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 Hey, it's a sports game! So one thing I've wanted to do for a long time now, I want to say since NBA2k introduced "MyLeague", a customizable league simulation that you can run for 50, and then nowadays, 80 years of simulations, is what I have called an expansion challenge. I'll get to that in a second. So there's many different ways to play an NBA2k game. These games are (rightfully) somewhat maligned as being improperly balanced, glitchy, and having totally unrealistic AI. Head-to-head games are just... not something I could ever see myself doing. Playing against the AI is a weird progression from "these unbeatable players are seemingly drawn to my team by magnets", to you learning the trick to exploiting them, to blowing out all teams by 20 points, even if you're using someone unbelievably bad, like the New York Knicks. (Any season) You can mitigate a lot of the problems in the games by playing around with sliders, making a simulation a bit more realistic, or really arcade-y if you prefer. This applies both to the in-game logic, as well as the out of game simulation logic. Find it too easy to hit layups? There's a slider for that. Maybe you think it's because the opposing defense is too stupid. There's sliders for how they go for blocks, how often they might succeed, defensive rotation, and on and on. On the GM side of things, there are sliders that make players more or less likely to accept contracts for various reasons. You can adjust how much CPU GMs value draft picks. You can adjust how much or how little players develop or decline during their careers. If you're really, really thorough, you can get a fairly believable simulation going. We'll only be focused on the GM stuff, as I will be playing the most fun way: with spreadsheets.  The MyLeague mode, as I said, allows you to simulate the entire league, taking control of any or all of the teams inside. You can move teams to different cities, expand the number of teams, delete stupid teams no one likes and that have never amounted to anything, like the New York Knicks, or replace literally everything about the league, such as in this other LP, which is a Fire Emblem based basketball league. MyLeague can run for an absolutely staggering 80 years if you so desire. Players will retire. Every active player will retire. Some may move onto jobs as coaches, GMs or Scouts. The league might completely change the rules. They might reduce the number of seconds on the shot clock, or they might increase it. Sometimes it decides to eliminate the shot-clock altogether. And it's not just in-game rules that could be changed. Contracts, the draft, trades, all of this could theoretically change during the course of play. The league of the future might be unrecognizable from the league today. And while 80 years might be a bit more than I can chew, and I haven't decided how many I'm going to run for, ultimately, this LP will be about what I call the Expansion Challenge:  Yes, we'll be playing as an Expansion team for the purpose of this LP. One of two. Our purpose is simple: By the time I call it quits, our team is to be more prestigious, more special, more inextricably linked with the Basketball zeitgeist as our sister team, the one that came into the league the same year we did. We can select from a list of pre-made teams, but I won't be doing that. Instead, I'll be letting the reader come up with ideas for both us and our rival team. Such as our name, the mascot, and of course location. When we make a new team, rather than simply typing in a city name, we actually have a limited number of cities that show up as potential locations for a new basketball franchise. When I select the option to set the expansion team's city, I am greeted with a screen like this:  As you can see, Seattle has a huge fan interest. It's almost as if the entire city is really mad over a dishonest investor buying them up and then moving their beloved Sonics to Oklahoma City in a multistate conspiracy. But that was like, twelve years ago. Are they really still mad about that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XigdA6kiLcE (you can skip to 1:18 for relevance) ...................oh. Yeah, they still mad. Seattle's kind of a "best case" scenario for starting a new franchise up. You'll find most cities are a bit more like this:  With three stats somewhere between 30 and 70, usually totally up somewhere between 90 and 150. Other cities are.... less ideal:  Yes, you can stick a team in Alaska, if you want to. Hell, maybe we will. It's not even the worst place you can stick a franchise. That would be this inexplicable option:  This actually haunts my dreams at night. Why Athens, GA? Why the gently caress Athens, GA? It makes no sense. It's really close to Atlanta, it has no population (It's the sixth largest metropolitan area in Georgia), and it's in ahead of other cities that would make more sense. Why not Boise, Idaho, which has three times the population and is in a region largely devoid of basketball? Why not Birmingham, Alabama, which is in a state that loves basketball in the same region as Athens, but also five times the Metro Population. Why not Des Moines? Why not Jackson? loving hell, the metropolitan area I'm in right now, Lansing/East Lansing Michigan has over twice the population. Soiux Falls, South Dakota, and Billings, Montana, both manage to have a similar (still larger!) dedicated metropolitan population and is nowhere near another franchise. Those last couple are a little disingenuous: Athens is actually rolled into Atlanta's Metropolitan area, but then again, no one alive thinks someone in Atlanta is going to choose a theoretical expansion team in Athens over the goddamn Hawks. The mind boggles. gently caress Athens Georgia. ....sorry. Anyhow, In addition to every city that already has an NBA team, the full list of cities you can expand to is: Albuquerque NM Anaheim CA Anchorage AK Athens GA Austin TX Baltimore MD Bronx NY Buffalo NY Cincinnati OH Columbus OH El Paso TX Fresno CA Hartford CT Honolulu HI Jacksonville FL Kansas City MO Las Vegas NV Long Beach CA Louisville KY Mesa AZ Montreal QC Canada Nashville TN New Haven CT Newark NJ Omaha NE Pittsburgh PA Providence RI Raleigh NC Richmond VA San Diego CA San Francisco CA San Jose CA Seattle WA St. Louis MO Tampa FL Tuscon AZ Vancouver BC Canada Virginia Beach VA VOTING TIME Please vote for four of the above cities. Votes for Bronx, East Rutherford, Anaheim, Mesa, Long Beach, San Francisco, San Jose or loving ATHENS GEORGIA  will not be counted. I will also not accept votes for cities that already have a franchise. We also have the option of either starting this season (redoing the offseason) or next season. Please choose between waiting until 2020-2021 or starting in 2019-2020 1)Which Four Cities sound fun? 2)Which Season do we start in? Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 02:21 on May 11, 2020 |
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May 11, 2020 01:59
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Ninurta posted:Also, why Mesa instead of Tucson? At least Tucson you can draw on all of Pima county/UA fans rather than another team in Phoenix. Because I'm an idiot and missed one of the options. I went back and edited my post if anyone wants Tuscon. Fort Worth is also a possible location, but they're on the list of "I won't count it" because they're essentially Dallas.
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May 11, 2020 02:21
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Zanzibar Ham posted:I have no clue about sports, hopefully none of these cities are on the secret 'already has a franchise' list. For the sake of convenience, I didn't bother to list the 29 cities that have NBA Franchises already. loving love Fiona Apple posted:Will you be using custom Draft Classes or randomly generated ones. I'll be using randomly generated ones. I could search for the high school kids that are in the real world or whatever, but 1)That makes me feel weirdly creepy, and 2)They're crazily overpowered.
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May 11, 2020 04:24
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I'm gonna go ahead and call the vote in favor of skipping/simming the 2019-2020 season, and adding the two teams in the 2020-2021 season. This is probably good. In my test game for this, I did it the other way around, and landed the sixth pick and then five teams proceeded to pass on Zion Williamson, the actual real life #1 pick and definitely the best player in the draft. (Sorry, Ja) So my franchise wound up pretty OK. Vote for cities is still pretty wide open. Maybe folks can pitch their ideas for team names/colors/etc. Perhaps you can sway others. I'll get on simming the early parts of 2019-2020 either tonight or tomorrow, depending on how fried I am from work.
