The Brewster

The team that drafts a Rule 6 player almost never signs the Rule 6 player. Usually, someone else in the league signs the guy, then the team that drafted him just takes him right back. But what if the team that signed the Rule 6 guy was really hoping that they wouldn't match, so they could keep the guy? I think that the team that signed the guy should at least have a chance to get him if the drafting team wants to trade him there.

Let's call the drafting team "Drafter," and the signing team "Signer".

I'd like to propose that during the 48 hour window in the rules where Drafter gets to choose whether to match the contract, Drafter may negotiate with Signer to trade the rights to the draftee to Signer. Once the 48 hour window is up, Drafter must either have chosen to match, chosen to allow Signer to have the contract, or Drafter must have dealt the rights to the player to Signer.

My model for this is NBA restricted free agency, and it's exactly how it works in that system (except I think the window is 120 hours and not 48).

Love it.

Hate it. The "signer" team already has to put out an albatross contract in 99% of cases to make the decision hard on the "drafter" team - now they have to jump through another hoop? You're going to have teams "threatening" to match unless you give them something back even if they didn't plan on doing it anyway - what does that add? Either you want to match or not - getting the player and/or dodging a contract bullet are already 'compensation' enough, imo.

PS. There is a reason why the NBA CBA is the laughing stock of the sports world... its probably pretty safe practice to avoid instituting anything inspired by it.

Yeah, but there's the risk involved that the "signer" team can ALWAYS get stuck with the albatross contract. In many cases it's not really being "stuck" so much as it's being given the 1% chance to actually get the guy. 99% of the time, the team that drafts the player's going to take the player. There aren't more than two or three guys a year worth drafting, so what we get is the top players from the EBA signing high-level contracts with a low-level team whose payroll and money situation are probably both fine. We're just giving a chance to the guy who signed the deal in the first place to get the player - usually it won't happen.

If the Rule 6 drafter generally spent $5 million and 20 PPT to stick the player on the other team then the system doesn't make sense.

I'm okay with the current system, for the record.

Didn't even occur to me to try to trade for him until Recte offered him, and obviously didn't occur to either of us that we couldn't deal him immediately.