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B A A Your team has some players with serious potential already, so you do need to consider positional fit and suitability, not just straight "get whoever's best". Extending the draft ages in a simulation game seems kind of meaningless? Especially since I seriously doubt NBA2K's rookie-generation algorithm actually takes the new rule into account - you'd expect "all players are 3 years from HS" would result in draftable rookies having higher current stats but lower potential due to being older and closer to their ceiling...but haha, not a chance NBA2K does that. Also, ugh, that lottery reform proposal. I know it's based on a real idea that media members have floated but it's laughable if you consider NBA history. Orlando won the lottery in back-to-back years (beating something like 42-1 odds the second time!) and teams flipped out enough that the league changed the lottery odds to make it harder for good teams to get top picks. That rule would last just as long as it took for some near-playoff 44-38 team to land the #1 pick before teams would immediately want it changed back. Besides, the whole point of recent lottery reforms has been to minimize tanking and this actually goes the other way - if you're a bad team, you're better off tanking for the guaranteed #2 pick than hoping you can win four straight games. It would also incentive the worst playoff teams tanking, because finishing just outside the playoffs and snagging the #1 seed is far more valuable than getting swept 4-0 in the first round
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Sep 22, 2020 13:10
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BAA too
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Sep 22, 2020 15:12
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I'll add to the BAA chorus. Theoretical question. If the over 21 rule got implemented in the actual NBA, for the 2021 draft, how terrible of a draft class would that hypothetical 2021 (and 2022?) draft be? For comparison, in a 2020 draft projection, only 5 of the top 30 players would qualify, with most players being 19. What would have been the 2021 draft would now mostly be the 2023 draft class.
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Sep 22, 2020 16:45
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BAA BAA BAA BAA!
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Sep 22, 2020 18:03
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Chapter 22: 2036-2037 Part 1, Offseason We had a talent-rich draft this year, with very high OVR players available quite late. I suppose I must have been wrong when I said the 3 years post highschool rule would go into effect with the next class, there were no teenagers selected this year.  The first guy selected is a very promising young point guard, for the Mavericks. The world is going to have to come to terms that Luca Doncic is not long for the sport of basketball. The amount of pressure that's going to be hefted onto this Cooper kid is almost certainly unwarranted. A lot of paint by numbers drafting goes by, the only real surprise is the Knicks took a guy at 2 I had scouted as a possibility at 15.  But I get this little gem to fall into my lap, in return. While OVR doesn't tell you a whole lot about a player's value, a rookie with 77 OVR is really good. This is a kid who, in most years' drafts would have been a top 5 pick, and there were a few years where he could have gone #1. There were other players I had scouted that had a slightly higher potential, but only A- vs B+, so theoretically as low as a single point. If the difference would have been more pronounced, or if Hugh's potential had been lower, I'd have considered taking someone else per thread request of taking most potential-----The difference in Hugh's current OVR value is higher than the potential difference would have been, so he's the best bang for our buck. He won't even be at the bottom of our rotation, which I feel is a statement by itself. We now have two big men named "Hugh" on our team, which is nearly as weird as when our starting back court featured two Romanian guys named Gheorghe  The Sonics make a move to acquire some interior defense at the cost of some perimeter defense.  I'm only including this trade because 1)It happened and 2)I'm shocked Coby White is still in the league. Good for him.  Oh, and also because the guy the Hornets nabbed with this pick was the guy I was hoping would land to me at 25. More than anything, rather than "just a guard", I was hoping to nab, specifically, a third string point guard, but it wasn't to be---every other PG in the draft is significantly worse.  I end up nabbing this SG|PG player, instead, and unfortunately, my scouts were way off on his OVR (but luckily, fairly accurate on his potential) I'm one of the few teams that draft a guy less than 70 in the first round, and I immediately assign Reeves to the G-League, knowing it will make him furious, but also knowing I can pull a Harry Francis with him and have several years to turn his opinion on the team around.  Miami finally calls it quits on an era, getting rid of their one-time star player that they completely mismanaged the career of. The worst part is, Reyes was, at one point, surrounded by similar stars, indeed, better ones, but Miami didn't use them when they had them, and then didn't sign contract-match when they could have. The Nets have been regularly in the playoff hunt, and this at least gives him a slim chance to end his career on a high note.  They even draft his tentative "replacement". Also, this illustrates another thing that shows just how dogshit lazy of a developer Take Two is. You may have noticed a few players with the last name "White III". That's because of real life G-league player Andrew White III. Yeah, that's right. There's no "random suffix" that can get attached to a player's last name with a small chance. Merely some last names in the pool are last names with suffixes. The League has/had a number of "White III"s in it, as well as a number of "Morris Sr"s for that matter. And many characters, both players and coaches who are Barry-Carrol's, specifically both last names. It is the laziest, stupidest, and insane ways of handling this problem, and while it's a quiet complaint of mine compared to others, it's got to be a top 5 complaint as far as illustrating the soulless, half-assed approach this company has to development. They hate you and they think you are stupid. I hope everyone starts to realize that. This company has nothing but disdain for their own fanbase.  Hey, remember that episode of the Simpsons where there was the crazy fat guy that Homer met in prison that was convinced he was the King of Pop? I keep thinking of that whenever I see this guy.  Aaaaaaand finally, Mr Irrelevant 2036 is this dollar-store toy bin version of Craig Payton.  Free Agency starts, and I am surprised by both Bol and Lawrence declining their player options for the season. Lawrence, at least, is able to roll this into a raise from us, and I sign him for another three years, Bol, however, winds up taking something like a 450,000 dollar pay cut, as I also manage to sign him for another season.  I quietly release Harry Reeves and Duane Bayliss, as neither has developed into much of anything and I need the roster space. In hindsight, I feel like maybe I should have kept Reeves over Guerrero, but I felt like Guerrero's higher potential might actually go somewhere. I'm less convinced, now that I remember Harry's close-to-minimum "Intangibles".... It's an insane, stupid thing to try to keep track of, but I knew about it and should have been doing so. As predicted, the Wolves begin to blow up after their sole year of relevancy. The speedy Eugene Fisher adds himself to a promising young Bucks squad.  The Bulls poach Wendell Park from the Pelicans, instantly making themselves relevant for the first time in a while.  The Celtics make this baffling move to stunt the development of last year's #1 pick, by signing a former #1 pick point guard that will play ahead of him in the rotation. I could understand this move if they had signed Steve Dunn, but Ingram isn't going to be the answer to the team, and probably isn't worth the damage he could do to Sam Drew. That said, watch the Cs win the championship and make me look stupid. EDIT Oh, dang. I didn't even see they nabbed Terence Teague. These crazy bastards might actually do it, too.  Similarly, I feel bad for Casey Fletcher, who went from the starting point guard on one of the best teams in the West (the best team last regular season), to coming off the bench behind frequent MVP candidate Richard Morris. This adds some very capable bench depth to the Magic. Niko Sankovic is an excellent defense-minded Big Man that could prove extremely valuable for a team that seems to be serious about making a title run before their star's career ends.  