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Below are the rules of Pacers Digest. After you have read them, you will have a very good sense of where we are coming from, what we expect, what we don't want to see, and how we react to things.

Rule #1

Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:

"Anyone who __________ is a liar / a fool / an idiot / a blind homer / has their head buried in the sand / a blind hater / doesn't know basketball / doesn't watch the games"

"People with intelligence will agree with me when I say that __________"

"Only stupid people think / believe / do ___________"

"I can't wait to hear something from PosterX when he/she sees that **insert a given incident or current event that will have probably upset or disappointed PosterX here**"

"He/she is just delusional"

"This thread is stupid / worthless / embarrassing"

"I'm going to take a moment to point and / laugh at PosterX / GroupOfPeopleY who thought / believed *insert though/belief here*"

"Remember when PosterX said OldCommentY that no longer looks good? "

In general, if a comment goes from purely on topic to something 'ad hominem' (personal jabs, personal shots, attacks, flames, however you want to call it, towards a person, or a group of people, or a given city/state/country of people), those are most likely going to be found intolerable.

We also dissuade passive aggressive behavior. This can be various things, but common examples include statements that are basically meant to imply someone is either stupid or otherwise incapable of holding a rational conversation. This can include (but is not limited to) laughing at someone's conclusions rather than offering an honest rebuttal, asking people what game they were watching, or another common problem is Poster X will say "that player isn't that bad" and then Poster Y will say something akin to "LOL you think that player is good". We're not going to tolerate those kinds of comments out of respect for the community at large and for the sake of trying to just have an honest conversation.

Now, does the above cover absolutely every single kind of distraction that is unwanted? Probably not, but you should by now have a good idea of the general types of things we will be discouraging. The above examples are meant to give you a good feel for / idea of what we're looking for. If something new or different than the above happens to come along and results in the same problem (that being, any other attitude or behavior that ultimately distracts from actually just discussing the topic at hand, or that is otherwise disrespectful to other posters), we can and we will take action to curb this as well, so please don't take this to mean that if you managed to technically avoid saying something exactly like one of the above examples that you are then somehow off the hook.

That all having been said, our goal is to do so in a generally kind and respectful way, and that doesn't mean the moment we see something we don't like that somebody is going to be suspended or banned, either. It just means that at the very least we will probably say something about it, quite possibly snipping out the distracting parts of the post in question while leaving alone the parts that are actually just discussing the topics, and in the event of a repeating or excessive problem, then we will start issuing infractions to try to further discourage further repeat problems, and if it just never seems to improve, then finally suspensions or bans will come into play. We would prefer it never went that far, and most of the time for most of our posters, it won't ever have to.

A slip up every once and a while is pretty normal, but, again, when it becomes repetitive or excessive, something will be done. Something occasional is probably going to be let go (within reason), but when it starts to become habitual or otherwise a pattern, odds are very good that we will step in.

There's always a small minority that like to push people's buttons and/or test their own boundaries with regards to the administrators, and in the case of someone acting like that, please be aware that this is not a court of law, but a private website run by people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. If we feel that you are a special case that needs to be dealt with in an exceptional way because your behavior isn't explicitly mirroring one of our above examples of what we generally discourage, we can and we will take atypical action to prevent this from continuing if you are not cooperative with us.

Also please be aware that you will not be given a pass simply by claiming that you were 'only joking,' because quite honestly, when someone really is just joking, for one thing most people tend to pick up on the joke, including the person or group that is the target of the joke, and for another thing, in the event where an honest joke gets taken seriously and it upsets or angers someone, the person who is truly 'only joking' will quite commonly go out of his / her way to apologize and will try to mend fences. People who are dishonest about their statements being 'jokes' do not do so, and in turn that becomes a clear sign of what is really going on. It's nothing new.

In any case, quite frankly, the overall quality and health of the entire forum's community is more important than any one troublesome user will ever be, regardless of exactly how a problem is exhibiting itself, and if it comes down to us having to make a choice between you versus the greater health and happiness of the entire community, the community of this forum will win every time.

Lastly, there are also some posters, who are generally great contributors and do not otherwise cause any problems, who sometimes feel it's their place to provoke or to otherwise 'mess with' that small minority of people described in the last paragraph, and while we possibly might understand why you might feel you WANT to do something like that, the truth is we can't actually tolerate that kind of behavior from you any more than we can tolerate the behavior from them. So if we feel that you are trying to provoke those other posters into doing or saying something that will get themselves into trouble, then we will start to view you as a problem as well, because of the same reason as before: The overall health of the forum comes first, and trying to stir the pot with someone like that doesn't help, it just makes it worse. Some will simply disagree with this philosophy, but if so, then so be it because ultimately we have to do what we think is best so long as it's up to us.