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May 11, 2020 18:32
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I'm not actually sure what effects, if any, location has on teams. I'm going to use the top two, and was planning on playing as the top vote getter, but if you guys want, I have no objections to playing as the "worse" overall location. That is, the worse between the top two.
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May 11, 2020 21:10
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Non update update: Well, I spent about half an hour adjusting recommended sliders and correcting a few things that I know are wrong, such as Luka Doncic's default position. (He's listed as a SG Primary and PG secondary. I am adjusting this to PG primary and SF Secondary) Peeling back the curtain a bit before I sim the first season: I'm not "Choosing to start in 2020". What I am actually doing is starting the 2019 season and setting my user controlled team to the statistical median team in the league (The Brooklyn Nets as it turns out), and then simming the entire season. At some point, I'm going to sign Timothe Luwawu-Cabbarot for the season. After the season, for which I will post the interesting happenings, I'll add the two expansion teams, take control over one, ditch control over the Nets, and then Pursue the Offseason according to thread directive, which I'll get more into after I create the actual teams. And then before the off-season ends, I'll take control of all thirty two teams and force those idiot sons of bitches to sign their goddamn 2nd round picks, because I kid you not, NBA 2k is a garbage fire of basketball ignorance and chooses not to sign every single CPU controlled second round pick, when the reality is much closer to the other way around. So unless a player is egregiously bad or insanely redundant, they're gonna get force-signed and then I'll resume control over only my real team. Phew. EDIT Also, the option to keep pre-season injuries as active doesn't loving work, and even turned on, no player starts the season injured. Good job, 2k
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May 12, 2020 06:38
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PROLOGUE PART ONE (2019-2020) Right off the bat, NBA2k20 proves to be a trash-fire, and despite having the injuries setting set to whichever the "real world" injury setting is, (and I loving reloaded as though I were crazy and tried the other setting, to no avail), no one starts the 2019-2020 season injured. This is, to put it lightly, very wrong. There were other injured players, sure, but the key guys that should have been out for at least part of the season, if not the entirety of the season, were MVP-caliber player Kevin Durant (oh, and former teammates Klay Thompson and Steph Curry), and All-Star Caliber player John Wall. Both men had suffered a ruptured Achilles the prior year. This is a slight advantage to their respective teams, the Brooklyn Nets and Washington Wizards that they otherwise would not have had. (Remember how I said that I picked the statistically medium team, the Nets? Well, by the end of this update, they are ranked second in the East. Whoops!) After I loaded the season, the first thing I did was notice that the Nets had already signed Timothe Luwawu-Cabbarot for the entire season. So that's one less task for me to accomplish. I also checked the news headlines to show you what that looks like in-game.  That's right, it's twitter. Because the world wasn't broken enough. Well, it does give us our first glimpse at the coming 2020 NBA draft, which we'll actually be able to participate in. Let's see who this #1 pick is that I won't believe.   Wayne Newton.......I.... I can honestly say I didn't expect that. You are right, 2K sports. The other thing that might be of interest at the very start of the season when you're not controlling a team (well, not really controlling one) is the power rankings. The top of the table looks like this:  With the bottom looking more like this:  It's worth noting that the #4 team in these rankings, the Golden State Warriors, went into the season suspension this year as the worst team in the league. The injuries this season were quite different than what 2k simulated. Also worth noting, a start-of-the-season power rankings that doesn't have the New York Knicks in one of the bottom five spots. So... 2k continues to not understand basketball. (Technically, they're only the sixth worst team in the league in real life this season) I simulate to the all-star break and trade deadline and very little of note actually happens.  These two signings early on are fairly notable players.  ....except Cousins followed somewhat his real life pattern and became injured. The Suns took a hit, here. The All-Star Teams look like this:  Steph Curry wins the 3pt contest and Donovan Mitchell wins the Slam dunk contest. Bradley Beal wins the All-Star game MVP (2k sports doesn't actually model this if you don't play the all-star game, but he went off for 28 points, 8 rebounds and 9 assists. So... Beal won.) The Rookie/sophomore game in this iteration of 2k is now a "general young players" game between the USA Squad and an International Squad. The international team wins off the back of Luka Doncic, who I check out.  The first thing I notice is that the game overwrote my re-positioning of him, but they kept his primary role as Point Guard, so I don't bother to change it back. Also, you'll note he feels angry because he was snubbed for the all-star game. Let's check out his st----  --ats. drat. Yeah, he has a point. Those are MVP numbers. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Around this time, two major events kick off in relation to the world or the NBA, the first, of course, is that the world has a global health scare when a very deadly, very infectious new virus is detected in China and begins to spread rapidly. The US response is swift and sure, and President Rodman (R) takes immediate action, pumping funds into the CDC and beginning early production on medical supplies, ventilators, n95 masks, and "enough toilet paper to wipe God's own rear end". One of the President's main critics, the New York Times, wrote: "...when the Republicans nominated the troubled Rodman, the world collectively held its breath and went on holding it all the way through election day until now. His response to his presidency's greatest challenge has been nothing short of admirable. One imagines another, darker world, where the nominee and eventual president was someone just as unqualified and ridiculous, with a similar checkered past including allegations of sexual assault. It is doubtful that any other America would have elected someone with similarly bizarre hair, but it is easy to imagine they elevated someone just as prone to barely comprehensible media interviews, and who also shares a troubling relationship with North Korea--or perhaps Russia, but not both; that'd be too ridiculous. This fictional American President has all of the negatives, but none of Rodman's strengths. He is hateful where Rodman is grateful. If we had gone into this potential crisis with a president who was less willing to defer to expert advice, less willing to sacrifice himself, less willing to put in the work needed, we could have been looking at the deaths of tens of thousands of United States citizens." When NBA player (and still zero time all-star) Rudy Gobert seemingly mocked people's fears about the virus during a press conference, making a show out of touching every available surface and microphone, the president called him personally and admonished him. Gobert would publicly apologize for his actions before sheepishly adding "He's the greatest rebounder of all-time, you know." ~~ The second is that the league announced it would be expanding and adding two new teams. The last expansion was 16 years ago in 2004 when the Charlotte Bobcats were formed. Franchises were announced for Vancouver, British Columbia, and, shockingly, Honolulu Hawaii. Honolulu has hitherto been mum about their plans for team branding, but Vancouver immediately petitioned Robert Pera, owner of the Memphis Grizzlies, for the rights to their old name back. In the meantime, anticipating that they might be politely declined, the new ownership group began brainstorming a new team name "just in case". On a big white board in their "war room", Vancouver's executives began brainstorming, separating ideas into categories of what makes a good team brand. Categories like "Connection to the city" "Alliterative" "Abstract connection to basketball" and "Intimidation factor". After a week of discarding ideas, a letter arrived from the Grizzlies organization, essentially telling Vancouver that it was laughable that they would change their name. After all, any success that the Grizzlies had ever had was in Memphis. "When the Grizzlies were in Vancouver, they were a laughingstock. Whatever your new team is called, it will also be a laughingstock, but it will never be the Grizzlies." The next day, several categories were erased, and one was added and circled: "Sticking it to Memphis." It was on the way back down from a three kilometer run up Grouse Mountain that team president Vaughn St. Martin saw the sign for the trail he was on and threaded the needle. A connection to the city, a middle finger to Memphis. The proposal: The Vancouver Grind. A name with a plausible connection to the city they can claim was always the intent, but with the added bonus of taking away the Memphis identity of Grit and Grind. If someone rips out your heart, rip out their soul. VOTING TIME: 1)What should we call the Honolulu team? 2)Do we go with Vancouver Grind or something else? If something else, what? 3)Which do we play as? Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 08:17 on May 13, 2020 |
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May 13, 2020 08:14
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For whatever it's worth, there is a Vancouver Ravens team pre-built into the game which would save me a lot of work, the colors would be purple and grey. Honolulu, unfortunately, does not have a pre-built brand.