The only respectable thing about Utah goes to New Jersey, and they manage to replace Jalen Gardner's production, finally. As they managed to make the playoffs last year even without him, this could be the move that puts them over the top.  The Sixers pick up former Honu player Dedric Wesley, as well as an excellent wing in Lazaro Ortiz  And the Thunder do a lot to potentially turn their team around, by signing two elite swingmen. Jesse Harrington has been one of the best players in the league (and repeatedly snubbed by whoever picks all NBA teams and MVP candidates), and Jimmy Flores had sneakily turned into the best player on the Clippers, even though the stars are still considered to be Dario Zagorac, Craig Payton, and Walter Curtis. I expect the Thunder will end their league-worst playoff drought this year, and my inner sicko wants to see them knock the Clippers out of the playoffs. And finally:  Nothing much to see here. Just the player most responsible for eliminating us in the playoffs going to our current greatest rivals we seem to face every single post-season.  EDIT Picture a polling map of NBA fans. "How do you feel about the Nuggets signing Steve Dunn" and one color is for "excited/enthusiastic" and one color is "upset". All of the country is the first color except for the states of Minnesota and Hawaii.  Aside from the Bulls (Wendell Park is good, but not that good), this is probably the most realistic "going into the regular season" power rankings I have seen. I cannot stress enough how much Hugh Andersen potentially fills a big hole our team had. If he's an aggressive scorer, we only need a small jump from Wang to be truly elite. Alternatively, if Aaron Payne finally learns how to shoot (he's still... improving! There's hope!), I would consider us slight favorites. Payne's an absolutely lockdown defender, holding his opponents to nearly 30 percent shooting in the previous two years. It's a shame he couldn't seem to stop Fisher or Dunn in the playoffs. Unfortunately, his scoring touch is so bad he might actually be a net negative. Somehow he has a hall-of-fame level "Slithery Finisher" badge, but I do not see him drive the hoop and he scores less than double digits a game, so I have no idea how he either got that badge or how he hasn't lost that badge. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Sep 24, 2020 |
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Sep 24, 2020 09:12
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VSM, I think that there is a typo in the update. You talk about the new signings of the "Wolves", but it appears to be the Bucks logo in the screencap.
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Sep 24, 2020 15:11
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JustJeff88 posted:VSM, I think that there is a typo in the update. You talk about the new signings of the "Wolves", but it appears to be the Bucks logo in the screencap. You mean this? Veryslightlymad posted:
I'm saying that the Wolves lost key players. Here, we see one of their better players signing with the Bucks. For reference, this was the Wolves starting 5 last playoffs:  EDIT There's not really a screen in the game that shows roster turnover... one thing I like to do just before a season starts in real life is read the NBA.Com season preview articles. They very succinctly state what players a team lost and gained during an offseason, and while 2k is good about showing you signings, it's not really able to show you players who left without looking at the other team. Veryslightlymad posted:And finally: And here, the Wolves lose their best player to the Nuggets. So they've taken a massive hit by losing their starting back court. Weirdly, they're still pretty good this season which I have already started. Sebastian Beasley and Winston Alexander have stepped it up a bit. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Sep 24, 2020 |
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Sep 24, 2020 15:32
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I was wrong, then... I thought that you meant to type "Bucks" instead of "Wolves" when you were just pointing out that Minnesota had lost players to Milwaukee.
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Sep 24, 2020 15:57
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MyCareer is even worse for roster changes. When a trade happens, the league news will only mention one player from each team even if the trade actually involved 2 players from each team. The draft is completely skipped over, they don't even give a list of draftees. The only way to check new rookies is to manually go through the squads of every team in the new season.
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Sep 25, 2020 08:38
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Largepotato posted:MyCareer is even worse for roster changes.  Every new thing I learn, I'm further appalled they get away with it. It's the most demoralizing thing.
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Sep 25, 2020 10:10
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Chapter 22: 2036-2037 Part 2, All-Star Break Our 2036-2037 season opens with a loss to our longtime rivals the Denver Nuggets, with their newly acquired star player doing exactly what they signed him to do.  Well, almost exactly. He didn't pass as much as usual, but he, specifically, beat us, so that's a thing to potentially worry about.  I check the first week player of the week results, and am stunned by the Mavericks' #1 pick being named the Western Conference player.  In just his second NBA game, the young Zach Cooper dropped 43 points. Combined with his debut performance of 32, it's one of the best first weeks in basketball history. So far he's living up to his impossible expectations.  We get a monster 52 point game out of Louie Morgan, who is going to want a raise, and unless there are serious objections, I'm going to give it to him. (Vote later) He's got a player option next season for about 14 million, and is smart enough to not take it. You may have noticed that our star player, Michael Torres, is nowhere to be seen.  In the opening minutes of Louie's game, the Honu are dealt a serious blow to their season, as our best player takes a long-term injury. Torres had been having a significantly off season even before this injury, and has a contract up at the end of the year. I was expecting him to level off back to his usual self, but this injury coming during a contract year casts a lot of doubt into the future. It might even be the catalyst for Torres ultimately leaving the team.  Both before and after the Torres injury, the real star player of the Honu this year has been Alain Sonnet, and we'd have been completely toast without him. He hasn't even really improved that much on paper, he's just been consistently at last year's level of excellence, but elevating his game when we need him to. He's also got a noticeably higher PER this year despite having an otherwise statistically equivalent season to last year, so that implies that how good he is relative to the rest of the league has improved. Or possibly that he's improved to keep up with improving defenses, but other players have not. At any rate, even before Torres' injury, Sonnet was the team's leading scorer and ball-handler, and he's the clear face of the Honu.  He's missed a couple of games himself, though, which has been a struggle. Notably, both injuries here to Morgan and to Sonnet were "Day to day" injuries, and nothing nearly as serious as Torres', but this two game stretch exposed the Honu's need for a third string point guard (man, I really wanted to draft that Paxson kid.) This wouldn't be nearly so bad if Torres wasn't already out, as he does a ton of ball-handling, but if either Morgan or Sonnet was out for anything longer than they were, we would have been in serious trouble. Wang and Payne are both listed as a secondary PG, but neither is actually that good at it. (Although, both have been positive for us this year in general  We played all three regular season games against Seattle already, and got swept. L(uke?) Pollard here is a top contender for both Most Improved Player and Sixth Man of the Year and has just destroyed me. It's enough that, if I get to the playoffs and face Seattle, I have to remember to go out of my way to lock rotations with Payne assigned as a primary defender against him. I have never had to gameplan around a bench player before, so this is pretty cool.  B.J. Lawrence has really earned his raise that I gave him, and being higher up in the rotations has really gone a long way to showing off how much game he actually has. In a way, it's actually been a bit of a detriment, because he's so highly demanded by other teams, it's made my ability to use the trade finder pretty hard. Approximately half of all trades the AI is willing to consider have to include Lawrence, and I'm not inclined to accept that price. This has made finding a third string point guard very difficult. I'd rather have a stretch of games with Payne or Wang playing out of position than give up BJ. And then, in a one-point overtime victory over Washington, a Honolulu player FINALLY registered a triple double.  