[quote=&quot;Fastidious&quot;]Perhaps but bad trades have occured a lot, almost every season.&nbsp; I think the main thing we should try and fix is sacrifice trades where captains just give people away for all intents and purposes.[/quote]<br /><br />While both you and I have been examples of this, I wouldn&#039;t argue this at all. <br /><br />[quote=&quot;Fastidious&quot;]Players already do this to an extent.&nbsp; You told Goat it would be your last season blah blah.&nbsp; I told off Tai when I was on DCL (and to be honest many people feel similar about Tai&#039;s captaining after playing with him) to get him to trade me.&nbsp; I won&#039;t put names out there but I know of some top players who have lied or misled captains to avoid getting picked or traded.&nbsp; Players can already do this but it is frowned upon for obvious reasons.&nbsp; Why not give them an official non-lame way to do it?[/quote]<br /><br />While I did express that to Goat, at no point did I say I would not continue to play if he refused to trade me. In fact, I believe I even told him I&#039;d finish the season with DMR if he didn&#039;t, but that&#039;s not the point. Let&#039;s move onto the real substance on this quote.<br /><br />It is totally lame when players do anything and everything they can to persuade captains not to draft them. It&#039;s also lame to say you&#039;d only accept a trade to a certain team. But, part of this goes back to the captain himself. <br /><br />Most times, I think players are extremely frustrated and want a trade to get out of a bad situation. I can&#039;t recall a trade or for the request for a trade by a player when he was on a good team. So if the team is bad, you have to start with why. While I think captains may make mistakes in drafts, some just can&#039;t be helped. And if a player is an all-star caliber player playing for a captain, who is to say the least, a low-tier skilled player, usually those situations don&#039;t end well. It sucks for these situations to emerge but when a team is very bad, the top guy on the team - assuming he&#039;s not the captain - usually wants out. Some have the balls to request it, some don&#039;t.<br /><br />This, again, can be avoided with better captains. Not everybody will finish 9-0 but if a team is in contention all season and has played every loss tough, chances are people won&#039;t request these trades. They will when they&#039;re 0-5 and have lost every game 5-0. As long as we&#039;re fielding better teams, which starts with the first player drafted - the captain - then we stand to probably avoid this mostly. <br /><br />[quote=&quot;Fastidious&quot;]In reality I think the board or commish lack the balls to stop trades and I don&#039;t blame them.&nbsp; Has one trade ever been refused in the IDL by the admins?&nbsp; Even obviously bad trades are hard to argue against as long as they are allowed in the rules.&nbsp; Chewy for Nati could work out for both teams, you never know, but 99.99% of the time a trade like that is a pure give away.[/quote]<br /><br />You&#039;re right. And truthfully, if we began to see the commissioner vetoing every single trade he thought of as being slightly incorrect, there&#039;s always the opportunity for him to veto one for his team&#039;s benefit in this instance. But, I don&#039;t see it happening with Bones. Nonetheless, getting more in depth with this aspect is fruitless. But common sense should prevail here, too. Maybe in the future, with the new board in tact and Bones getting a better grasp of the job, they&#039;ll finally have the courage (and confidence quite frankly) to do that. It&#039;s a tough job. Nobody said it would be easy.<br /><br />[quote=&quot;Fastidious&quot;]If trading is more limited it puts more pressure on captains to draft correctly.&nbsp; If trading is more flexible and possible it will allow captains to gamble more on the draft and hope trading later can fix their possible mistakes.[/quote]<br /><br />Trading should be more flexible. If a captain is willing to gamble on a player, he should have the ability to trade him if someone else is willing to take the same gamble. I see this helping parity more because that trade could work out better for both captains since both would be in the position in the first place willing to deal. The worst part would be not to be able to trade because then a captain could be between a rock and a hard place and this also could lessen the opportunity for some newer guys to get chances. Guys might take the proven less-off players than risking it with a newer guy who hasn&#039;t proven much. But regardless, with trading I think that&#039;s the least of our worries. <br /><br />[quote=&quot;Fastidious&quot;]Basically you just want captains to be able to swap draft positions instead of trading people they have picked?&nbsp; Can&#039;t captains already do this?[/quote]<br /><br />While the rules don&#039;t state it, I&#039;ve requested swapping positions in the past and have just been told no. So, I think if people are going to make mass/LB-like trades, just trade spots, not the players. In the end, it&#039;ll probably be less messy.<br /><br />[quote=&quot;Fastidious&quot;]Is it really fair if you have a certain need to trade draft spots with someone else?[/quote]<br /><br />Sure, the guy who has #1 overall might want #12 overall. Or, he might want #8. Both positions will probably land him a more balanced team, whereas #1 might only get him Chew/White/Nostar and a much worse-off 3rd. If he&#039;s not so hot himself, this position may not be as desirable as a more balanced team with two high-end players and himself. <br /><br />Overall, having the flexibility to move up and down the draft through trading with other captains might give the league more parity just because it puts them in better draft positions. I would have been much better off with 12+13 last season than I was with 8. Ralph probably could have done just as well with 8 as he did with 12+13. If this had happened, then my team is probably better and you have created two good teams instead of one. I see that as parity. <br /><br />In closing, we can argue the semantics of trading and it&#039;s effect on parity all we want. The truth is, the only examples that have been brought up by anyone have been the most extreme. As I&#039;ve stated a thousand times, better overall captains would probably cut this down a ton, if not completely. Because they&#039;re not behind from the start in terms of skill and if they have a decent team, the need to trade probably won&#039;t be there. There&#039;s no way to truly know until we see both examples but I&#039;d argue the risk of removing trading to force captains to draft better is certainly not worth the reward. At least with trading, a captain who made a slight error in judgement can have the opportunity to save his season. If you eliminated that, he&#039;d just be stuck and I&#039;d argue that would be a much bigger blow to parity than keeping it around and doing a better job on regulating extreme cases. Either way, the closer we come to evenly skilled captains, the less likely we are to see those extreme trades. At that point, trading could only help. 