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May 13, 2020 09:50
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Another thing of note, is there's a really good looking Honolulu Honu jersey (unless I waited too long and it's gone now) available
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May 13, 2020 18:20
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I told my joke, so I am done with any attachment I might have had to the Grind. Please vote between: Dragons:  Ravens  ~~~~~~~~~~~ Honu:  Volcanoes:  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you want to submit a fan option, do not let me stop you. I'm playing on PC, so I don't melt my Playstation. EDIT: And to be clear, I can also upload an image if you want to submit an idea and don't own the game Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 18:38 on May 13, 2020 |
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May 13, 2020 18:35
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I'd say those are pretty overwhelming margins, so it's official. I'll be adding the Vancouver Ravens and the Hawaii Honu On the one hand, I find the colors of each pretty boring, but on the other, I love those jerseys, the big angry turtle, and the font on the floor of our arena (which we'll basically never see), so overall I'm quite pleased with how this turned out. I'll sim out the rest of the season and start gearing up for the expansion draft.
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May 14, 2020 02:36
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AHAHAHAHA. This garbage fire game. Guess the thread's over, everyone. (The thread is not over. I overrode this decision and added my two teams. I have another fun image about the league Re-alignment that it suggested)
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May 14, 2020 03:13
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PROLOGUE PART TWO (2019-2020) No huge news as we head into the playoffs. Seeing as we already passed the trade deadline window. So there's not much else to do except sim until the season's over.  Going into the playoffs the only injury worth noting is Gordon Hayward's. (Unlike what would have happened in real life had the season continued, the Pacers and Rockets did not make the playoffs.)  The 2020 playoff picture looks like this. (In real life, the Cavs and the Warriors were two of the worst three teams in the league. The Spurs and Trailblazers looked unlikely to make it. The Thunder, Rockets, Jazz, and Pacers are the teams that theoretically should be here but aren't. No clue on what happened to the Jazz here, but this lines up with "expert" analysis that suggested Westbrook and Harden couldn't coexist, despite having done so for years, and also that Chris Paul still couldn't lead a team at his age. Westbrook in real life got knocked in some spaces for having a bad shooting year, despite shooting the best percentage of his career by a noticeable margin. He didn't shoot the 3 well, which is what modern teams think they want.) AWARDS:       No real surprises here, but I have some thoughts. 1)Ja's performance here is better than his IRL self, but if his actual shooting percentage was that high, that honestly might be right. He's a stud and the near future looks bright for Memphis. 2)I'm increasingly convinced that 2k tries to get the weirdest photos for players. Look at Schroder's pic. Look at it! 3)2k was unable to get a photo of Leonard in a Clippers uniform, even from a practice or publicity shoot. 4)OK, those Miami Heat Alt jerseys are slick. If I didn't hate the Heat with the fire of a hundred million suns (appropriately, that's hot!) I'd look into buying one. 5)In another example of 2k being kind of broken, as near as I can tell, the Coach of the Year is always assigned to the coach with the best record. Though I haven't really considered how, yet, I'll be occasionally overriding this in the future. (Small Edit: For example, if I had bothered to overwrite and assign COTY manually, I'd have assigned it to Steve Clifford. The Magic overperformed by a lot, and he'd have deserved it if this were a real season.) And of course the teams: All-NBA First:  Second  Third  All Defense First  Second  And the two Rookie teams:   Nothing too crazy in any of these. The main notes are: 1)Embiid's injury is nothing serious. Some sort of day-by-day injury that was gone before his first game in the playoffs. 2)Doncic wound up the season in second place for MVP voting and All-NBA First team. Not an All Star. He also lead the league in points per game. Here's an example of what injuries look like during regular play.  This was literally the last day of the regular season, just after I already took the other injury picture. During this entire season, I've just been telling it to let the CPU adjust automatically, since I'm not trying to control the Nets. This is also the only significant injury of the playoffs. A couple of 10th man bench players go down, and Doncic picked up two injuries but the kind you could play through. This injury was a big difference maker for the nets though, because without LeVert, they lost a grueling seven game series to the Raptors. Somehow I failed to capture the rest of the playoffs---Doncic's injuries caught up with him and the Clippers wound up beating the Mavs in round two, leading to an all-LA Western Conference Finals. The Celtics managed a big (?) upset over the Magic and took Philly to six or seven games. The Bucks never played more than a five game series and easily won the NBA Championship. Giannis Antetokounmpo won the finals MVP. If we ever have the 2020 NBA playoffs, this is basically what's likely to happen. That Bucks team is an unholy terror. (For whatever reason the real life Sixers seem to give them trouble somehow)  These players retire. Vince Carter is named to the Hall of Fame. The Raptors opt to not retire his jersey (despite six all star appearances with them), the salty ingrates. Not pictured: Zach Randolph also retiring. I was briefly furious that his number wasn't retired by the Grizzlies, but it turns out the real life Grizzlies already retired Z-Bo's 50 back in 2017, and the game actually recognizes this. See? I can point out good things the game does. Despite only 17 of the required 23 teams voting to expand the league, backdoor politicking (and the override button) lead to the creation of the Vancouver Ravens, and the Hawaii Honu. The initial re-alignment suggested by NBA Head Brass is.... ....questionable.  I mean, sure. Why not. I guess we could take the team in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and make them play in the Atlantic Division, literally the farthest possible distance from the team. I mean, hell, they're gonna have to travel an excessive amount every away game anyhow.* I move the Honu to the Pacific Division and then move the Memphis Grizzlies into the Eastern Conference in the Central Division. This makes much more sense. *  The guy who made the Hawaii Honu put them in the Bronx, the cheeky bastard. Almost certainly to give them more capital. I am unable to actually relocate them officially until next year, so here's hoping that playing a season in the Bronx, which I will not officially acknowledge as actually happening, and then suddenly moving to Honolulu doesn't completely ruin our finances.The NBA Draft Lottery results:  Appropriately making GBS threads on the Knicks. We get lucky and get the better draft position over the Ravens. I didn't resize this image on purpose. Check out the image artifacts surrounding the Reporter. That's not me. That is what it looks like in game. Excellent professionalism from the 2k staff. VOTING TIME: THE EXPANSION DRAFT: Before the actual NBA Draft, there will be an expansion draft. Expansion drafts work as follows: Between us and the Ravens, we each get so many picks among players currently already on an NBA Roster. Each roster (Somewhere between 14 and 17 players) can only protect 8 players. Anyone else is up for grabs. So... this will be our starting roster. There's a lot of ways to go about it. Do I: A)Pick the highest rated players I can B)Pick Young players with potential whenever possible C)Pick veterans that are productive D)Go for players locked into long contracts E)Go for expensive players that are coming off the books and pursue free agents aggressively F)Other (Please Specify) (You may pick multiple selections, rank these options, whichever. I'm going to use it as a guideline and depending on who is protected, might not be able to follow exactly.) THE DRAFT PART 1 Since this is literally our first ever pick, and very likely the future face of our baby franchise, I'm limiting this to two options: A)Pick the highest overall player available (According to our scouts, mind) B)Pick the player with the highest potential (According to our scouts) DRAFT ROUND 2 A)Fill positional holes B)Best available overall C)Most potential overall D)Draft for a specific skill (Specify skill. You could also specify height, wingspan, or weight. Anything goes.) E)Best Name Available (With Wayne Newton as the consensus #1 pick, I'm almost certain we're gonna lose the draft name game this year. Sorry guys, but sometimes you're just drawing dead.  )
Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 05:48 on May 14, 2020 |
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May 14, 2020 05:42
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Voting is still up, I just woke up angry because I just realized this stupid game didn't put Pau Gasol in the hall of fame. There is literally zero chance that he doesn't make it, even without taking his international career into consideration. Technically he wouldn't be eligible yet, but the game doesn't work that way, and adds players immediately when they retire.