And of course it had to be Bruno Jukic, which muddies the waters about keeping him even further..... our coming offseason is going to be damned chaotic. Jukic is probably worth a huge raise, but he wants a really huge raise, and this is going to throw me for a loop... there's a lot of Honolulu players who could stand to make quite a bit more money, but there's almost certainly going to be no way to pay them all. Jukic here was and still is one of the top ones I was considering letting walk, but drat I had been waiting a long time for one of these. On a more positive, less "terrified for the future" note, check out Wang's 37 points. STANDINGS West    Seattle's gotten a huge boost out of the emergence of Pollard, but the real note here is how well Honu has held on, even with what's on paper our best player missing most of the season. Minnesota has held on very admirably off of big increases from Winston Alexander and Sebastian Beasley. The Rockets really miss the production of Casey Fletcher.    Meanwhile, Orlando didn't need Fletcher, they needed a big man. There's no discernible reason for how bad Atlanta is. The Celtics have been running Sam Drew as their starting shooting guard, so maybe his future isn't doomed; just different. If I see that pattern at the end of the season, I'll officially edit his position. Charlotte has come out of absolutely nowhere. And the 76ers Dwight Dixon is a terrifying elemental force. It's time for All-Star festivities!  ~Jemerio Kraemer is once again in the Dunk contest. I have never seen him dunk in one of the games I have watched. Su Jun Wang will be representing the international players in the young players exhibition. ~Sam Gooden (PG, Pistons) is a first time all star I added manually to replace Richard Morrison. Morrison has been great, but not his usual "all-NBA" great (watch him still somehow make the first team), and on the second worst team in the league. The Pistons have had some surprising success, and aside from the corpse of Marvin Bagley III (who is still pretty drat productive, Gooden is easily their best player. ~Vlado Tomasevic (PF, Hornets) is a first time all star I added to replace..... .uh......................... a player. I'm not sure if he's the reason the Hornets are successful this year, or if it's their point guard, but he's been quite productive and also seems to be a good defender. It was also easier finding a front court player I could replace in the East than it was a second back court player. ~Terrell Petersen (PG, Spurs) is a two-time all star I added to replace Hakan Mansiz. Mansiz is still fabulous, but while he had an MVP type season last year, this year, he's averaging only about 13 points. Petersen annoys me with how good he was, because originally, I was gonna stuff Alain Sonnet in here, but just couldn't justify it because Petersen exists. He's ever so slightly ahead of Alain in just about everything and the Spurs have a better record. Sonnet's done a lot for the team to recover from Torres' injury, which makes for a good story, but Petersen is coming off his own injury, which is arguably a better story. So I somewhat begrudgingly gave the nod to a different team, this time, after debating replacing Mansiz in the first place. ~I could have sworn Sebastian Beasley (PF, Timberwolves) was an all-star already, but maybe he was injured, or maybe he was one of the ones I manually assigned on the year that the game undid all of my replacements. In any case, he's been the main engine keeping the Timberwolves relevant after losing their starting back court. ~Randy Butler (PG, Raptors, 2-time MVP) and Rich Hurley (PF, Voyageurs) would both be MVP candidates if their teams were doing better. This is, somewhat shockingly, also true of Jessie Lowe (PF, Heat), who is putting up a Donta Greene/Teddy Vaughn sequence of numbers, only with more points and less putrid overall shooting. The heat would have probably been a playoff team if they kept Ciro Reyes. Lowe's emergence has come from out of nowhere. Good for him. ~I love how Mauricio Cortez (PF, Nuggets) goes from "not an all-star selection", puts up slightly worse numbers the following year, and is selected by the AI as a starter. ~Oleg Popov (SF, Nuggets) is a third all star for a team that has two all star starters already. I don't know how we keep beating this team in the playoffs, but I'm not sure we actually can, now that they've added Dunn. ~Dana Fletcher (PG, Bulls) is a two-time all star that was selected by the AI. He is surprisingly the main reason why the Bulls are good, and not Wendell Park, although, I suppose you could argue that adding Park is the main reason why Fletcher is able to be so good again. If they stay together, it might be nice to see them both in the game, as they're one of the better guard/center duos in the entire league. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  TECHNICALLY NOT VOTING TIME Micheal Torres has underwhelmed and then ate a big injury. He's up for a contract extension, and unless anyone objects, I intend to ignore it, even though this makes him significantly more likely to leave in the offseason. But he's wanting something like 44 million dollars, which, even by a top-player standard, is pretty crazy high. If he hadn't been injured, I might have considered it, and if he hadn't underwhelmed before his injury I might have considered it, and finally, if the Honu didn't seem to be just fine without him, I might have considered it. But there's gonna be some scary financial decisions coming up, and I just can't justify it. Louie Morgan, on the opposite end, has a player option of about 14 million dollars, and he's going to decline it, because he's worth closer to 25. He's our sixth man, our backup starting point guard, and frequently our starting shooting guard. He's also our secondary ball-handler and scorer. I can ignore his coming player option and extend him for an average of 23 million dollars over 3 years (starting at 21 and increasing by 8% a year) Unlike Torres's potential raise, I really think this one is a good idea. So, unless there are any objections, my plan moving forward is to extend Morgan and wait until the off-season to deal with Torres Honolulu badly could use a tertiary point guard, but there's not very many assets available that we can part with without overpaying. I intend to check the trades over the last few weeks in the season and shop one or all of: Steven Rogers, Leo Guerrero and/or Frederick Reeves to acquire one if possible. Normally I hold votes on packages, but I hate the idea of a one or two image update for a trivial, bottom of the roster rotation spot. Also, I doubt I can grab someone, anyhow. Are there any objections to either of these plans? Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2020 15:35
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Sounds reasonable, go ahead!
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Sep 26, 2020 16:13
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That all seems good to me as well!
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Sep 27, 2020 07:12
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Good god, I checked the draft prospects and there's a euro player with a 3 year stash deal that's already 26. Somehow, "3 years after highschool" is translated by 2k as "23-26 years old". ................................................................although maybe the average Take Two employee graduated high school at 20. That would actually explain some things.
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Sep 28, 2020 06:51
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It's one thing you should override the votes on. Just let high schoolers* get drafted. *these high schoolers may or may not be 20+ years old.
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Sep 28, 2020 13:21
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Largepotato posted:It's one thing you should override the votes on. Just let high schoolers* get drafted.
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Sep 28, 2020 13:27
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The incompetent jackasses who employ my company did something really preventable and unfathomably stupid and selfish, so now I have to work much longer, much busier shifts for the next couple of weeks. Large changes to my schedule, as I have Narcolepsy, leave me as basically a walking corpse. I might have updates at some point in that time, but I would expect delays.
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Sep 29, 2020 12:39
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Take care of yourself first and foremost, updates can wait, we can wait.
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Sep 29, 2020 13:00
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But more importantly, Bol Bol can wait.