If you see a problem that we haven't addressed, the best and most appropriate course for a forum member to take here is to look over to the left of the post in question. See underneath that poster's name, avatar, and other info, down where there's a little triangle with an exclamation point (!) in it? Click that. That allows you to report the post to the admins so we can definitely notice it and give it a look to see what we feel we should do about it. Beyond that, obviously it's human nature sometimes to want to speak up to the poster in question who has bothered you, but we would ask that you try to refrain from doing so because quite often what happens is two or more posters all start going back and forth about the original offending post, and suddenly the entire thread is off topic or otherwise derailed. So while the urge to police it yourself is understandable, it's best to just report it to us and let us handle it. Thank you!

All of the above is going to be subject to a case by case basis, but generally and broadly speaking, this should give everyone a pretty good idea of how things will typically / most often be handled.

Rule #2

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B) Send a private message to the administrators, and they can respond to you that way.

If this is done the wrong way, those comments will be deleted, and if it's a repeating problem then it may also receive an infraction as well.

Rule #3

If a poster is bothering you, and an administrator has not or will not deal with that poster to the extent that you would prefer, you have a powerful tool at your disposal, one that has recently been upgraded and is now better than ever: The ability to ignore a user.

When you ignore a user, you will unfortunately still see some hints of their existence (nothing we can do about that), however, it does the following key things:

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To utilize this feature, from any page on Pacers Digest, scroll to the top of the page, look to the top right where it says 'Settings' and click that. From the settings page, look to the left side of the page where it says 'My Settings', and look down from there until you see 'Edit Ignore List' and click that. From here, it will say 'Add a Member to Your List...' Beneath that, click in the text box to the right of 'User Name', type in or copy & paste the username of the poster you are ignoring, and once their name is in the box, look over to the far right and click the 'Okay' button. All done!

Rule #4

Regarding infractions, currently they carry a value of one point each, and that point will expire in 31 days. If at any point a poster is carrying three points at the same time, that poster will be suspended until the oldest of the three points expires.

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If I copy and paste an article from the Indianapolis Star website, I would post something like this:

http://www.linktothearticlegoeshere.com/article
Title of the Article
Author's Name
Indianapolis Star

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The legal means of watching or listening to NBA games are NBA League Pass Broadband (for US, or for International; both cost money) and NBA Audio League Pass (which is free). Look for them on NBA.com.

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We prefer self-restraint and/or modesty when making jokes or off topic comments in a sports discussion thread. They can be fun, but sometimes they derail or distract from a topic, and we don't want to see that happen. If we feel it is a problem, we will either delete or move those posts from the thread.

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What changes are you expecting?

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  • #16
    Re: What changes are you expecting?

    Originally posted by wintermute View Post
    . . . edit: check out Larry Coon's Q26 http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q26
    yeah, i really like that explanation, it does a nice job of taking a complex thought and making it simple.

    Comment


    • #17
      Re: What changes are you expecting?

      It is threads like this that make me BEG people to use the hyphen in "re-signed" when you mean "to ink a new contract" rather than "left".

      "Hibbert resigned" makes bad things happen in my brain.
      BillS

      A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
      Or throw in a first-round pick and flip it for a max-level point guard...

      Comment


      • #18
        Re: What changes are you expecting?

        I think that we do something with either DC or Tyler, or trade them both. If we trade one of them, it will be for a pick, and if we trade them both, it will be packaged with our first for a pretty good player who would fill one of our needs. So either we get two prospects and keep one of DC and Tyler, or we get a player of high talent. Players of high talent potentially available here are by guess are Anderson Varejao or Paul Milsap. If we don't pull off a trade, I think we go after Carl Landry or Brandon Bass in free agency. If we have the money, we go after Kris Humphries...

        I think before everything in free agency we go after Nash. If we don't get him, we get a veteran point guard like Chauncey Billups, Andre Miller, or Jason Kidd for cheap with hopes of good production.

        We re-sign (There you go BillS :P) Hill and Hibbert. We don't re-sign Barbosa, AJ, or Lou. Lance has a big role next year, and hopefully as a full time shooting guard with honed skills he starts to show his talent.

