Thudd Kassel Contract Issue

[shadyshoelace]

in the absence of a veto, it would appear that we agree the transaction was therefore allowed, as it was not judged to have violated a rule. this is tacit approval at the very least. as i already stated, if a problem was identified, all that was necessary was for HO to say "hold up... we gotta discuss this"

and this is literally the crux of my argument.

a transaction that, as far as I can see, was accepted (tacitly, through a lack of opposition) -- and therefore implicitly validated, and so cannot be considered illegal -- was later altered unilaterally by HO. this should not happen.

I'm not exactly sure what constitutes a veto in your eyes. The contract was posted late on 11/16, and about an hour and a half later Swag commented asking if it was legal. That led to an immediate conversation between HO and GMs in GM chat discord (i.e. HO saying "hold up... we gotta discuss this"). Then, HO voted on the rule on 11/17 and notified the teams (PHI/BAL/NOLA) that the transactions were invalid and the contracts needed to be changed. To me, that doesn't sound like the transaction was allowed at all.

unless there is a clear error in the approval of the transaction (for example, when carmel gibson was approved with incorrect TPE totals) -- which does not exist in this case, given the debatable interpretation of the rule as written -- the transaction should not be altered. fix the rule and apply it moving forward.

That is a fair opinion to hold. But this was very clearly an attempt to use a loophole in precise wording to get around the obvious spirit of a rule - to not allow players in their 4th season, who can have, what, 800 TPE? - to be on minimum rookie contracts. The fact that DD originally opted into the previous contract, then retracted it and signed the totally-not-an-extension contract 10 minutes later, shows that this was in no way a free agency decision, it was an attempt to add a year of $1m control to his existing contract.

This is a league run by a bunch of nerds for fun. It seems strange to be intensely focused on literal verbatim interpretation of rules when it's obvious what the spirit of the law is. It also seems strange to me to expect every rule written to proactively encompass every possible unforseen workaround, such as using options on contracts. We all know what the rule was meant to be.

at the very least, the lack of transparency here is concerning.

HO has already owned up to the fact that they screwed up by not making the public post earlier. But the fact remains that the team was notified in a timely manner and opted not to act on the decision.

at worst, we are accepting that HO may, at their discretion, alter the rulebook on the fly and retroactively apply the changes.

I mean, yeah. I personally think that not allowing clear loophole exploitations to go through is fine as you fix the rule to clarify the language. Doesn't seem like a flaming hot take to me.