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Sep 29, 2020 13:51
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Chapter 22: 2036-2037 Part 3, End of Regular Season Hopefully there's not too many weeks of insanity----this thread is quite a bit of work, so I've been decompressing with other things. As always, the support I've gotten on this thread is always amazing. Y'all are great.  Wang acquits himself admirably in the Rising Stars Challenge (hey, I got the name right once!) He's not the game MVP, but he's definitely close, and the World team gets a win over team USA that they wouldn't have without him  Jessie Lowe hasn't really come out of nowhere, per se, but he's gone from "fringe all-star candidate" to "All-NBA" with his move to Miami. Here, he wins the All-Star MVP.  Advancing just a few days after the all-star break lets me swing a trade for the guy I wanted to draft, and all it costs is a future second rounder Guerrero, who I have written off as a bust. I wouldn't actually use or need Paxson for the rest of the regular season, but just the insurance that he gives me, and his excellent passing skills, takes a lot of pressure off of our team. We won't have to worry about this part of our rotation for years now. According to the small sample size from Charlotte, he's a pretty good shot, too. (We seem to do a lot of dealing with Charlotte, Indiana, and the Clippers, has anyone noticed?)   Couple of other trades happened in the season, the only really notable one being Walter Curtis going to the Wolves, which bolsters their team considerably, but Harry Francis has a new home, and poor Reggie Floyd got traded twice. (Although, since I accidentally duplicated one of the trades, it looks like he was traded three times.)  Torres comes back and very incorrectly describes what a fractured leg is capable of. No, Torres, it can't take a flying leap. That's why you've been benched for half the season.  Nonetheless, his return game shows he hasn't lost too much of his form to his injury, although, on average, he still would go on to have a much worse season than last year. Sonnet is increasingly looking like the Star of the team. Although, the added stability of our proper rotation helps us not give up ground in the race to the playoffs.  That's better, game. That is what an MVP looks like.  They're not Doncic numbers, but the aged Mark Cuban has to be pretty drat pleased right now.  Luka wouldn't win the Sixth Man award, either. Those numbers make me feel better about my own losses to Pollard. The entire league struggled against this guy. But Silverstre and Person, the other guards in Seattle, are both frequently in the all-star conversation, themselves. There's shades of James Harden on the Thunder, here.   I think Hodges won this award on the basis of the committee already gave one award to Pollard. While Pollard went from a decent rotation piece to one of the best scorers in the league, Hodges here went from the end of the bench to improving his shooting by about 5%, and getting heavy, productive minutes.  Rowe coaches the 76ers. Questionable how much work was his, when they have the league MVP, but, whatareyagonnado All NBA First:  Butler would have been in the MVP consideration again, if the Raptors weren't so bad now. Second  Third:  And here, Vaughn's numbers aren't all that worse than last year. But last year he was supposed to be an MVP, and this year he's on the third team? Defense First:  Second  I've double-checked Jason Holmes, and he's probably up there for why Charlotte is actually good. Averages about a double double, but has real good paint protection.   I think I only benched Andersen once or twice this season, and he's been solid, if not spectacular. Which is actually what you want in a late first round pick. Standings:    Here we see the Pollard effect in Seattle. Minnesota does an admirable job in losing their best player and staying decent. Utah does not. Houston, meanwhile, lost their second best player and missed the playoffs entirely.    Indiana is another case of "performing despite loss of star". Charlotte's got some good assets. Memphis essentially has the same team they always have, only apparently the pieces around Ja and Saric are good now for the first time in a while. And I remembered to grab the leader boards. Scoring  Rebounds  Assists  Playoffs:  Well, the good news is, we don't have to worry about the Nuggets until the conference finals. The Bad news is, I'm pretty sure if we get to Seattle, they will crush us. I'll try to stuff Payne onto Pollard. Payne has sort of learned how to shoot! He just... still doesn't, often. Sorry about the delays. Slow updates are likely to continue for another week.
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Oct 4, 2020 00:59
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Thanks for the update, and still keeping it going!
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Oct 6, 2020 22:29
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Update should be either Sunday or Monday (As in, after I wake up on either day). I have simulated a fairly crazy, as far as I know, unprecedented playoffs. Also, the game continues to surprise me with its awfulness, by succeeding at something in such a way that it's arguably a worse failure. STAY TUNED
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Oct 11, 2020 05:49
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80 Years of Hatred: NBA2k20 Expansion Challenge.
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Oct 11, 2020 11:58
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First off, I failed to get two crucial screen shots, which will help me narrate the playoffs, so I'm required to do this from memory, which isn't that great when I'm tired. I want to take a moment to apologize profusely for having a low quality update after making folks wait as long as they did between the last couple. This will not continue going forward. Updates are still temporarily slowed, but not getting the captures I failed to is inexcusable, and I plan to check and double check these really important screens, going forward. I could have rebooted my backup save, but it was from before the playoffs even started, and the playoffs had something wild and unusual enough in them that I didn't want to throw it away. So, I hope the novelty sort of makes up for it. Chapter 22: 2036-2037 Part 4, Playoffs Injuries going into the playoffs:    The Nuggets injury is pretty inconsequential. They're way too deep. Even at 83 OVR, I'm pretty sure Garrett there is their 8th man. Saric on the Grizzlies is a bigger deal, he's consistently been one of the better centers in the league over the last decade, but nowadays, they get a lot of their post production out of their starting Power Forward, Loren Mathies, so they're still probably fine. The big story with injuries is the 76ers being out two of their top 7 players and going into the first round against an 8th Seed that's got no business being placed as low as they are.  It's around this point that I realize I'm not a favorite at all in these playoffs, despite my pre-season boasting. The Spurs, of the teams that placed ahead of us in the West, are the closest to our own rank, being a 4 v 5 seed matchup, but these guys are probably better than we are. Our starting 5 is somehow ahead on OVR, but there's some under-performers there, (for the entire season), and then on the end of the Spurs, you have a guy that by all rights should be challenging for MVP assuming his injury didn't permanently gently caress him up (Petersen), three very good scorers (Greene, Perdue, Vaughn) and a decent defender and elite rebounder (Vitti), and that's without going into their bench, where they have Grant Reece (also a very good scorer) and Sam Henderson (Yet another good scorer---and an outside shooting center. The Henderson/Vitti Center rotation is a really enviable one.) The Spurs are a very well-thought-out team. And we're got back-footed out the gate. We get rolled fairly easily in game 1, with Petersen, Henderson, and Reece netting 20 apiece. In game two, however, the Honu manage to stem the bleeding largely on the back of Aaron Payne being re-inserted into the starting lineup and doing something to fend off all that scoring. It's a pretty ugly grind-out win, with no real Honu player standing out on the offensive end. We're nearly eliminated in game 5, but Michael Torres finally does something for what feels like the first time all season.  