        Comment


        • #19
          Re: What changes are you expecting?

          It's hard to have concrete expectations with so many possibilities in front of us.

          First of all, we don't even know if our front office will be here in a month. But for the sake of discussion I'll assume they will return (Bird/Morway).

          I think Shaw gets hired to head coach, and someone will be brought in to replace him.
          I think Barbosa and Amundson will only be back if other plans don't work out.
          I think Fesenko will be re-signed.
          I think Roy will be re-signed for less than the max, but still a lot.
          I think if Hill is brought back, it will be for about $7m a year. Much more than that, and he's out.
          I thought we'd go after Nash or someone else clearly better than Hill or DC, but after hearing Grady and Wells I tend to doubt it (but then again, that's just their opinion; maybe the F.O. disagrees and will still pursue someone bigger/better for the staring 1). I would think that if someone foolishly plays Hill 8+ million a year to play somewhere else, this becomes more likely.

          I think Paul George and Roy Hibbert will be better players next year than they were this year. I'm suspicious of the same for Lance Stephenson, but I don't hold high hopes with him.

          Before I move on, I need to think about who I could imagine giving Hill 8 million a year.

          The tax teams for 12-13 are Lakers and Heat, so they're automatically out. Next are teams already at or over the cap (or very close) and therefore cannot offer such a high offer to Hill: (I'm assuming the cap is going to be about $58m) Mavericks (only $4m under), Grizzlies, Hawks, Bulls, Magic, Sixers, Pistons, Clippers (basically right at the cap), Knicks, Bucks (right at cap), Thunder, Nuggets ($1m under), Jazz (about $5.5m under), Timberwolves.

          Of those teams, the following have $8m+ trade exceptions to theoretically use to get Hill for that kind of a number (though this would have to be a sign and trade we'd have to agree to, obviously): Lakers ($8.9m), Jazz ($10.9m). I'm not sure if or when those expire(d), so they may no longer be valid. I think they are, but I forget the rules here so I won't claim to know for sure.

          Could either the Lakers or Jazz be interested in Hill? Maybe. For $8m+ ? I dunno about that. Certainly not a definite "YES" in either case, I don't believe.

          Other than them, that leaves the following teams:

          Celtics ($22.5m), Spurs ($9m), Blazers ($17m), Hornets ($21.4m), Suns ($26.2m), Nets ($23.4m), Bobcats ($15m), Rockets ($17.2m), Warriors ($9.9m), Wizards ($12.4m), Raptors ($16.1m), Cavaliers ($26.5m), Kings ($13.9m).

          Celtics: That's before re-signing Garnett and/or Allen, but even still I don't see them paying Hill $8m to backup Rondo. Espeically with Avery Bradley around, who is similar to Hill.

          Spurs: While there's mutual love here, they need to re-sign Duncan, they may want Diaw back, and of course Tony Parker is the starter. I'm sure they'd be open to his return, but odds are they won't pay him $8m to replace Gary Neal (who will cost much less).

          Blazers: This is one of the real threats. Plenty of space, I highly doubt they want Felton back, they were looking for a consistent starter, and Crawford's gone, too (most likely). If they think Hill is worth $8m+ to be their starter, he's probably gone unless George just wants no part of that franchise.

          Hornets: Likely to use a good amount of that on Eric Gordon's new contract, plus Kaman and Landry are free agents. I think with Anthony Davis coming in, assuming they see him as a center, they'll probably go with Davis and Okafor at the 5, so Kaman will probably leave, but they may still want Landry back. I haven't done the math on Gordon's new potential deal, but I'm assuming it will still leave around $8m or so to go. Jarrett Jack is coming back at $5.4m, and he was a solid starter for them last year. Greivis Vasquez is also returning. I don't see Hill as the right guy at the right time for them; certainly not at that high of a price tag. I doubt they get him.

          Suns: Obviously a huge part of this is what happens with Steve Nash. I've been assuming he's leaving. They would have the money and the starting role to offer to George, so put them down as a threat. Like Portland, it would largely depend also on if Hill would be satisfied being overpaid to play for a losing team. Maybe he is.

          Nets: Again the obvious being what happens with Deron Williams. If they trade for Dwight they'll keep him, too, and this will be moot. If he does leave, they would be a similar threat as Phoenix.

          Bobcats: They'll have the room, and I didn't think they were too high on D.J. Augustin. But even stilll, they also have Kemba Walker coming back, and I have a hard time seeing them offering George $8m to share that space with Kemba.

