Rules: Conferences, Re-Seeding, No Roster Lock

#= Power Ranking / Seeds
*= Draft Pick

1) Hello Conferences, Good-bye Divisions
We’re eliminating the old four division setup, and just going with two conferences: Russell vs Chamberlain. The conferences won’t affect postseason play -- postseason seeds are assigned irrespective of conferences -- but will affect schedule, as you tend to play more games in-conference than out. See "Playoff Seeding" below.

Also we won't be using a custom schedule anymore. [ 2019: Re-Alignment ]

2) Power Rankings
At the end of the season, we’ll have a Power Rankings, which will use the same formula as before: (1) overall record (2) H2H record among tied teams (3) most categories won for season (4) coin flip.

3) New Playoff Seeding, and Re-Seeding Each Round
Instead of taking the top four teams from each conference for the playoffs, we’re just taking the top eight teams overall according to Power Ranking, regardless of conference affiliation. That will help mitigate 0.500+ / super-strong teams from making it to the Toilet Bowl.

Also this is the reason we are tossing aside four-team divisions. (Yes, this means we are essentially just one big league. Note: This is something the NBA has considered to even out the imbalance between East and West.)

And with no conferences taken into account, we are now re-seeding each round for playoffs, and Toilet Bowl. This makes it harder for postseason upsets, but also more thrilling when it happens. [ New Postseason 2.0 ] and [ Postseason Mini-Explainer ]

4) Change to Weekly Games Cap
Changing from 22 to 21 soft cap, so that it makes it easier to count. Just make sure you are at 20 for the week before your final big day! Also this change reflects how the NBA has lightened weekly schedules for their teams, thus less games per week for us.

[ Weeky Games Cap explainer ]

5) Changing Fantasy Season End Date
Postseason now starts after WK20 of regular season -- it was WK21 before. This is to accommodate the revised NBA schedule. The rule of thumb is that we''ll end our entire SlamNation season two weeks prior to the end of NBA regular season -- it was one before -- to mitigate the effect of NBA resting players, and to prevent the dreaded one-and-a-half week championship week which we suffered through before. This year our fantasy season ends March 31st, while NBA regular season ends April 10th.

6) No Roster Lock
Farewell roster lock, which was a rule we had that you couldn’t touch free agents (adds / drops / waivers) once postseason started. Instead we will now have a trade deadline that goes into effect at the end of the fantasy regular season, which would be WK20 for 2019.

7) No More Pushing Trades
Once a trade is completed, we can’t push through trades anymore, they need to be processed by ESPN fully—usually 48 hours. The only exception to this rule is for pre-trade deadline trades, and then we can push the transactions so that the traded players are ready for week one of the postseason.

8) Initial Waiver Order
Initial waiver order will be in reverse Power Rankings order from the previous season.

[ Edit 9/27/2019 ] Once we install FAAB in 2020, this rule will be replaced as there will be no waivers. Instead the Free Agent Auction Tiebreaker will be "Reset Each Week to Inverse Order of Standings." See here for details on our FAAB process.