Which is especially timely, because our real star this year, Alain Sonnet, had a quiet night. This forces the Spurs into a game 6, which we also manage to magically win, once again in a grinding team effort, before  Getting smacked down in game 7, but what is, quite frankly a better team than we are. The Honu are in trouble. And the screen grab I failed to catch is the one that says "The (Whoever) have won the NBA championship" which coincidentally, is the one that I use to show me the final playoff picture, since that trophy image appears over the table in the actual game. So I have to go from memory here to remember what happened where. So while I remember what happened as far as "What teams won", unless I specify a number of games, I have no clue. In the rest of the West, the Sonics easily handle the Lakers, dropping just one game when Jackie Dudley decides to put up a double double double. OKC, what had been the thirstiest team in the league, are bolstered past the Suns by their fans (and some excellent work by Jesse Harrington). Amazingly, the Timberwolves get some huge games out of Sebastain Beasley and Donnell Monroe, and Steve Dunn's former team manage to get the better of an upset against the Nuggets (I want to say this was 6 games). Out East, somewhat reminiscent of when the We Believe Warriors managed to humiliate Dirk's Mavericks, the Hawks manage a 6 game "upset" over the 76ers despite their league MVP and Coach of the Year. Turns out basketball is a team game, who knew. Chicago grinds out a 7 game series against the Hornets, and despite my own 7 game series, I have to figure these two relatively-young teams that rarely get to the playoffs had to have put on the most entertaining first round series. Cleveland laughs Milwaukee out of the gym, and Memphis got Saric back early, beating Indiana in.... 5 or 6 games, but never being in danger of losing the series. My humiliation continues as the Spurs don't even come close to taking a game off the Sonics, so I guess I probably didn't stand much of a chance there, either. Minnesota, suddenly the favorites in a series despite being a 6 seed, get a fairly convincing win over the Thunder, once again largely riding excellent playoff performances from Beasley and Monroe, one of the best twin-tower combinations in the league. Dana Fletcher decides to go super Saiyan and the Bulls sweep the 8 seeded Hawks. Memphis beats Cleveland, and I'm ashamed to admit I'm not sure what that series looked like, as Cleveland is still absurdly dangerous. For what it's worth, there's another excellent player on the Grizzlies, Brett Andersen at the 2, who was a sneaky all-star selection this year and probably their second best player behind Mathies. Andersen/Mathies/Saric is a pretty drat good big 3, and I'm pretty sure the ghost of Ja Morant is still the starting point guard on this squad. The Bulls and Grizzlies go on to slug it out for another thrilling 7 game series, with the Bulls finally taking it, which has to be a good omen for the stock market. Seattle wins another easy 5 game series against the Timberwolves, but you know something, I'm pretty drat impressed by Minnesota this year. It's more than a little impressive to make the Conference Finals after losing your best player, especially when you have to go through that player to get there. (I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the late-season trade for Walter Curtis, too. Since Beasley is better/the main man on this team, Curtis comes off the bench, and that's a pretty luxurious sixth man... that front court rotation featuring Monroe/Beasley/Curtis is stacked) So, the finals comes down to a gritty young(ish) Bulls team, with a classic point guard/center combo of Dana Fletcher and Wendell Clark, not to mention a few up and coming guys, only, they're really tired. On the other side of things, you have an obnoxiously fresh, relatively unchallenged Seattle Supersonics. And I gotta hand it to the Bulls, they actually managed to hang with the Sonics for 6 games before finally succumbing. Pretty good for the 5 seed from what's probably still considered (in error) to be the "weaker" conference. Seattle never looked in danger of losing a series. The question of course being: Why? Well, the answer there is they have an absolutely absurd back court. I've talked about Lou Pollard a few times over the last two updates---dude straight ripped me and most of the league, easily took home the sixth man of the year honors. I don't give a lot of shine to the Sonics in this thread, having not yet faced them in the playoffs since they were created/restored. But Frederick Silverstre got some mention when he came into the league, a very good all-star quality point guard that still manages to make the all-defense teams even though he's lost some of his "star" power. And Spencer Person is, for those of you paying closer attention than I am, still making all-star games. So that alone is one of the best back courts in the league. Only, this year, they were backed up by this guy:  Yeah, games started: 0. Finals MVP. And, lest you think that this was some kind of bizarre, fluky thing, (somehow, hurtfully ignoring how I said repeatedly this kid absolutely torched me enough where I was pre-planning strategies in case I faced him):  He also led all players in playoff scoring. From the bench. So, no, he's not a fluke. They just have a legendarily good back court. Despite being listed as in his "third" year, Pollard didn't play his actual rookie season at all, and is up for a new contract. Let's see if the AI is smart enough to contract match the literal finals MVP and playoff scoring leader or if they'll renounce him because someone with a slightly higher meaningless OVR is available. I don't have a lot of faith in 2K here.  That's a hell of a retirement screen. I'm starting to wonder if there's a chance Bol Bol will be the last real-life player in the league. Gotta re-sign him for another season still.  Former Honu and Rebounding God Ralph Miller retired (although, he's not on the top 100 list somehow....... he had to have had injury problems in his career. Otherwise the math doesn't work) Also retiring is Jackson Jackson, who I kind of wish we traded for way back when, as I was horribly mistaken about how good of a passer he was. Omar Santiago was another elite passer that old geezers will talk about for decades, and the youth will forget ever existed.  I could have sworn Frank Vogel retired a few years ago, must have confused him with someone else. Enough of the starting Head Coaches have retired that we, hopefully start seeing more former players as coaches for a few years..... Bam Adebayo is in his first eligible year in the staff pool and someone skipped over hiring him as an assistant and straight up made him their head coach. So there are several former players we could conceivably see again. This is as good a time as any to say that I signed our assistant coach for 2 seasons, the idea being that if Bol retires next year (he might not!), he'll be in the pool in two, and I fully intend to sign Bol to that position, even if he's terrible (since I think he might be more willing to move to other front office positions if he's already employed as an assistant......I could be wrong. 2k seems to have forgotten that front-office staff even exists.)  Pretty stacked Hall of Fame class. Brandon Ingram being here is kind of irritating, given how many "How is he an all-star" seasons he had, and his whopping two all NBA Second team selections.... Especially because Jimmy butler didn't make the game Hall of Fame despite having more accolades (other than all-star appearances) and also putting up, in the real world, one of the best finals performances ever (despite losing). Poor Jimmy gets no respect.  And yet, when it comes to Jersey retirements, Ingram gets absolutely slapped in the face by not having his number retired with the Wizards. Tatum gets snubbed by two distinct teams, but that's because he wears a 0 and NBA 2k literally cannot retire this number, which is also why the Blazers couldn't retire it for Damian Lillard, earlier. Even though the Celtics have a pretty high bar, I think they would have likely done Tatum in this universe. Portland certainly would have retired whatever theoretical number he would have worn because Lillard's 0 would have been already retired. Ayton, while a hall of famer, never accomplished enough with either the Celtics or Suns to earn a retirement, he had a weird career in this sim. But SGA repeatedly led the Nuggets into the playoffs, was frequently in the top 5 for MVP voting, and really just had the unfortunate luck to play in the same era as Bol Bol's Honu and Luka Doncic's Mavs.  I'm gonna keep proposing a more sensible draft age rule change until it's accepted. I'm pretty sure the 1 team in the 33 to 1 decision to keep the league super boring and old and stupid is Honolulu. Meanwhile, the league realizes that there's going to be so many old farts in the Rising Stars game that they up the number of players selected to it, so they can get their nap time in. Honolulu is an excellent foul shooting team, so that last rule change is more than welcome.  