For most of us who play Fantasy Basketball, adding players, dropping players, and trading players is easy business. You figure out what another team owner might accept and offer him a certain number of players whose stats you can stand to lose in exchange for players who have the stats you crave. If you can get them to trade one great player for two or three good players, more power to you.

A lot of us have that same mentality when it comes to watching the general managers of our teams trying to work out deals with other teams or free agents. If we can do it with our own Fantasy teams, why can’t General Managers figure out similar scenarios involving their own teams?

We even have a tool on ESPN.com to make sure that we follow some of the crazy things stipulated in some of the players contracts.

Even with that, though, building a real team isn’t as easy as building a Fantasy team.

I’ll illustrate by using my local team, the Utah Jazz, but these principles apply to a lesser or greater extent to every NBA team.

Utah’s Dilemma

Why can’t Utah manage to get a shooting guard who can play defense and spread the other team’s defense with good three point shooting? It’s not that they aren’t out there. This year, especially, we will see a good group of younger players and veterans who have shown that they can do both AND are available on the free agent market. There is also an opportunity in the 2007 NBA Draft to find a player who could do that. There are also teams that have them that might be willing to trade them for one reason or another.

Obstacle 1 – Money This Year

The Jazz are near the expected salary cap. That means that if they don’t want to pay a luxury tax (which they don’t), they’ll have to be careful not to do things that will hurt them this year. Among the things that the Jazz could theoretically do that would increase the amount of money they are paying this year are 1) Sign their current players, 2) Sign new players, 3) Make Trades, or 4) Draft Players.

1) The Jazz currently have three players who will not be under contract next year: Rafael Araujo, Dee Brown, and C.J. Miles. None of them played well enough to command high salaries on the free agent market. The highest would probably be Araujo, simply because big men are paid more. Even picking them up for a million apiece, though would be three million dollars that can’t be spent on a player who might help them more than all three of these players combined. You hate to think that you may have wasted a recent draft pick on a player that still shows some promise, but you can’t always afford to keep giving them chances either.

2) The Jazz have a mid-level exception that they can spend on a free agent shooting guard. There are some good ones out there that can be had for the mid-level exception as well. The Jazz have to decide, though, if they can afford to do that AND any other trades, acquisitions, and/or re-signings that they might want to make.

3) Making trades is the best way to not add more money on this year’s contracts while adding players who can help you in places that you are deficient. The current rules don’t allow you to pick up much more in a trade than you are giving away (unless you are under the cap). The big problem here is finding someone who will take your dead weight and give you a quality player in return. General Managers aren’t being paid millions of dollars for making dumb moves. Some still do, though, but they don’t do that quite as often as some of the GMs in Fantasy leagues.

4) Drafting players can add significant contracts to a salary for the teams drafting near the top of the first round. As the Jazz are not drafting very high, this amount will not be terribly significant. It should be noted, however, that the Jazz might rather trade their first round draft pick and sign one of their current players (e.g. Dee Brown) than picking up a rookie who might not be very helpful this year. That especially might make sense considering the fact that the Jazz are already very young. Getting an additional first round draft pick several years from now might be MUCH more helpful than it would be this year. Another option would also be to pick up a European who might not join the Jazz for several years, choosing to finish up his time in Europe before jumping to the NBA.

Obstacle 2 – Money down the road

Isiah Thomas didn’t get the Knicks into a bind because the salaries he was picking up were high for one year. He was picking up high salaries that still had many years left on them. The Jazz, with a multitude of long contracts, have to be careful with any other long contracts that they might pick up because it could hinder them in future years — just like the Knicks have been hindered. Money down the road can be picked up in several ways as well: 1) Extensions to current players, 2) Free Agent Signings, 3) Trades, and 4) First Round Draft Picks.

1) I’m going to lump signing current players and signing the team’s own free agents into this category. The Jazz want to keep Deron Williams because he has played so well and they spent the third pick in the draft on him. They are going to want to sign him to a contract where he has to stick around for a while to play alongside Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur. They have to be careful about signing any current players to more than a one year contract because they know they REALLY have guaranteed money in years to come already tentatively scheduled for this signing.

2) Because of Deron Williams, the Jazz have to be careful about offering too much future money for a good free agent shooting guard, even though they need him. They may have money available this year for him, but they aren’t going to be able to entice any good player with a one year contract. And that won’t help them compete for a championship for years to come, which is what they should be hoping for.

3) This is where Isiah got into trouble. He traded equal salaries, but the length of the salaries were often for much longer. He would trade people with expiring contracts for players who were still locked up in 3 or 4 year deals. It’s very hard to sign a free agent from another team if you have no money to pay them because every year you STILL have contracts to pay. If the Jazz make a trade, they have to be careful that the player they are getting doesn’t have a long contract left, or they have to be willing to fit THAT contract under the cap, too.

In Fantasy Basketball, it might be good to have Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Ray Allen, Lebron James, and Stephon Marbury on the same team. In REAL basketball, you don’t want a bunch of players who all have the same talent. You want some guys who can play with their back to the basket, some players who are good at defending, some players who are good at passing, and some players who can make threes and spread the defense, and some players who can rebound, offensively and/or defensively. Some players need to be able to find their own shot, while it is also fine, depending on the offense and the point guard, to have players who can run off screens and be set up for their shot.

In Fantasy Basketball, you don’t care. A real GM has to care.

Obstacle 4 – Personalities

This one is the toughest for the GMs, I think. In Fantasy Basketball you deal with stats and only stats. The players on your “team” don’t have to get along. They don’t have to get along with the coach. They don’t have to like the city. They don’t have to play well with their teammates. The players are only real because they can stop playing (because they are injured or are benched). Other than that, they aren’t real.

In REAL basketball, the players are real people. They might play worse because of their environment, friends, teammates, coaches, or other basketball personnel.

The hardest part about this one is that GMs don’t often know how a situation is going to work out until they are in it. Will the local guy play better or worse coming home? And do they care if it increases the ticket sales substantially? If a guys stats decrease but his team wins more games because he is a leader in the locker room, the GM is ecstatic and the Fantasy GMs are crushed. Will the player get along with his teammates, or bring them all down?

Conclusion

Just because the trade works out in the ESPN Trade Machine and the player plays well on another team, doesn’t mean that he will play well on your team. Or that another team would part with the player. Or that the player would like to live in your city.

Real Life Team-building isn’t as easy as it looks.