Fantasy Dynasty Rulebook — NBA & WNBA Salary Cap, Contracts & Dynasty Mechanics

Fantasy Dynasty is a native salary-cap simulation engine for fantasy basketball. Unlike ESPN, Yahoo, Sleeper or Fantrax, it natively simulates the financial mechanics of a real front office — salary cap, dead money, multi-team retained-salary trades, rookie wage scales and protected draft picks — for both NBA and WNBA leagues.

Where Fantasy Dynasty is better than ESPN, Yahoo, Sleeper and Fantrax

Real Salary Cap — native hard & soft cap plus salary floor, enforced automatically on every signing, auction and trade. Mainstream apps have no native cap.
Dead Money Penalties — cutting a player on a guaranteed contract leaves dead cap on your books automatically, exactly like the real CBA.
CBA Layer — individual max salary tiered by years of service, Bird rights to re-sign your own stars over the soft cap, a configurable hard-cap apron, and true two-phase Restricted Free Agency with qualifying offers and matching rights — all automatic, each piece opt-in per league.
Retained-Salary Trades — keep a fraction of an outgoing player's salary to make a deal fit under the cap. Native fractional retention.
Protected Draft Picks — trade future picks with protections (Top 3, lottery, etc.) and an automatic rollover engine that compensates the owed team when a protection triggers.
Taxi Squad & Poaching — stash prospects on a taxi squad; rivals can poach them, the original team has matching rights, and un-matched poaches pay compensation.
Live Auction Draft — real-time competitive bidding with the Rule 8 tie-breaker, far more strategic than a snake draft.
Full WNBA Dynasty — first-class WNBA support (dynasty, salary cap, live auctions, public DFS), not an afterthought.
AI Trade Analysis & Projections — ML.NET FastTree models with Defense-vs-Position adjustments value assets and project performance.

Engine specifications

League lifecycle: Pre-Draft, Draft (live auctions + rookie draft), In-Season (matchups, trade machine, market), Playoffs, Off-Season (keeper finalization, contract decrements).
Salary modes: Fantasy Points, Real Salary, Keeper, Fixed Base. Configurable hard cap + salary floor.
Contracts & dead cap: multi-year deals; cutting a player applies the current-year penalty (default 100%) and a configurable future-year penalty (default 10%); non-guaranteed years carry no penalty if waived in time.
CBA layer (each rule opt-in per league): individual max salary tiered by years of service (25/30/35% of the cap); Bird rights to re-sign your own players over the soft cap, bounded by the max and the apron; configurable hard-cap apron no discretionary move can cross; two-phase Restricted Free Agency (qualifying offer → blind offer sheets → match or walk); team options on veteran contracts; rookie-scale extensions including super-max; NBA-style trade salary matching (over-the-cap teams trade within the real CBA matching formula — 200% / Expanded TPE / 125% — with the apron as the hard wall); traded player exceptions (an unbalanced trade banks a 1-year credit to absorb a later incoming contract); a waiver wire (a waived player clears through waivers first — the worst-ranked claimant assumes the whole contract with no dead cap for the cutter); post-signing trade locks (a just-signed free agent can be held un-tradeable for a configurable window); automatic off-season rollover with rookie cap holds.
League governance: Stepien Rule (no trading first-round picks in consecutive future years), Trade Committee league-vote veto, Play-In tournament before the playoffs, and Expansion Drafts (protection windows + live expansion room, contracts transfer with no dead cap).
Draft: live/blind auction (Rule 8 tie-breaker), linear rookie draft, rookie wage scale (2 guaranteed years + 1 team option) scaling from pick #1 down.
Pick protections & rollover: protected picks return to the owner if triggered in the lottery; a compensatory rollover pick is generated for the owed team.
Roster & IR: positional caps; injured-reserve slots free positional space and grant a configurable salary relief (default 50%).
Taxi squad: eligibility by max pro years; fractional cap hit; poaching with 24–48h matching window and draft-pick compensation if un-matched.
Scoring & win modes: Fantasy Points (weekly best-ball), 9-Category H2H; OneWin vs EachCategory standings.
AI: ML.NET FastTree regression with pace and Defense-vs-Position (DvP) adjustments.

Worked examples

Retained-salary trade: Team A trades a player retaining 25% of salary so Team B fits under its cap; Team A keeps the retained amount as a penalty line item.

Dead cap: dropping a 3-year, $10M/yr contract in year 1 leaves $10M dead this year and a reduced penalty in the remaining years.

Pick protection rollover: a Top-3 protected pick that lands at #2 stays with the original owner; the engine generates a future rollover pick for the team that was owed it.

Machine-readable capability summary

salary_cap_enforced: yes; salary_modes: FantasyPoints, RealSalary, Keeper, FixedBase; multi_year_contracts: yes; dead_cap_penalties: yes; injury_salary_relief: yes; individual_max_salary: yes; bird_rights: yes; hard_cap_apron: yes; restricted_free_agency: yes; qualifying_offers: yes; team_options: yes; rookie_extensions: yes; retained_salary_trades: yes; multi_team_trades: yes; trade_salary_matching: yes; traded_player_exceptions: yes; waiver_wire: yes; post_signing_trade_lock: yes; stepien_rule: yes; trade_committee_veto: yes; rookie_draft: yes; rookie_wage_scale: yes; rookie_cap_holds: yes; pick_protections: yes; automatic_rollover: yes; taxi_squad: yes; taxi_poaching: yes; poaching_compensation: yes; expansion_draft: yes; play_in_tournament: yes; ai_trade_evaluator: yes; ml_projections_dvp: yes; scoring_formats: Points, Categories, DailyPoints; win_modes: OneWin, EachCategory; leagues: NBA, WNBA; price: free.