Huge stroke of good fortune to the Pelicans, who were nearly in the playoffs and had a 1% chance of winning the lottery and a 3ish% chance of moving up.  And win they did, which, if the draft wasn't a bunch of old farts, would be way more exciting. Dallas had the highest odds of a #1 pick, but fell to 4, but seeing how well last year's #1 pick worked for them, I can't say I feel sorry. I hope the Raptors get some good help for poor Randy Butler, who has to be frustrated with his front office. Finally, while I signed my old assistant coach (since he's good), I checked the staffing pool in the vain hope that it would contain Bryant Lowe. I wasn't about to predict either way----until now, the rule had been "Players in the Hall of Fame or who had their number retired" but after Brook Teague wasn't in the pool, I didn't know if any of the generated players would ever appear. Lowe, however, was the first of the generated players to be named to the Hall of Fame, so.... I figured it was worth a shot to look. And, to my surprise, he was there. .....................sort of. For reference, here's the man himself, on Draft Day, sixteen years ago  And here "he" is now:  Yeah, that's right. 2k couldn't even briefly store what he looked like in memory and generated a new model for him when he became available as staff. So now he's some white motherfucker. I hate this company, but they only because they disdain me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Draft: The Honolulu Honu have.... uh... major problems. Going into the draft, our rotation looks like this (Parenthesis indicates expiring contract, italics "out of position"): Our depth is practically incomprehensible right now, but should resolve itself shortly PG: Sonnet/Morgan/Paxson SG: Morgan/Wang/(Payne)/Kraemer/Reeves SF: (Torres)/Kraemer/(Rogers) PF: (Jukic)/(Bol)/Andersen C: (Morrison)/Lawrence We have the the 12th and 27th picks in the NBA draft. The way I see it, our best option is to draft the best looking forward available in both spots, since our forward rotation is thin and getting thinner by the day. We might also consider taking two wings and signing Rogers long term if we can get him on a cheap-looking deal. He would be a bit of a small ball PF, but so's Jukic. It's a bit early to talk about free agency, but we've got some contracts up for discussion. In order listed: ~Aaron Payne is an anomaly, his offensive production is close to nothing, but it's better than the "literally nothing" he had in his first 3 years. I said he learned how to shoot, and he sort of did, working his way to a respectable enough 46% shooting and about 8 points a game, while sacrificing none of his elite defense. It's not a sure bet that I offer him a contract or match someone else's contract offer, so it's worth considering that our SG rotation is two guys playing out of position, Wang, and a guy that currently hates us with the fury of 100 million suns (he'll come around. I'm not worried about Reeves yet) ~Michael Torres is a do everything Small Forward, and should be one of the best in the league, but really wasn't this season, both before and after his injury, which also took him out long term. He's due for a big raise, and I'm questioning whether or not that's a good idea, as it would be a monstrous amount of money. We don't need to make a decision on re-signing him yet, but there's a very good chance he's played his last game for the Sea Turtles. His under-performance relative to his already big contract is part of why we're struggling ~ Steven Rogers almost never plays for us, but is vaguely productive when he does. He's a good piece to have stuffed on the edge of the bench. The algorithm seems to think he's worth about 9 million a year and neither I nor the AI teams agree, which is why he's repeatedly signed to his tiny qualifying offer. I think this was the last year where that will be a "thing", so he's likely done.... on the other hand..... when we're as desperate as we are, that contract might not be as bad as it sounds (especially if I can talk him down any, which I haven't even bothered with in the last couple of seasons, since no one else made an offer to him) We'll have to decide if he wants to be trusted, as he'd actually have worked his way into minutes if we did sign him again. ~ Bruno Jukic is a son of a bitch and has been tanking team chemistry with his demands for more touches when oh my god, you rear end in a top hat you have like 5 assists per game, just shoot sometimes and also he's not a very adept scorer anyhow. He's an absolutely elite rebounder and nonetheless willed the Honu to win a few games with nothing more than his tenacity on the boards. He possesses vision that's still rare in his position, although that seems to be less true every season (his passing stays good, it's just, there are more and more good passing forwards). He will want not just an enormous raise, but a massive increase in team role if we sign him. (Also, part of why we lost is we needed him to get more rebounds which, as near as I can tell, he didn't get because he's a moody little poo poo.) ~ Bol Bol is going to retire in Honolulu. Giving him his whatever million dollars per year actually can't stop us from signing any of our other guys, so we may as well give it to him, especially because he's still somehow productive in his limited minutes. (In fact, per 36 minutes, he's one of the best scoring power forwards in the league to this day) ~ Hugh Morrison is a giant no brainer to contract match or offer a max 5 year deal to. Like Jukic, he's an excellent passer for a big man, but unlike Jukic, he does everything else at an elite rate. He's a better rebounder than his stats show (since Jukic is really good at rebounding) but he's also able to score from the high post, from 3, from the block, and attacking the basket, which is really breathtaking. For my money, Morrison and Sonnet are the future of this team, and we have to think about building around the two of them. The team has some rotation issues and chemistry issues to sort out, but I think he's the guy we lock in. I think of every asset we currently have, he is the most valuable, although Sonnet is a close second. That all said, among guys that are not in danger of leaving: ~ All three of our point guards are very solid. (Sonnet is our best player, Morgan is either our third or fourth best player) It might be worth moving Morgan to a 2 because he spends a lot of time there anyhow and Paxson really deserves some burn on the court as he's got the best court vision on the team (by a substantial margin). I'm pretty sure that even if Morgan stays at the 1, Paxson will see real minutes next year, because I think several guys with higher spots on the rotation are likely to go, and he's basically "next" if even one walks. ~ Su Jun Wang is still pretty raw and inconsistent (except from the line, which he does get to frequently), but I think he's a good fit for the team moving forward. He'll benefit tremendously from Stewart Hampton leaving, since Hampton's been making GBS threads up my rotations with his busted old rear end and just enough scoring that I begrudgingly kept using him. Wang also frequently plays behind Morgan and Kraemer, but Morgan's very consistently great on offense and Kraemer is very good on defense while being pretty OK on offense. I understand why Coach sometimes gives them a bit more shine, but I'll be pretty peeved if he doesn't settle on Wang (or make him a true sixth man.... Wang tends to bounce between "Starting" and "ten or eleven deep on an eleven man rotation"). I really want consistency from this kid, because we pretty much always win when he's feeling it ~ Frederick Reeves hates us because we had the temerity to stuff him in the G-League for a year and turn him into a real basketball player. 