won't have to make trades either. Steve Walters will be sending out a league disk every month with all the trades in it, ready to go and use.

And finally, when the league file comes out, you will be making out emergency instructions to send to Steve Walters and I for posting on our website. This will ensure that our league never gets behind, because if someone doesn't send you their instructions or results, you will simply download their emergency instructions and play the games. More about the procedures for that will be coming from Steverino.

47. Chandler trades its 2nd pick and Ervin Johnson to Springfield for Sura

46. New Orleans trades Al Harrington to Springfield for Jaric and Chapel Hill's 2nd pick

45. St. Lucie trades George to Springfield for Tsakalidis and Springfield's 3rd

44. Tucson sends Milicic, Giricek, & its first pick to Chandler for Rip Hamilton, Samaki Walker & Chandler's 3rd pick.

43. St. Lucie trades Pierce to Fort Hays for Artest & Fort Hays' 2nd pick

42. St. Lucie trades Kobe Bryant & Gerald Wallace to Cave Creek for Paul Pierce, Devan George and Cave Creek's 1st pick.

40. Galactic trades Kedrick Brown and A. Davis to Indy for R. Evans & R. Rogers

39. NY trades Calvin Booth and Kelvin Cato to River City for Allan Houston and Gerald Wallace

You may not have noticed it, but instead of playing 82 games this year, we are gonna be playing 88 games instead. It's the best balanced schedule that can be worked out with 24 teams that gets us as close to 82 games as possible without going under.

So, because you probably based your minutes on 82 games instead of 88 and because expansion has stretched many SABL teams to their minute breaking point, we are gonna allow 30% over NBA minutes this year instead of 20%. This is for this year only.

It's at our 2004-05 SABL Minutes link, thanks to our SABL "Minute-Man", Tulsa Twister Coach Philip Creider. You will need Excel to read the file, or the free Excel reader at the Microsoft web site.

40. Galactic trades Kedrick Brown and A. Davis to Indy for R. Evans & R. Rogers

39. NY trades Calvin Booth and Kelvin Cato to River City for Allan Houston and Gerald Wallace

OK, the draft is over (finally) and we can all trade again. I want to thank all of you and especially Mark Long and Steve Walters for getting us through the most intense period of drafting in SABL history. We got through expansion, we have 24 coaches (and more backups that want to join) and we are ready for perhaps our best year ever!

All players obtained in trades made from now until 11:59pm, Nov. 14 can be used when we start our season on Dec. 6. On Nov. 15, right after that deadline, Statistician Steve Walters will start working on our official league disk and schedule. He'll be getting that out to you as soon as he can after our post-draft trading period ends.

The best years are yet to come in the Second American Basketball League, where you are free to be the best that you can be.

Just found out that my daughter has qualified in the Florida state Cross-Country finals this weekend. That means I'll be unavailable to do the draft on Saturday.

That means your remaining Executive Committeeman Steve Walters, our Galactic Thunder coach, will be doing the draft at 1 PM EST on Saturday, Nov. 6.

I ain't missing my daughter's track meet for ya'. I love you guys, but I love her more.

Because of Expansion and all the extra picks we are having to make to fill up our 14-man rosters this year, our email draft may not get done before Saturday. That's no one's fault, the email draft is a great idea and Mark Long is doing a great job with it. It's just that we are making so many more picks. We won't have this long a draft next year, even if we do email drafting again.

So, per our Constitution, and per what Mark's been telling you in his emails all week, here's what's gonna happen at 1 PM EST, Saturday, Nov. 6, when the remainder of our draft will finish up:

"If a coach cannot participate in the annual SABL phone draft, he can send a paper (or email) instruction sheet to the commissioner or let the commissioner draft for him. The commissioner will ring your phone number twice and hang up. If your line is busy, he’ll try twice more. If he can’t get you by then, he’ll draft for you.

When you call him back, he’ll read you the list of players that have been taken since your last pick. You’ll have 10 seconds for each player chosen, since your last pick, to make your decision. If you don’t pick anybody by then, the commissioner will hang up and pick your player for you."

I think it would be a very good idea for all of you to send me a draft list ASAP. Either I, or Steve Walters, your other friendly neighborhood Executive Committeeman, will be doing our phone draft on Saturday.

And if I can't get a hold of you on the phone, if you can't make up your mind in the allotted time frame and if I have no draft list for you, Steve or I will make your pick for you, based on what we think your team needs.

The most Amazing Feeney of all has ended his brief resignation from the league, taking over River City, effective immediately. He will be making River City's last draft pick in the second round.

Kevin's vitals: 2115 N. Nevada Ave., Davenport, IA 52804 (563)-388-3913 DAVDAZZ@aol.com.

You can't imagine how good this makes me feel. Kevin, welcome back to the SABL. And good luck in rebuilding the River City team.