AI GMs

Any team without a human GM is run by an AI GM, and every AI GM has a personality:

• The Quant: trusts the numbers, ignores the noise.
• All In: the window is open; close it.
• The Rebuilder: tearing it down to build it right.
• Old School: you earn your jersey, you keep it.
• The Wildcard: no plan, no problem.
• The Rival: eyes on the top seed, always.
• The Developer: draft young, coach hard, win later.
• The Mercenary: value in, value out, nothing personal.

Each one has needs and a plan (contending, retooling or rebuilding), and they trade with each other as well as with you. Each AI GM's profile shows their style in words (how often they call, how they spend, how they feel about youth and picks, how hard they bargain) with tips for dealing with them. The commissioner can switch an AI GM's persona, tune it or mute its banter, and can switch off trading with AI teams entirely.

You can DM any AI GM in plain words: "my backup center and a 2nd for your wing", "what would it take for your point guard?", "who's available?" or "what do you need?". They read it into a deal card for you to confirm, then answer in their own voice. They might accept, pass, or counter with a full package of their own. A price they name is an opening ask, the same as you'd get from a person, and it comes down as the talks go on.

Talks on one player run a few rounds a day. After that they stop until tomorrow, and you can still send a formal proposal from the trade builder. Each AI GM also only prices so many deals for you in a day; past that they'll tell you to sleep on it. Call something your "final offer" and they will take it or end talks on that player for the day. Walk away and, now and then, they call back. When an AI GM tells you a player isn't for sale, that answer holds for the rest of the season. When you agree, the AI sends you a real proposal that you still have to accept.

They also remember how you have treated them: deals done, walkouts, lowballs. Their profile shows how they see you (Warm to Burned). That memory colours what they say. It never changes their prices.

A formal proposal you send an AI team from the trade builder isn't rubber-stamped. Within seconds their GM answers in your DM thread that they're taking it to the staff, and the trade card reads "With the staff" with roughly how long they'll be. Two to five minutes later (longer if a sim is running, since a trade never settles mid-sim) the real answer lands in the same thread: yes, no, or what would make it work. If something changed in the meantime (a player moved, trades closed), they tell you the deal went stale instead.

An AI club hears at most three formal offers from you in a rolling 24 hours (a three-team deal counts for each AI club in it). Past that, talk it through in a DM or send a new one tomorrow.

Some players are simply not available from AI teams, whatever you offer. In the league's own words:

"AI teams won't trade their best player, an all-star, a young rising star, their only playmaker or rim protector, the only starter at their position, a key starter with no real backup, or a young starter still on their rookie deal."

Ask about one in DMs and they will tell you it is off the table; tap "Why?" for the rule. The rule applies only to AI-run teams. Human GMs decide for themselves.

AI GMs also come to you. When trades are open, an AI team may DM you a pitch: a player they would move who fills your weakest position, with a note and an offer card you can take, counter or turn down. Countering starts a normal negotiation.

You get at most one pitch a day across the whole league, and at most one a week from any one team. Pitches skip your quiet hours and stop if you mute AI DMs.

Two cooldowns protect a club when its GM changes. A team that has just gone to the AI takes no trade calls from human-run teams for three days, so nobody can strip it the moment its GM leaves. And a GM can't trade with a club they left for 30 days. The message tells you when the cooldown lifts. AI GMs respect both in DMs, pitches and their own offers. Solo leagues have neither.