Welcome to V.35! If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Ground rules:
Rule 1. Cedrick Pagan is the best and deserves to be MVP every season.
Rule 2. Don't tank. It can be a viable strategy (look at Naples Napalm now) but it makes everyone else mad, especially when that team steals all the top draft prospects, which leads us to..
Rule 3. Maine Claws deserves the top prospect in the draft. Simply put, I put more money and effort into scouting and I care about the results more than any of the rest of you.
Rule 4a. No regular-season CTs, they just waste enthusiasm and annoy your opponent. I've had three of the wannabe contenders CT me this season when I was playing TIE (wannabe contender: basically, all the current playoff teams in this league except me and Naples Napalm). I still won one of those games, but I never would have lost the other two if the other team hadn't wasted all their enthusiasm playing CT. It's stupid because the game means nothing for playoff standings or anything else, but I don't like losing especially when I don't deserve to.
Rule 4b. If you feel like you must crunch-time someone, make it Naples Napalm or someone like that. You'll almost certainly lose anyway, and no one's the worse off except for you.
Tips:
Tip 1. Save enthusiasm. Play TIE during all regular season games if you can.
Tip 2. Invest $10K per week in the draft. Even if you don't get the guy you want, it's fun, and it can be very rewarding. $10K is the most cost-effective investment ($5k per scouting point, 2 scouting points per week).
Tip 2, subsection A:
Do the scouting combine first. Only scout 18yos, 19yos have little value on the open market and have already missed their best and fastest season of training
Scout players who are either really short or really tall. Those players train the fastest (shorter = faster guard training, taller = faster inside training) and either they'll train faster for you or someone will pay more for them because they'll train faster.
*Note: the "ground rules" are not entirely serious, specifically rules 1, 3, and 4b. Everything else (rules 2,4a, and all the tips) can be taken seriously.