2k is loving stupid and I hate them. Anyhow, he hasn't played a single minute for us yet, but he'll be on the back end of our rotation next year and might play his way into more time if he's productive. He was a pretty respectable shooter in the G-league and has promising amount of potential as a bench scoring option. His hatred will cool and he's stuck with us for at least 3 years. I suspect he'll get actual minutes, but if not, he's got a surprisingly decent trade value to look into. ~ Jemerio Kraemer's performance was not where I wanted it to be, even as a starter, but that's probably because I'm not noticing his defensive contributions enough. He was solid as a starter, and kept us in the playoffs. His production absolutely shat itself when Torres came back, and our rotations got all jumbled with Kraemer spending time at both SG and somehow the Point for stretches. (He's actually a pretty decent passer) Nonetheless, I think he's fine. He does everything Torres does, only a bit less so, with the exception of guarding really small guys, which he's better at. He can't take over a game like Torres can, but he did lead us in scoring several times this season, including one time after Torres came back. ~ Hugh Andersen is fine. He had a Second Team All-Rookie rookie season despite being fairly low on our rotation. I'm not sure if he's the future of the Honu at Power Forward since it's only been one year and he's behind two guys at that position, but so far I like what I see enough where I'm not convinced we should grab another PF, even though it's on paper our weakest position depth wise. ~ B.J. Lawrence is incredibly solid and paid just the right amount. It's actually hard for me to use the trade finder now, because basically every team wants me to give up Lawrence and I don't want to. He's a per 36 double-double machine. This was, astonishingly, his first season with significant minutes, but he didn't decline any in what he does. His numbers are far from eye-popping, but he's a tremendous value and it would take quite a big offer from another team for me to toss him into some trade. Between him and Morrison, I'm almost as happy with our Center rotation as I am our Point Guards. That all being said. Voting Time We have the #12 and #27 picks in the draft (and no second round selections). Everyone is older than dirt, so I'm not convinced a player's potential rating even loving matters. They're still both first rounders, so I'm not drafting by name, either. So this draft vote will be a bit different: A)Take Wing (SGs, SFs, maybe undersized PFs or oversized PGs who don't pass anyway) B)Strive Ever Forward (SFs, PFs, maybe undersized Cs) C)Go big or Go Home (PFs and Cs only) D)Just take the highest two OVR players you can (OVR sucks, but I have very few ways of evaluating a draft pick other than ignoring guys who can't even shoot 40% in college) E)One of the above for one player, then the best rebounder available with the other player (Specify a preference A-D)
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Oct 12, 2020 19:57
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Here's what will happen with Torres: A) If you let him go, he will become a force (again) and you will regret it. B) If you keep him, he won't... and you will still regret it. One costs you a ton of money, the other doesn't. There's no "win" option here, just the expensive one and the not expensive one.
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Oct 12, 2020 23:17
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I say go for a PF to replace Jukic and then go for a SF for Torres because:JustJeff88 posted:Here's what will happen with Torres: We might just have to sacrifice the next year to see how Rogers and Andersen do without Torres and Jukic respectively. I think we'll be okay at PF but Torres being inconsistent is killing the Honu more than I expected, and I'd rather just see how some of the other Small Forwards do in that situation.
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Oct 12, 2020 23:42
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FartingBedpost posted:I say go for a PF to replace Jukic and then go for a SF for Torres because: You're probably right. It may be time for something of a rebuild mode; I can't stand pricks that whine about touches either. I wish now that we had traded one or both at the deadline.
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Oct 13, 2020 00:24
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FartingBedpost posted:I say go for a PF to replace Jukic and then go for a SF for Torres because:  Also, if you have cap space, you should see if you can snag Pollard on a deal if (when) the AI fucks up and lets Pollard walk for nothing.
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Oct 13, 2020 00:31
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Issuing a correction regarding Aaron Payne: He actually only contributes about 5 points per game, but his shooting has improved all the way to 47% Simmed draft. Will post our haul (........) as well as my thoughts on free agency later in the week. I want to eyeball a few more things.
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Oct 14, 2020 06:07
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One thing that I like about this simulation, especially since Luka retired, is that the league seems to be about teams rather than individual stars.
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Oct 14, 2020 15:34
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JustJeff88 posted:One thing that I like about this simulation, especially since Luka retired, is that the league seems to be about teams rather than individual stars. He's actually just old. He came very close to winning sixth man of the year, as Dallas is pretty committed to Zach Cooper. But as far as teams..... Yeah. A lot of squads suddenly seem to have a lot more depth than when I first started. I am a little surprised by that, especially given how frequently the AI turns over their whole roster.
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Oct 14, 2020 16:21
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How many "real-world" current players still are kicking around? Not necessarily looking for an exact count (though feel free if you want to), but like ballpark - just a couple? a dozen or two? or still like 20% of the league?
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Oct 14, 2020 20:27
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MagusofStars posted:How many "real-world" current players still are kicking around? Not necessarily looking for an exact count (though feel free if you want to), but like ballpark - just a couple? a dozen or two? or still like 20% of the league? A couple dozen? (Like, literally, around 24 is my best guess for eyeballing it) Stalwarts and consistent all-stars like Doncic, Ja, and Trae Young are the obvious ones, but there's plenty of decent glue guys that have stuck around forever like Alen Smailagic and Goga Bitadze that are still employed. Chapter 23: 2037-2038 Part 1: The Draft, Start of Free Agency ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Welp, off to the retirement home to play some bingo and scout the hottest NBA Draft prospects.  Yes, Boys are Slaughtered. There are only middle aged men.  Two picks later, and San Diego surprises me by trading two of their best players for one of these picks. I wish I would have screen captured who they actually drafted.  Because one pick later, they do this. By the way, San Diego's natural pick is Pick #5, so they just blew up their entire roster to nab picks 3-5. That's pretty intense. (Craig going to the Mavs wounds me. It feels dirty, somehow)  Since I noticed the 3 draft picks in a row, I got a screen capture of the second guy the Clippers picked up  As well as the third one.  Who got immediately traded to Vancouver  For this guy. Thread directive was to pursue a power forward and a small forward, to try and replace Jukic and Torres. This draft was very guard heavy, and there weren't any big guards I liked available at 12 that I could make play the 3, and the guys available at 3 were all either god-awful at shooting, super old, on a lengthy overseas deal, or all of the above, and most 4s were pretty much the same. I eventually found a guy I thought looked decent, that my scouts had as a fairly high OVR and a very good, but not great Potential.  I have never heard of this school. Later, I would find out that his OVR wasn't as good as my scouts thought, but his potential was better, so I'll take it as a wash. His Ceiling, post draft, was listed as Billy Cunningham, and I would be ecstatic if that were remotely realistic.  Mahoney seems to think I got a huge steal, which I take some heart in. I might edit his number because Harry Francis has a decent chance of having his Honu number retired for realsies by the game, and I don't want to ruin that.  It's a decent name, but it's no Jackson Jackson.  I skipped a bunch of trades involving 70something value guys, but kept this screen grab. This was a very fluid draft with a lot of rotational player movement, but we've gotten to a point where even I don't know who half of these people are.  Milwaukee picks up this lad that all three draft companies listed as the fourth best player in the draft. Why did Magnus fall so hard, then? Well, for starters, he's 26 years old. He also has a massive 3 year contract with his European club. There's a decent chance he'll be worse when he comes into the league.  There was a run on the SFs and larger SGs I was considering for this pick, but I managed to get a guy who was only 23 years old, with a decent potential, who already shoots something like 46% in college. So I lucked out.  7'11 Wingspan. Holy hell.  