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May 14, 2020 16:35
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CHAPTER 1, 2020-2021: The Offseason Finally, it's here: The expansion draft. My first take after seeing the expansion draft is, "Holy hell, expansion draft players loving suck." The highest overall player was the shambling corpse of Mike Conley Jr, and I actually felt sad that I missed out on his 34million dollar a year busted old rear end. He was only 80 overall, though, so it's not like I missed out on too much. Per the thread near-consensus, I was going to take players with high potential if possible, and then good players second. Things change in expansion drafts, though. This got ugly. (Seriously, 2k needs to fire their photographer. Alex Caruso looked like Shang Tsung hit him with the neck stretch.)  I end up using my first pick to select Bol Bol, son of former not-that-great but increadibly tall and early 3pt shooting big-man Manute Bol. Was Bol the player with the most potential available? That's.... debateable. Actually, only Conley Jr (Who, again, would be an excellent vintage of wine by now) has a higher potential rating. Actually, most of my picks have either A- or B+ potential. And everyone is in the 70-77 range. Once I realized this was how the draft was going, I started isolating players with particular "skills", and picked up whoever was noticeably higher in any one stat than everyone else available. I also picked up a few veterans, the ones that weren't expensive, but they're used up and won't have particularly great badges to pass on. Anyhow, I first picked Bol because he was 1)One of the highest rated players at A- potential, 2)By far the youngest player at A- potential and 3)In my test game before I started the thread, he became an All-Star. I don't think he'll amount to much in the real NBA, but 2k seems to really like him.    Like I said, ugly. We're gonna go to war with this squad, and our boys are gonna get killed. Some thoughts: Aside from Bol Bol, the real gem I snagged was Aaron Holiday. A 77 Ranked Point guard with an A- potential at only 23 years old is arguably the best player I could have gotten in this draft, especially if Bol busts. Between Bol and Holiday, I feel we have a nice potential core of the two most difficult positions to fill. Mfiondu Kabengele became a 6th man of the year in my test game, and was actually on that expansion team, too, only I lost him and I still regret it. Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk and Dylan Windler are a pair of sweet shooting wings I'm half-tempted to try running together. Only half-tempted, though. They don't have a step of defense between the two of them, but, importantly, Windler is the only player on our team with a gold "Badge" in anything. He's got a very, very quick release on his shot, which combined with how accurate his shooting is, could be a very big get for us. He's dumb as a rock, and has like, a D- Basketball IQ. It might be worth sending him to camp. Hamidou Diallo is really young and the most athletic player in the expansion draft. We are not the best defensive team in the world, but we have quite a few good shooters, and at least one player with an A or higher in every scoring category, so on offense, we can beat a team in a variety of ways. If I had an obvious weakness to call out, it's our perimeter defense, which is part of why I grabbed Trevor Ariza. I wind up with some redundancy at SF and at C, but that's OK, we don't need to keep or play all these guys. We gotta tinker around and see what works. We can also change guys' position if we feel like it. ~~~~ The time finally arrived for the actual draft. My scouting going into the draft sucked, because I was playing as an expansion team and didn't get actual scouts going on missions or anything. So I only had the "make-up scouting" trip (which let me check, I want to say 10, and only 10 players) and the combine and the personal workouts. I didn't bother to screengrab those, because there was nothing particularly interesting, and we wound up drafting outside of most of that. The draft itself was wild. This had a ton of movement of high-value players, and one team pulled a pretty impressive coup.  New York gets the party started by selecting the consensus #1 pick for the entire season, the immortal Wayne Newton out of UCLA. After the draft results are posted, I learn he's better than every member of our squad as a rookie. The drop off between him and the second best guy in the draft is like, 3 or 4 points, but I won't say New York won just yet.  Chicago follows up by selecting this very cool player sure to lead them in the playoffs for years to come. The setting for summer is A.C. Lowe. I rejected a trade to move up exactly one draft spot and go on the clock.  Oh, that might be lucky. Chances are, my scouts are wrong about this guy's potential. Nonetheless, if they're not, that's a huge get. A+ guys develop like crazy, and can wind up as hall-of-famers with a little bit of TLC. He's also listed at PF, which is, on paper, one of our weaker positions. (In practice, I bet I could slide any of my centers to PF and their overall would go up. 2k is really fuckin' dumb, people.) Kelley winds up only an A- potential afterall, but A- is really high, he fills a position we lacked depth in, and he's already on par with the rest of our team. I'm pretty pleased with this result.  Welcome to the team, Harry Kelley, first ever draft pick of the Hawaii Honu. (Imagine living in Iowa and finding out you'll be spending most of your year for the next few years in Hawaii.)  Our rival team for this thread drafts this guy I screen-grabbed partly to show our rivals' first ever pick, and party because ofthat serious liver and onions hobo beard. After a bit of a lull, trades for high-value players start coming out rapid-fire.  The Wolves strike first and snag two players in the 80+ range. If the AI thinks to move Holmes next to Karl-Anthony Towns, they could make some serious noise in the West. This is a good example of what to do with a pick if you don't actually like anyone on the board. If Towns' big thing is "play for a winner" this probably went a long way to making him happy. Smart.   In back to back trades, the hornets trade into picks at 15 and 16, dealing Cody Zeller to the Suns and Terry Rozier III to the Wizards. They're clearly blowing up their team since this is 3 lottery picks in one year. With one of them they grab this guy:  Fortuitously, I grabbed a screenshot of this guy. I only took one because he has excellent name fundamentals, being named Steppenwolf. It was lucky I did, though, because this guy is the crown jewel of the draft, an A+ potential stud. He's not as high as Wayne Newton's 81 just yet, but he will be. Indiana also grabbed an A+ guy who could potentially lead their franchise for years, but I didn't find that out until after the draft. But breaking down their team, getting 3 lottery picks, and making one of them the intent for the best potential player in the draft is easily the slickest thing I've seen the AI ever do in a draft on one of these games. I dunno if it's the sliders I found, or if the AI is actually this much better this year, but I'll give 2k props for this one.  