Trade Logic really bad

[dudefan]

First year trades around the league (all ai to ai trades):

Trae young for fred van fleet and 1st round pick

Jayson Tatum for donovan mitchell and first round pick.

Austin reaves, rui hachimura christian wood for terry rozier and first (this the only one where you can make a case)
LOL

I bought the game every year to support the only viable BB GM game on the market, but that is really bad. also why cant i trade future first round picks like 2028? not top pick protections etc. BB games stand and fall with trade logics, no improvements whatsoever over all the years.
i cant even replicate the sixers clippers trade in commish mode...

[Gary Gorski]

Well before we call the trade logic "really bad" lets examine both the trades and you also have not provided any context for them.

I entered these trades on day 1 through commissioner mode.

The Trae Young trade shows as an advantage to Houston so its unlikely the AI would accept this trade so I am guessing that perhaps Young had a falling out with the organization and his attitude dropped and wanted to be traded. Lets consider that if Atlanta is forced to trade him how did they do compared to other NBA teams forced to trade a superstar? They're getting back a downgrade player wise although not a massive one and picking up what likely will be a lottery pick (how bad was Houston's record when they made the trade?) - if they're getting a top 5 pick plus a legit good player back I think that's pretty good for that situation.

Again, the Tatum for Mitchell and a 1st trade is shown as advantage Cleveland so quite possibly the same situation and again if you have to trade Tatum to get an All-Star plus a 1st round pick back I'm not really seeing the issue with that.

For your third trade again I don't really see the issue here. Reaves is a 77, Wood is a 75 and Hachimura is terrible for Rozier who is an 81 and a 1st. The game feels this trade is advantage LA and I think so although again I have no idea how Charlotte was doing or if anyone was unhappy but even if the trade is advantageous for one side it's not like there are no trades in the NBA where you are surprised at one side. The AI GMs are built in with random different ratings so one team might have a "bad GM" - again certainly has happened a number of times in the NBA.

I also created leagues as running both Houston and Cleveland. I offered FVV and a 1st for Young and was turned down emphatically. I also was turned down by Boston offering Mitchell and a 1st for Tatum so that lends credence to my assumption that these teams did not want to trade those players but had to.

As to why you can't trade picks more than three years in advance? Because its extremely difficult to make viable and realistic trade logic given the constraints of needing to match salaries, worrying about not trading back to back 1st round picks and to a degree trying to make leagues not become unrealistic or impossible for the AI teams to recover from trading those future picks. There are people who have acquired like 20 draft picks with the current constraints - imagine what they would do if they had 5 or more years worth of picks to acquire. Also its very difficult to value items that far into the future. It's a challenge to make the AI have appropriate valuations for what picks might be worth in three seasons let alone five. I have actually built the framework for pick swaps into the background of the code so that in can be added in but its something I am struggling with to make the AI perform it properly and then deal with it in the future with then not being able to trade other picks because some are marked for possible swaps.

Now I am not dismissing anything or saying the trade logic is perfect - I think its the best of any basketball game out there but everything can be improved upon but in order to truly evaluate things there has to be context. So let me ask you, in the case of Atlanta and Boston having to trade those players what do you think would have been acceptable returns given both actual NBA trades from times teams were forced to trade their player and the constraints of the game in terms of picks.