Conduct & Discipline

Now and then a player gets into mild trouble away from the floor: a missed team flight, late to shootaround or practice, a missed team meeting, a broken curfew, a league fine for what they said about the officials. It always fits your real schedule. Nobody misses a flight before a home game.

It happens more to players with weaker makeup, to younger players, to unhappy players and in a locker room that's already coming apart. It only happens in the preseason and the regular season, and the same player won't be in the news twice in a short span.

Each incident costs the player some morale and the locker room a little chemistry. Both fade over about two weeks. The whole league reads about it, and your player messages you first with a card. You choose how the club handles it:

• Back him: the player remembers it. The room likes it a little less.
• Fine him: the room settles faster, and the player cools on you a bit. It's club discipline only. It never touches your PP.
• Sit him a game: a one-game team suspension. The room respects it, and the player takes it hardest.
• Say nothing: the player notices.

If you don't answer after you've had a fair chance to, the player takes the silence as your answer. For AI teams it's just news and its effects.

The commissioner sets how often this happens on the Sim Config page: Off, Rare or Normal.

Rarely, the league office suspends a player for an incident, for anywhere from one to three games. The smallest slips (late to a meeting and the like) never draw one. Missed flights, curfew and comments about officials are the likeliest to draw one, and a repeat offender in the same season is more likely to be sat down. A suspension is counted in your team's games, so it follows the player if they're traded before it's served.

A suspended player is healthy. They show as Suspended, not injured, and they never appear on the injury report or count toward the injury limit. Their depth chart spot is held, the next player up fills in, and they come back by themselves once the games are served. Sitting a player yourself works the same way for one game. You can't sit a player who is already out.

Be as blunt as you like about basketball. Criticising a player's effort, defense, attitude, role, minutes or contract is all part of the job, and they'll answer it. What you can't do is get abusive, get sexual, pry into their private life (family, money, relationships, health, religion), or try to trick them into breaking character or giving up hidden numbers.

Cross that line and the player never sees the message. It's marked "Not passed on", and their agent answers in the player's thread instead.

• The first time in a conversation is a warning (in an interview, that question doesn't count against your five). If you've already crossed the line with that player twice before, there's no warning: the agent steps in straight away.
• The second time, the agent runs the rest of that conversation. Typing is off and you pick from what the agent offers: in an interview, questions the agent chose (you still get all five and your scout's read); in a discipline matter, the same discipline choices; otherwise a few simple options or a way to end it.

Every time it happens, three things follow. The player cools on you, and more so the second time. The agent tells the media: the team, the player and the fact that the agent had to step in, never your words. And your locker room's chemistry dips a little for about two weeks. Do it repeatedly and the dips stack, up to a limit.

The agent hands the conversation back when it ends. What it cost you with the player stays.