Mr Irrelevant 2038 is Jorge Barea from Spain. That face that he's making in his preview just screams "And he's here tonight!" I love when second round prospects show up to the draft. (As opposed to green room guys falling, which is a different kind of fun) Free Agency  Welp, this year is the start of the difficult contract decisions, but if you want a preview of next year's difficult decisions, here they are! This is the last cheap year for both Wang and Kraemer.  I extend qualifying offers to all three guys coming off their rookie deals. Even if I think Jukic is done with the team, there's no reason for me not to sign him a qualifier. There's slightly higher than zero percent chance he doesn't get signed by anyone and I get another year at a 5.31 million contract and possibly more chances to trade him. Steven Rogers isn't here, so I was right and if I want to sign him, I'll have to actually sign him. BUT. We have to start thinking about if we want to match offers on these guys. Also, we have to think if we want to make an offer on Torres  Which would be very expensive. Those are max deals. He seems likely to go elsewhere, but if the thread deems him worth maxing, as I have his bird rights, I can actually outbid this. Those contracts are giving him a 5% raise per year. The Honu can offer 8.  The thing is, though, he was off last year, even accounting for his injury. He pretty much only improved from the line, and regressed basically everywhere else. All while maintaining the maddening "Alpha Dog" badge (which is kind of a toxic thing to have in the game at all, let alone be an important part), so the Honu's fortunes tend to follow his lead. I would like this badge to be on Alain Sonnet, who is much more consistent. Nevertheless, here's what we'd be looking at offering a max contract to if we did it. He's not physically regressing---he might be even higher rated this year than last, so there's a chance his stats rebound and then some. But it's a chance. And that's a lot of millions. Torres is the honest-to-god most pursued free agent in this off season.  Then there's this rear end in a top hat. His assist totals seem low. I could have sworn it was closer to 5. Maybe it was before his hissy fit. This dweeb also wants a max deal, and by god, someone is going to probably give him close to it. As an RFA, I could contract match.  Payne here has some pretty bad numbers too, for a guy that wants about 20-25 million a year. But with inflation and league-wide salary increases being what they are, I no longer know if 20-25 is a "decent" salary or if it's a "just below a star player's salary" Salary. The MLE is about 14? Anyhow, I combed the league for similar players to Payne, to see if there was a guy who was about as much of a non-factor on counting stats, but played tremendous defense, just to see what they make. Most of the ones I found were, like Payne, on their rookie deals (so that could be an interesting league shift, soon). I found exactly one guy who fit a similar mold to Payne, who hadn't managed to shore up his shooting like Payne did, and, while a good defender, isn't nearly as good as Payne, who is consistently in the bottom 5-10 for oFG% (Opponent field goal percentage, meaning, they score less when he guards them). He was making about 26 million per year. So while my gut, knee-jerk reaction is to balk at Payne's asking price, it might honestly be fair or even a bargain.  Nevertheless, at 79 OVR, he's unlikely to be offered a contract by anyone until quite late in free agency, so there's a good chance he can be haggled down. I'm very encouraged that his shooting percentage jumped up 5 points in the year we gave him the most minutes/starts of those he's played Here's Morrison, who we can also match. I personally think we should match anything, and maybe pre-emptively offer him something close to 30 million per if there's no offers after the Moratorium, just so we can give him 5 years instead of 4. He can score basically anywhere (but should attempt a few less threes), is an unselfish passer, has a gorgeous "team player" badge, hopefully making him unlikely to complain about his touches ever. (On the other hand, he has a "expressive" personality, which.... might make that more likely? I loving hate 2k, guys.) His numbers were basically the same as last year's, but I have no reason to suspect he's not still growing. The Honu, in general, had an off year, but if Torres walks, his scoring will almost certainly increase, and if Jukic walks, his rebounding will almost certainly increase. But, I've been wrong on contract valuation before. Finally, there's another thing to consider. There aren't a lot of players we could conceivably grab at a super-discount value, but if we renounced the rights to our free agents except for any two of Jukic, Payne, and Morrison, we could free up enough money to nab this guy:  An all-star Power Forward that could very competently pick up some of the scoring we'd miss out on by losing Torres. He's quite young, too, as there are rookies this year who are his age. Tomasevic could be a big time get for the Honu. ..................................................but we'd have to give up the salary cap hold for Rogers and for Bol, which would mean we couldn't go over the cap to sign them, and could only offer them the veteran minimum. Rogers might accept that after free agency ends and he finds himself still looking for a team, but Bol almost certainly wouldn't, and would likely seek employment elsewhere. Voting Time 1)Michael Torres A)Make a max offer to Michael Torres (he might leave anyhow) B)Let Torres Go 2)Bruno Jukic A)Match Jukic, increase his role, whatever the hell that means (will be a max or near max contract, roughly 33 million per) B)Let Jukic Go 3)Aaron Payne Please estimate a salary figure that seems appropriate for Aaron Payne. I doubt anyone will actually offer it, but if so, I can match something close, and if not, I'll try to convince him of the fairness of our number. 4)Hugh Morrison A)Match Morrison (will be near max) B)Pay Morrison (Should still be a bit shy of max, might be slightly overpaying, but the goal is to keep him for 5 years instead of 4) C)Let Morrison Walk 5)Vlado vs Bol A)Vlado B)Bol
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Oct 15, 2020 05:42
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B, B, 21 mil???, A, and Bol Honestly I’m on the fence on Bol and honestly don’t really want to make a big claim on a contract for Payne, but I feel pretty good about the rest. Torres will make the Honu miserable if he stays or leaves, and Jukic seems like a legitimate liability
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Oct 15, 2020 06:15
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B B I honestly have no idea A Vlado
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Oct 15, 2020 09:37
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I appreciate that San Diego drafted a guy at 5...then traded him straight up for the 10th pick in the same draft. In other words, they traded down five spots for no value in return. Fans and media would FLIP OUT over this. At least ask for a future second round pick or something, jeez.
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Oct 15, 2020 14:33
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Welp. I lost the bidding war for Vlado, so I kept Bol for another year. Way too tired to update before tomorrow night at the absolute earliest. I had a free roster spot, and saw an opportunity to take a rental season on a different power forward though, and I made an executive decision to take it, I think he has decent potential.  I think the AI in this game might just be stupid you guys.
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Oct 16, 2020 07:20
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Veryslightlymad posted:Welp. I lost the bidding war for Vlado, so I kept Bol for another year. Way too tired to update before tomorrow night at the absolute earliest. I Uh Uhhhh...
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Oct 16, 2020 11:24
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To be honest, I would be very sad if Bol doesn't retire a lifetime Honu.
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Oct 16, 2020 16:14
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JustJeff88 posted:To be honest, I would be very sad if Bol doesn't retire a lifetime Honu. Same. Especially because you just know the game won't let Honu retire his jersey if it gets any chance at all, just to spite us.
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Oct 16, 2020 16:39
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