Hoops Rumors is taking a page from our sister site MLB Trade Rumors this offseason and introducing our inaugural Free Agent Prediction Contest!
You’ll have the opportunity to compete against Hoops Rumors readers and win prizes by predicting the landing spots for the players on our list of 2022’s top 50 NBA free agents.
We will award $500 to first place, $300 to second place, and $100 to third place. We will also be giving one-year memberships to Trade Rumors Front Office (our ad-free tier) to everyone who finishes in the top 15. Winners must respond to an email within one week.
Click here to enter your picks for the destinations for our top 50 free agents. The deadline to submit your picks is the start of the June 23 draft (7:00 pm CT). You’ll be able to enter and edit your selections up until that time, but entries will be closed at that point.
Here are more details on what to know for our Free Agent Prediction Contest:
- After the window to make picks has closed, we’ll post a public leaderboard page so you can see who’s winning the contest as players sign with teams. We’re going to use entrants’ full names on it, so if that concerns you, please do not enter the contest. Entries with inappropriate names will be deleted.
- We are also collecting email addresses, which we will use to notify winners.
- After you submit your picks, you’ll receive an email from Google Forms. In that email, you’ll see a button that allows you to edit your picks.
- We will announce the winners on Hoops Rumors once all 50 free agents have signed or on September 27, 2022, whichever comes first. If there are any unsigned players as of September 27, they’ll be excluded from the competition.
- Our top-50 list may undergo some edits by June 23 if certain players move on or off the market, but the contest will be based on our initial top-50 list and won’t be changed to reflect subsequent updates.
- If a player on our top-50 list picks up an option or signs an extension between now and the close of the contest, that’s a freebie, but you still need to go in and make the correct pick. For example, since Jeff Green has opted in with the Nuggets, you’ll need to list Denver as Green’s destination to get that free point.
- If a player with an option has the option exercised (by himself or his team), he is considered to have re-signed with his current team, even if he’s subsequently traded. That means that if you think the Thunder will pick up Luguentz Dort‘s team option and then trade him, you should list him as “re-signing” with Oklahoma City.
- On the other hand, a free agent who joins a new team in a sign-and-trade deal is considered to have signed with the new team. So if you believe Bradley Beal will decline his option and then head to Memphis in a sign-and-trade deal, you should list his destination as the Grizzlies.
- During the NBA’s July moratorium, the leaderboard will be updated based on tentative contract agreements. However, until those agreements become official after the moratorium, they won’t be locked in. In other words, if we’d been running this contest back in 2015, when DeAndre Jordan committed to the Mavericks before changing his mind and signing with the Clippers, you wouldn’t have gotten credit for predicting Jordan would sign with Dallas, even if he may have been listed in our leaderboard as a Mav for a few days.
- Ties will be broken based on which entrant picked the higher-ranked free agents more accurately on a cumulative basis. Each free agent will be assigned a point value based on his ranking and the entrant with the lower overall point total would win a tiebreaker. For instance, an entrant who correctly picks the No. 4 and No. 8 free agents’ destinations (12 points) would earn the tiebreaker over an entrant who correctly picks No. 1 and No. 14 (15 points).
If you have any further questions, ask us in the comment section of this post! Otherwise, make your picks now!
So if they sign and trade? Like let’s just say Beal signs the max deal with the wizards but immediately is traded to the Rockets (just an example) and only signed to be traded, we have to say he resigned with the current team? Like no credit at all if I predicted the rockets even if he ended up there?
If Beal were to pick up his player option and be traded to Houston, it would count as re-signing with the Wizards, since the option pick-up would essentially end his free agency.
If he turns down his option and then is sent to Houston in a sign-and-trade deal as a free agent, it would count as him signing with Houston, since a sign-and-trade deal is a single transaction, not two separate ones.
It’s not the most elegant solution, but I want to treat all exercised options the same way to avoid having to make a judgment call in a scenario where a player picks up his option in June, then is traded in August.
Man I would have dominated this a couple of years ago lol, but with so much trade movement these last 2 years or so, it makes it much more difficult. I’m interested to see how this goes in comparison to baseball, which kind of fell off a few years ago when teams started refusing to sign players b/c of the qualifying offer stuff
More trade movement does not change your odds. It’s the same for everyone.
You’re just complaining about the work ahead if you throw your lot in. All the uncertainty, how one wrong call affects others like dominoes.
That was my first thinking on reading this post, anyway!
It’s a good idea for HR, but predicting the draft or the standings seems like would come before predicting free agency.
I was planning on working the draft prospect list… now this too… Well, better late than never, Luke.
Shoutout to the intern who scores these entries … 50/50 here we go!!
Luke, how about doing this for standings and playoff results too. Or the draft if it’s not too late.
Then start up a gambling site… Open some parlors… Get rich… Blow this popsycle stand eh…
The free agent top 50 was a BIG hit for baseball
What if a player goes unsigned, is that considered retirement?
Not unless he announces his retirement. If he’s unsigned when training camps begin (Sept. 27), he’d be excluded from the tally.
I’ll consider 6 picks a success. I’m really bad at these contests.
Most picks look like locks… of course for everyone else too.
I spent way too much time on inevitably being way, way off lol.