(This is what I'll say:
Ralph, I understand your frustration. I explicitly dropped the ((in my opinion)) very obvious hint in DIRECT response to your team's situation. There was a lot of acknowledgment in the thread, maybe people thought I was joking or wouldn't do it, but I did. The idea was of course for it to be revealed after FA but hinted beforehand and maybe some people would take advantage of it.
However, people kind of need to relax at this point. I am all for board discourse and shit talk, but let's ease up on the personal side of things. I took no offense to Ralph saying "this is bullshit" or whatever it was, because one, I disagree, and two I can empathize. There's the GM part of me that says suck it up, you just won a title, but as the commish and a person, I can understand being upset. I tried to give the best hints that I could, but I understand inevitably there is going to be people that just don't like some of this stuff. That's fine.
To Matt's point of it not really being a factor after FA, I couldn't disagree more. Teams that couldn't offer MLEs can now use them freely in leftovers/during the season. As total salary gets higher and higher in trades, the buffer zone increases greatly, and you'll see teams able to make moves with $4-5M gaps with no worry. Strongly disagree on this doing nothing to increase trade activity. I took away one of the biggest limiting factors.
To the covid cases, all I can say is wah, it'll be fine.

It's a VASTLY reduced rate of occurrence and will not happen at all during the playoffs.
The tournaments are much more streamlined for this and will have little to no impact on sim schedule. They will be simultaneous with normal sims. If you don't want to participate in the other stuff, you don't have to! I thought it'd be fun and add little mini-stakes to every game this year, but you certainly don't have to participate and you won't be penalized for choosing that course. I told you all everyone would be rewarded, and I meant it.
As for rewards, it isn't all +5s and free potential, there is all sorts of ways I can reward you guys.
At the end of the day, look at the engagement. Let's make it a little more positive, but regardless I think there is excitement.)