The Celtics decide to get involved in the trade game by trading Memphis' pick and a future first rounder for LaMarcus Aldridge.  The Blazers trade for Ricky Rubio  ....and then the Celtics follow up by trading their own pick for Blake Griffin. The Celtics are clearly in "Win now" mode and have traded for an excellent front court duo. The actually realistic AI in this draft continues to impress me.  The Nets are also looking for help right now, and swap their pick to scoop up Mitchell Robinson. The second round begins and I go back on the clock. I want a shooting guard, but there's no good looking young ones left. My directive was to draft for potential, and I have zero scouting on anyone left, which gave me very little idea on who might have "it". After agonizing on it for way longer than an NBA team would actually be allowed to stall for a second round pick, I take Helmut Kraemer out of Germany.  It came down to my notes saying that he far outperformed anyone in the strength portion of the draft combine, (getting 22 reps when the next highest was like, 17? Less?) and also two of the three draft boards had him as the best center in the draft. Not the best center remaining, the best center in the entire draft. The other one thought he was the third best. ( and were right. )However, I don't need five centers, and after the draft, I learn that he's better overall than Dewan Hernandez already, and is also younger with more potential. Hernandez was a player I picked up during the expansion draft with an optional contract, and I opt out. Kraemer's better. Despite not being the best center in the draft, I'm pretty pleased with Kraemer as a second round pick. He's big and gives this creampuff team of ours some much needed toughness inside.  Mr. Irrelevant 2020 is a 64 overall Neck-bearded player from Turkey that still has 2 years to play overseas before he never plays a game in the NBA because he's only got a B- potential. After the draft, I painstakingly take control over every single team. Why?  Because NBA2k is a broken garbage fire and the AI will never sign second round picks. This here is the 76ers. They traded for these players. They only had 2nd round picks, went out of their way to get them, but naw, gently caress it. Don't want those. Want another example?   Here are the Wolves' two picks. They play the same position, are the same age, height, and weight, but the guy they took in the second round is both cheaper and higher rated overall. But naw, gently caress it. Don't want that guy. The New York Knicks drafted a 73 rated Center with an A potential (the third highest potential player in the draft, and the guy that is sadly a better center than Helmut). NAW, gently caress IT. DON'T WANT THAT GUY. So yep. I took control over every team in the league and signed their second rounders. I didn't blanket sign all of them, I tried to use my judgement on whether the player stood a chance in the league, but I signed all but five.  ....funnily enough, two of them were guys the Sixers picked. They had a bad draft. TRIP REPORT That was the single best experience as a player I have ever had in a draft in an NBA simulation game. Wild trades, AI pulling slick, realistic moves that make sense for what their team is trying to accomplish, with Charlotte blowing up their team and surrounding the best player (that they deliberately pursued!) in the draft with some buddies, Boston throwing away picks to make a serious push to wrestle the East away from Milwaukee, and finally Minnesota getting KAT the support he wants to consider sticking with their team. Fantastic stuff. Overall, I think I did OK, I got one redundant player with potential and a strength we're missing, and I got one high-potential player in one of our weakest positions. I'd say the Timberwolves and Hornets were the big winners of the draft, with the next two being Indiana (Other A+ guy) and New York (They got WAYNE FREAKING NEWTON, and also that A potential center that I forced them to actually sign. I am already smarter than the real New York Knicks.) The big loser of the Draft was the San Antonio Spurs, who traded LaMarcus Aldridge for a 69 Overall loser from UTEP with a B potential overall and a ceiling and floor that simply read "Bench". Philly drafted two players at about 65.  VOTING POST TO FOLLOW
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May 15, 2020 08:41
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FREE AGENCY 2020-2021 We enter Free Agency with a little bit of roster room, and a cool 23 million dollars in cap space. It's not enough to capture Anthony Davis, who wouldn't want to come to us anyway, but there's two main guys that could come over and help this squad, and theoretically, we have both the money and space for both. Let alone either. The first is Bogdan Bogdanovic (Real name, no relation whatsoever to fellow NBA player Bojan Bogdanovic)  Bogdan would play in our weakest position, Shooting Guard, (Where, unless we change someone's position, the second guy on our depth chart is Diallo, our lowest rated player) and instantly be the best player on our team, unless someone makes a lucky jump during the "player development" phase of the off season. He is an excellent shooter and would fit the seeming structure of our team of gunners. And he's willing to work for cheap. He only has one offer, and we can almost assuredly snag him if we're willing to slightly overpay him. The downside is that he's got the same problem as the rest of our team: he's not a very good defender, and our perimeter defense is pretty bad.  The other player we could seriously consider is Fred VanVleet. At 86 overall, he would also be the best player on our roster immediately, and he's actually a good perimeter defender to boot. He'd be playing at PG, our second shallowest position (arguably first shallowest), and bring a lot of cohesion to our squad. His main drawback is he could stunt the growth of Aaron Holiday, but the other side of that is I need to be both patient and lucky with Holiday to mold him into something that VanVleet already is. Unlock Bogdanovic, he has a lot of teams gunning for him, so even if we make a move on him, we're probably not very likely to get him to sign, but I still say we give it a shot. The gorgeous part of this is they combine to a projected 23 million dollars, exactly as much cap room as I have, and I have exactly two free spots on our roster. So, do I try and sign one of these players? Both? Or do I look for someone else? I can also stand pat, etc..... let's hear it. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 17:15 on May 15, 2020 |
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May 15, 2020 08:57
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Some of your feedback has made me realize that I have been neglecting to actually post our true cap situation, and that might have more than a little influence on this vote. I will rectify this shortly, some time today.