          Rockets: You'd think at least one of Lowry and Dragic is returning to start for them, and I'm skeptical of them overspending for Hill to be their backup.

          Warriors: I don't think Curry's going anywhere, so it's the same deal: They won't overpay for a backup PG.

          Wizards: Same as Warriors only with Wall.

          Raptors: Calderon is coming back unless traded, Nash is a dark horse to go there, and they have Jarryd Bayless. Never say never, but they're not high on my list of teams that concern me in this scenario.

          Cavaliers: Again, with Kyrie Irving around, why overspend for his backup?

          Kings: Evans is no longer their PG (and they won't be extending him this summer, either, so they can't be too high on him right now), Jimmer was questionable, and Isaiah Thomas was their starting PG at the end of the year. Hill would probably do them some good. So put them down as another threat.

          So let's refresh who the apparent threats are IMO:

          Portland, probably Phoenix, maybe Brooklyn, Sacramento.


          Are any of them primed to be a winning team soon? Probably not, and I think winning does matter to George. I also believe he likes being in Indiana, likes this organization/staff/roster, and knows we're in a good position to be in the thick of the playoffs again over the next few years.

          So do I think he'll leave all of that for one of the above teams for an extra 1 or maybe 1.5m a year more per year? Eh, maybe. But I tend to doubt it, so for now I'm going to assume he comes back for about $7 a year, which is about as high as I can see us going. If I'm wrong, oh well.

          So I'm looking at:

          Hill/DC
          George/Stephenson
          Granger/Jones
          West/Hansbrough
          Hibbert/Fesenko

          This is assuming DC and/or Tyler does not get traded. I have no idea if they will be or not. I know if I were the GM I'd be trying to see what they might net me, at the very least, to see if I like the potential new roster better than this one, but I can't say with any certainty that either is going to be out soon. I wouldn't be shocked either way, really.

          But if we're going to trade someone, it's probably going to be one of those two.

          Then we have the 26th pick. Seems logical to be on the lookout for a draft night deal involving this pick and perhaps DC and/or Tyler for another veteran to bring off the bench, but again you just never know.

          And then lastly we're looking at about $20m-ish in cap space if they sign their rookie and before Roy and Hill are addressed. A spit-ball number is that those two will take up almost all of that, maybe $12m for Roy and $7m for Hill. Maybe a little more. But we could still add a piece first, in theory, by acting swiftly to get an outsider signed on the dotted line and then re-signing Hibbert and George afterwards. I just don't know where our front office's heads are at on that front. I don't know how much Simon will let them spend, I don't know if they're thinking of pursuing a big fish or just a small to moderate sized fish. It's just impossible for me to say.

          So I feel pretty good about saying I think Hilll, George, Stephenson, Granger, Jones, West, Hibbert, and Fesenko will be back, but past that I can only wait and see how the next month and three quarters plays out.

          Comment


          • #20
            Re: What changes are you expecting?

            Originally posted by BringJackBack View Post
            We re-sign (There you go BillS :P) Hill and Hibbert.
            BillS

            A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
            Or throw in a first-round pick and flip it for a max-level point guard...

            Comment


            • #21
              Re: What changes are you expecting?

              Originally posted by Hicks View Post
              . . . First of all, we don't even know if our front office will be here in a month. But for the sake of discussion I'll assume they will return (Bird/Morway).
              GOOD POINT EVIDENTLY. with the morway/prichard thing going on.


              Originally posted by Hicks View Post
              Before I move on, I need to think about who I could imagine giving Hill 8 million a year.
              Wanted to thank you again for your analysis. I was curious, but too lazy to do it. My initial reaction is no one will be interested in playing hill more than the non-taxpayer MLE. ie $5M. So I am not worried about that myself. Even more so with your list.

              Comment


              • #22
                Re: What changes are you expecting?

                I'd guess that we'll take a run at Carl Landry, OJ Mayo, and one of the Rockets PGs... Barbosa is almost 100% assuredly gone, and my gut instinct is that we'll see an offer for Hill that we won't match (as we did a few years ago with Jarrett Jack).

                Hibbert definitely gets re-signed, without question. Landry is an emerging strong post player, who could play alongside Hibbert now that his defense is emerging as a strength. Lou will be groomed into a Foster-lite...

                No shot we get Nash or Williams.

                I actually wonder I'd Boston will just blow up the team this offseason and reload with draft picks and young talent to groom. I wouldn't be surprised if they moved Rondo.

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