I think I have a fun idea for a new theme. Hopefully everyone agrees.
This will be a 12 round snake-style draft league. All 2012-13 players with eligible seasons will be available to be drafted.
However, your final team must have a total real life salary below the actual 2012-13 salary cap. SIM salaries will not figure into this league at all. This will likely involve a lot of research and a lot of work, but the number of different strategies possible in building your team will likely make this a very fun league.
The Draft:
Once every owner has signed up, I will set a random draft order. The draft will be run snake style over 12 consecutive weekdays, with one round conducted per day. When you draft your player, make sure you include his salary. I strongly suggest you track your team's cap room as you go, but I will do everyone the favor of keeping tabs on everyone's cap number on the draft page as well.
Penalties:
Teams will be given the chance the swap their 12th player selected for a cheaper player in order to get under the cap. If an owner still can't get under the cap, he will be docked one win for every $500,000 he remains over the cap.
For now, I want all owners to refer this list and only this list for player salaries:
espn.go.com/nba/salaries
However, if anyone else has a better resource for player salaries, I'd be happy to know.
The 2012-13 cap was
$58.044M. This means that owners can't just stock up on superstars. It means you will likely have to draft some rookies or minimum salary players. It means some very good players might not be drafted at all.
Cap - None (though I can't imagine team salaries being too high).
WW - No
Trades - For players yes, for draft positions, no.
Rookies - 3 below average rookies, just in case teams undershoot their total minutes.
Alignment will be random.
Let's get this one filled up!