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May 15, 2020 17:14
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As promised, here's our current salary situation: (Also pictured: the game rendering our delightful angry turtle mascot on our important screens. I seriously love that little guy already.)     And next year's situation currently looks like this:  (We won't actually have 74.5 million to play with: We'll want to sign our draft picks, and we'll also extend a large chunk of the guys we're able to extend. Aminu, Anderson, Wright, and Kelley are the only people we definitively have on the books for next year, and we might seriously consider trading Aminu and Anderson partway through the year to free up space on our roster to develop guys like Windler, Kabengele, and Harry Kelley. Meanwhile, if I select "Contract extensions" it gives me some of the guys who have expiring contracts and an idea of what they want next year.   Note that this is only what they think they're worth right now before the offseason is even over. If any of these guys has a tremendous year, they could ask for a lot more. Right now, if we don't extend Joseph we will have about 35 million in cap room next season. At least 20 of that should likely be poured into Holiday and Bol. DJ Wilson should either be traded our not re-signed and Diallo is a project that I'm gonna try to develop, but if he doesn't thrive, well, that's another 4 million we won't need to worry about. Worst case scenario is nothing pans out, we re-sign Bol and Holiday and extend Joseph, and we'd have 4-5 million in cap room. All of this is, of course, subject to change, but the long view is still pretty healthy. If we had either of the free agents, we'd need to worry less about extending or resigning certain players. We wouldn't need to extend Corey Joseph if we had VanVleet, for instance. Boggy B might allow us to not extend Windler or Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk, although, for the purposes of this game, I'm pretty high on both. Windler actually has an A+ in 3pt shooting and a gold "Quick release" badge. I'm not sure badges actually matter if you're simming games, but if they do, I have to assume he's one of the best shooters in the league, and one of our highest potential players. I was also mistaken about our worst stat overall, it's definitely interior defense, not perimeter defense, but both are pretty bad. EDIT What the? I just realized I could also just extend Holiday instead of re-signing him. That would save us 4 million. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 21:28 on May 15, 2020 |
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May 15, 2020 21:23
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CHAPTER 1: Offseason 2020-2021, part 2 The thread was mostly split between signing both and signing just Boggy. I decided to make VanVleet an offer slightly less than what he was asking for, or being offered by his highest bidder, but for a number of years no one else was offering him (2 instead of 4 or 1) and I made Boggy an offer of a bit more than he was worth (right now) for three years.  To my great surprise, they both actually agreed.  Hernandez comes off the books and frees us 2 million dollars, making our final cap going into the season: Healthy for the beginning of a season. If everything goes to poo poo or if someone goes nuts in Summer League (Spoiler: no one did), we could hire someone (Well, no, our roster is full). All the whales stuck with their former teams. VanVleet is actually the highest rated player to go to another team, and he came to us. I take that as a positive sign. Next up is player progression:      Some things to note here: ~Less than 10 players in the league jumped up five points, and Bol Bol was one of them. He's living up to that #1 pick. Kabengele's jump of 4 is pretty solid, too. ~Trevor Ariza and Ed Davis might have aged themselves clean out of our rotation. ~The guy who had the A+ in 3pt shooting was Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk, not Dylan Windler. And apparently, he only had this because his mood was so high because he was boosted. They both have As now. ~Harry Kelley and Helmut Kraemer didn't gain any points because new players do not gain stats in this phase. I also simmed the summer league. Most of our team is actually in it, because everyone is super young. This might give us a taste of how things are going to look this year in the NBA.   ...the next game is just as lopsided in our favor.   We make it to the second round of the big tournament, but our hated rivals advance to the semi-finals. (Not pictured: Boston won) Nothing super noteworthy about the summer league. My main two takeaways were: Aaron Holiday woefully underperformed, but I'm much less emotionally invested in him now that I have VanVleet. If the Honu had a star of the Summer League, it was Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk, who shoot a good percent, averaged a steal and a block and a half a game, and held his opponents to less than 40% shooting. He averaged something like 20+ minutes a game, so he actually defended a decent number of shots over the course of 5 games. He's not a particularly great defender, but I'm digging what I see. I generate a new class of rookies that aren't really interesting, have only one first round projected Center (for the second season in a row), and no amazing names.  I'd normally not bother to post this exhibition game, but look at that blowout. The 2020-21 All-Star game is announced for Los Angeles. Finally comes the last part of the offseason. Training camps. Each year in the off-season, we can send exactly two players to camp in one of these categories. No more, no less. I think there's a way to pay real money for more training camps, but that's like, the single saddest thing you can spend money on.  Here's a list of the camps. They raise specific groups of several stats by 2 pts each, except untapped potential raises potential (a hidden stat represented by a letter grade) by 3, whatever that means, and weight, I believe, adds five pounds of muscle to a player. We have a lot of B+ players. Everyone other than Bol Bol, Dylan Windler, and our two rookies, in fact. Those four are A-'s. I'm not counting our veterans here. My recommendation is to send at least one young player (maybe not Diallo, who will struggle to get minutes) to Untapped Potential (since this will make them grow faster every year), and to send Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk to any camp other than Perimeter Shooting and Free Throw. You're welcome to stuff whoever wherever though. VOTING Please pick two players to send to camp and a camp to send them to. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 03:24 on May 16, 2020 |
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May 16, 2020 03:20
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Guper posted:Though honestly, I'm not sure if defense in general and particular for Sviatoslav is a lost cause? I'm gonna assign him Ariza as a mentor either way if it looks like Ariza can pass over his badges. He's got pretty good physical tools to work with and good potential, so I don't think it's hopeless--just maybe uphill. He clowned the summer league, which, yeah, there would be way worse shooters, but with his bad defense scores, the only thing I can figure is his size and quickness was enough to stop guys with a low shot IQ.
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May 16, 2020 19:07
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Chapter 2: 2020-21, Part 1 - Getting Started Not a lot of votes for the camps, but I flipped a coin between Bol and Windler and sent Bol to Untapped Potential. I sent Sviatoslov Mykhailiuk to Perimeter Defense camp.  (Pic is big to show off our bitchin' Jerseys. Bol is now an A potential and should have a stellar career if his feet don't explode.)  Meanwhile this goober has a little ways to go to be a good defender, but this one camp actually raised his overall by a point, so I'll call that a success. He's now actually the highest rated Small Forward on our roster. (Well, Kyle Anderson is, but I'll get to that.) Camps are the last thing to do before starting the new season, so I hit the advance button and immediately learn:  That I'm a moron. For some reason I thought you could have three more players than the minimum, which is 14. I have no idea where I got that from. Apparently, you can have either 14 players or 15 players going into the season. I look at who is expendable and prepare myself for a difficult decision.   ...........................or, after fiddling around with the trade finder, I find an absolutely absurd offer that I leap all over. Phoenix is willing to give me two first round picks for the corpse of Ed Davis and Kyle Anderson's weird head. I can't even wrap my head around why this was even offered to me, or what Phoenix is doing. This is more first rounders for Kyle Anderson than we just saw traded for actually good basketball players like Blake Griffin and LaMarcus Aldridge during the draft. You'll note that the pick for 2021 is Top 10 protected. That means that if their pick lands in the top 10 in 2022, they'll still keep it. However, if they pick 11th or lower, then I get it. If they keep it, though, I'll get their first rounder in 2023 no matter what. I know that it has, at best, one year of protection, because their trade also includes their 2024 first round pick. I'm not sure how 2k does protected picks, but I do know this would be an illegal offer otherwise. It's actually an illegal offer now, but for a different reason. Phoenix is taking on more salary than their cap situation while I am giving up more salary than I am taking in. When I go into the actual negotiations, the final trade looks like this:  That's right, in addition to the two draft picks, I get a seventeen million dollar trade exception. That means that I have exactly one calendar year (which will very helpfully include next season's free agency) where I can use this exception to sign up to seventeen million dollars worth of salary, even if it exceeds the salary cap. As long as the player I sign is within 100,000 dollars worth of salary to this exception, I can sign them regardless of my cap situation. So that was a pretty loving good trade for us. I windmill slam the accept button. EDIT: (Keep in mind, this is 17 million dollars I can sign a player with (or trade for a player) that is completely distinct from the 10 million dollars in cap space I'll have next season from trading Anderson)  Going into the season, we see that we're actually projected to be better than a third of all teams, which is a fantastic start. It's not likely to get us to the playoffs, but we could actually squeak in in our very first year if we get a little lucky. 