I don't think it was ever admitted by Team A that he was willingly handing a win to Team B as part of the trade. The trade was "I give you MT, but you can't start him this week against me". The trade was NOT "I'll give you MT and you sit him and give me an easy win this week". Somehow throughout this thread the argument devolved into Team A throwing a match or tanking because he flexed a different player than who he normally would have. That's not game fixing.
Breaking my promise to address this:
It didn’t need to be explicitly stated or acknowledged by either of the teams for this to be the same thing.
Since you didn’t read through, I’ll summarize what we know:
Team A (commish) did not need to win the week.
Team B did need to win the week.
Team A stated they would have started MT were it not for the condition.
Both team A & team B believed that MT would outscore Mattison that week with a healthy active Cook.
It did no harm to team A to lose the game.
it did harm to the league, and anyone other than team B competing for a playoff spot for team A to not field his best team.
Team A & b lied about the trade condition to the league because they knew it was cheating.
So it really is irrelevant if Team A or Team B used the term “fixing” or “tanking” or “throwing” the game that week. That was the functional effect of their agreement.
This aspect is not at all ambiguous. We know that they did this. And if Team A is agreeing to field a lesser lineup for the game against Team B as a condition of the deal, they colluded to throw a game.
Whether team A thought he could win without MT is irrelevant. The only relevant factor here is that both teams believed MT was the better play, and both teams agreed that team B would face an inferior lineup, which gave team B an unfair advantage to win that week as compared to the other teams competing for a playoff spot who had no such advantage that week, and who may have to face team MT later without such a condition.
I understand that maybe possibly it could be that they were innocent babes who did this deal with the best of intentions, and in the interest of assuming the very best about people and not calling them dirty players or unethical cheaters I’ll concede that much.
but at the end of the day, the functional agreement was for a team to throw a game they didn’t need to win to get a player. It’s been established that this was the case.
We can debate motives, we can debate intentions. But we simply can’t look past the fact that whether they intended to or not, they entered an agreement that one team tanks as a condition of player acquisition. Both teams involved clearly admitted that was the functional effect.
That they lied implies to me that they knew what they were doing, but I’m drawing my own conclusion there about intent. The nuts and bolts don’t change regardless.
i’m out. This time for real.