21 out of 32 is great.  Our rivals, the Ravens, on the other hand, are projected to be the worst team in the league. Also pictured: Phoenix, the team that just sold their future for Kyle Anderson, of all people, is projected to be a bottom 3 team. What in the world are they doing?   I'm not sure if badges effect rating (or the other way around) or if they confer a passive bonus, or if they confer a bonus at all if you're simming games. But both Ariza's badges are defensive ones, and with him mentoring Sviatoslav, he's expected to learn both of them by the end of the season. I also readjust Sviatoslav's training to focus less on being an offensive SF and more being an "all-around" SF to try to get him just a little bit more defense. He's only a bit under 3% less compatible with the training, so I figure it's not a huge dropoff in output. I also assign VanVleet to mentor Aaron Holiday. The main drawback of losing Davis is I can't pass some of his badges onto Bol Bol, Kabengele or Kraemer. He was not my first choice for guys to trade, even though he was our lowest rated player. But how the hell could I pass up that deal?!  I also properly relocate us to Hawaii next season.  Sorry, Bronx. (Incidentally, I know of Haralabos Voulgaris from outside of this game, and outside of the NBA. He's a (I guess somewhat decent) Poker Player (a little shy of 2mil lifetime tournament winnings) and a famous sports better. Apparently he's in real life now employed by the Dallas Mavericks, who I consider one of the smartest ran teams in the league. So if he's contributing to that, well, you get 'em, Haralabos. I thought this was pretty cool) EDIT: (Literally the day I post this, I discover he's actually kind of a horrible loving person. So, I rescind my "go get it", or at least, I intend it to mean something else.) I change my rotations to use 11 players instead of 10 because players in 2k are loving primadonnas and I don't want to deal with that poo poo. The rotations default to this:    We can, and should, change this up throughout the season, but we might want to consider changing it up now, to give some of our younger guys a bit more burn. Please indicate any adjustments you might make to our rotation---you can be vague or specific, and I'll use a few as guidelines. Also worth noting: If I change either Kabengele or Bol Bol to a Power Forward they will be higher rated than Aminu is, and this would allow them to start together. The important drawback to consider is this might move Harry Kelley, our brand new draft pick, further back in the rotation. Should I change one of them to a Power Forward? If so, which one? EDIT: I feel like I should apologize to Kyle Anderson, both for bringing attention to his weird head, and also for repeatedly calling him Ryan Anderson, who is a completely different person. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 04:39 on May 17, 2020 |
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May 17, 2020 01:36
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Actually, I wound up manipulating minutes between every individual game (just about) so asking the thread to vote on minutes was probably a poor choice. CHAPTER 2: 2020-2021 Part 2, 2020 Our first game of the season is against the Brooklyn Nets, almost like the game knows that they were the team I was "playing as" last season.   There's a few different ways you can watch or sim games. Here, we see the Simulcast version, which is... a weird to watch, cartoony clusterfuck, but it's worth showing off, mainly because it shows how good our Arena actually looks. Hawaiin Airlines Arena is a seriously well done design. We Miraculously win this game on the backs of Bol Bol, Freddie, and Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk. Kevin Durant scored 27 points, but like, 22 of those were against Trevor Ariza. Mykhailiuk held him to 33% shooting, which feels encouraging for the whole "turn this guy into a defender" project.  Another way you can choose to sim games is this way: which gives you a different look, but it gives you a really big visual cue of who is winning at any time, or who has possession, etc. In both methods of simming, you can jump in and take control at any time. I'll pretty much never use either of these modes unless for some reason I want to jump into a game and get a couple of action shots. Ignore the tips, Trevor Ariza sucks. We lost this game in a squeaker.   I want to take a minute to talk about Morale effects in this game. Namely, they're loving terrible and I hate the person who decided what causes them. This is Diallo. This shot is taken immediately after the Ravens game, our literal second game ever as a franchise. Diallo is a very sad boy that he's not getting playing time, despite being the second lowest rated player on the team. The absolute lowest, Helmut Kraemer, is even more upset, (at something like 15 morale) because I had the absolute gall to send him to the G-League. Because he's an NBA player, you see. (In reality, almost no one loses their mind this way over this. Players getting this upset at the G-league as they do is the single least realistic thing about this game, and that is loving saying something.) G-league Assignees (that is, ones that get put there from an NBA team they're already signed with) make their actual NBA salary, which is something like ten times (at least) a G-League Salary. And they get playing time. But it's like, this huge fuckin' insult according to 2k. It's so unfathomably stupid. It's also biased against the player. Here's a player with a higher rating than Kraemer (and eight years of age!) that was assigned to the G-league for a longer span of time:  How come he's fine with it? gently caress off, 2k. I have the Morale "Difficulty" slider set to 25 (which is down from the default, per the sliders I found online that seem to work OK) this absolute unrealistic bullshit makes me crank it all the way down to five. Meanwhile, I discover our Sixth Man has a bit of a brown-nosing problem.  ....Ah, yes. You grew up a fan of the team that didn't exist until you were in your sixth year in the league. I see, I see.  I took this picture of the news page, because it shows four interesting things. On Christmas (nice!) Bol Bol gifts Hawaii fans with a sweet 20 and 19 game. (Also 4 blocks). He's undeniably the star of our team, even though he's not the highest rated. Him and Bogdan Bogdanovich are the only players who have earned a start in every game, but Boggy has started at both SG and SF. Bol has been our starting center for all 29 games I simmed. Also pictured: Aminu goes down for a trivial injury. I've had a few of these to different players, and everyone on my roster has gotten real, NBA playing time (only about 2-3 games for Diallo and Kraemer, but they're still furious) ALSO also pictured: Doncic doing Doncic things, New York doing New York things. So how are we doing going into the New Year?  We're actually fifth in the West. Even more incredibly, our rival expansion team, the Ravens, is currently second in the West.  Here's a direct comparison between us, which is pretty interesting. It actually shows that we had completely different (almost opposite!) team identities coming out of the expansion draft. They're big and inside and control the paint. We're remorseless, freewheeling gunners. Perimeter defense isn't the weakness I thought it was, and is actually listed as one of our team's top strengths. Weirdly, "Steals" is listed as one of our top weaknesses, but we are currently second in the NBA in Steals. Here's another strength of ours, that illustrates some similarities and differences with the #1 team in the league, the Utah Jazz.  Our bench is really strong. We're only .6 bench points per game behind the strongest team in the league. If you look to the column directly to the right, it illustrates that we actually get a higher percentage of our points from our bench, but not much. If you look to the immediate left, you see the difference between the team with the most points in the paint (Utah) and the least points in the paint. (Us.) Like I said. We are gunners.  Our best gunner, percentage wise, is this guy, Dylan Windler. He started a few games with us. In an alternative universe, this man went without a single miss for three straight games, but then my game crashed and I lost it. In that universe he was shooting 60%/65% on the season for FG%/3p%. His numbers are pretty absurd as is, but the sample size is still fairly low.  Compared to Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk on defense. Diallo only played two games, so doesn't qualify, but Mykhailiuk has played at least ten minutes every single game this season and is, on the metric of opponent field goal percentage, already the best defender on our team. So... yeah, I'd say he has a knack for it. To put it another way:  He's currently defending better than any single member of last year's champions, the Milwaukee Bucks.  Here's our top 5 players arrayed by points. Spy Delon Wright down at the bottom. Holiday's getting more points off the bench, but I will be kind of shocked if Wright isn't a contender for sixth man of the year when awards open up. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I'll admit this was fairly... uh, disjointed. And I apologize for that. I figure no one wants a run down of 82 games a season. However, my gut feeling is that this probably doesn't give enough context. Is there something people would like me to keep a better eye on? I'll try to make an effort to capture things if I know what folks are interested in actually seeing.
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May 18, 2020 11:47
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Sometime after work, possibly tomorrow, I will post an update. I plan to include the usual any interesting happenings, as well as the entire Ravens roster, and the league standings. I will also show off our current staff. Is there anything else folks would like to see, specifically? Edit The award races should also come online by then.
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May 19, 2020 19:04
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Done. I'll post a report, but I believe the answer is Wayne Newton for New York and Alfred Kerr for Vancouver. Kerr is extremely similar to oir own Kelley, but isn't competing for minues and has a gross hobo beard.
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May 19, 2020 21:11
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CHAPTER 2 2020-2021, Part 3, Midway But first, Since folks asked, here's some stuff I should have shown off earlier. First, the staff:       As you can see, our staff is all solid-to-good across the board, and no one is particularly below average. When I started the team, my staff page was a bunch of completely random guys with nonsense bad stats, but their contracts all read as "Expired", so I figured I was supposed to replace them/fire them. Vancouver's head office still reads that way, though, so apparently, I passed on a chance to have a free front office. Whoooops! Everyone is competent because I didn't want to have an update for picking staff (especially when there was no one interesting available) so I chose staff by finding the most competent looking guy that no one had made an offer to, and making them the absolute default offer for two years. I must have missclicked on the Assistant Coach, but that's OK. The Assistant Coach having more years than the coach might motivate him. Put that sumbitch on notice. (That'll learn you to keep wanting to put Trevor Ariza in the starting line-up/bench/anywhere but the reserves the core of the sun.) Secondly, folks wanted to see Vancouver's current team/who they drafted in the expansion draft. Here it is.    Boogie was not in the expansion draft. I'd have taken him. He was a free agent that the Ravens signed in the off season. When I picked first and went with Bol, my second choice eyeballing the players available was Robert Williams, and I felt pretty vindicated when the AI made him their first overall pick. They went a little ham with centers. The only player that they have that I actually feel bad that I missed out on was Rudy Gay. I would gladly trade five Trevor Arizas for one Rudy Gay. We come off of our honeymoon period, much like the US comes back to earth after realizing they had re-elected the incumbent President Rodman. Kabengele goes out for two weeks and then we drop five games in a row to start the new year. While we right the ship, this was more in line with what I expected our performance to look like. We still have a chance to make the playoffs. Kabengele came back for our next game against the Ravens.  His own performance was poor, but We absolutely roast them. Bol Bol and Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk went bananas from 3, scoring a combined 13/18 three pointers.  I also captured this game, to give you an idea of the sort of monster stat lines that our Star can put up. Bol's already turned into something special and it's only his sophomore season. I wonder if he'll make the All-Star team?   Nope.Good for Steven Adams though. Gobert makes it a year late, having taken the president's admonishment as a motivational tool. (Also the Jazz are straight killing it). Team Giannis wins this game, and Joel Embiid is named the All-Star MVP in a close vote, putting up 26, 8, and 5. Luka Doncic scored a triple double, but his team lost. Steph Curry wins the 3 pt shootout and Zion Williamson, the Dunk Contest. While Bol Bol didn't get invited to the All-Star game, he did make the young players invitational game, whatever the hell they're calling it now. Actually, both of our centers did, making the world team.   And, even better, the World team wins because of them. Check out our lads here, #1 and #2 in both points and rebounds, and also check out that 6 offensive rebounds figure for Kabengele. I'm so proud of these two. In the middle of all of this is the trade deadline, and I shop around for some deals, seeing what I can get for various picks, Diallo, DJ Wilson, Trevor Ariza, Corey Joseph or Helmut Kraemer. Or any combination of those guys. Nothing seemed remotely worth it. Diallo's gonna walk next season, there's no way he'll resign with us, even after I started giving him regular minutes. Everyone else is either expiring or uninspired. Kraemer's whining is starting to bug me. But, since I didn't trade him, I will extend him. Maybe he'll come around to team play on his sophomore year. There is no way in hell I am paying Corey Joseph 12.6 million dollars next season. I might re-sign DJ Wilson if the price is right. I hope Trevor Ariza does the right thing and loving Retires. The only interesting trade (other than Rubio switching teams again) is this trade that rebalances the universe's Chi, righting ancient wrongs.  There are two current injuries of any significance:  Both those guys are MVP caliber players, and that's a long time to go without. Davis' injury was actually for longer than this, but I figured "Eh, I'll just grab a report on my last day simming; he'll still be injured"  Here's the rookie report. Wil Gaines and Wayne Newton were both picked before our pick of Harry Kelly, but between Carson and Doyle, I'm only sad I didn't have the scouting to select Doyle. He's an A+ potential player, and getting more minutes than the other one drafted this year. I want to bring attention to two award races. The first is for the Sixth Man of the Year:  It's moot, because Schroder here is going to take it in a walk, but I'm irrationally angry four other guys on this list aren't Delon Wright  Sure, his counting stats are a little lower overall, only Gasol has anywhere near the balance Wright has right now, being just a little good at literally everything, but Delon is shooting considerably better than any of these guys, including the two big men. By quite a bit. It's like, 5% more than the big guys and 10% more than the other guards. The other is for Most Improved Player  As you can see, we have the top 3 leaders for this award right now. But, more importantly:  Bol Bol is going to win this award. Look at those sexy gains. Tables:       Notes: 1)We fell pretty hard, but not as bad as I feared, and are still in the hunt for the playoffs. We could beat some of these teams in a 7 game series, but aren't likely to. 2)Vancouver fell even harder. 3)Those Draft picks we got from Phoenix are looking mighty fine. 4)What the gently caress happened to the Celtics. There is no reason for that team to be so low. There are rumblings Jayson Tatum wants out. 5)Lolknicks  I'll close with this shot of the team's 5 leading scorers, as we gear up for the second half of the season and the push for the playoffs. This really doesn't illustrate the team's performance very well. My thoughts after half a season on our five best players: 1)Bol Bol: The numbers speak for themselves. He's our Star, our Ace, our string bean, sweet shooting big man. His rebound numbers are going to explode next season. His consistency is really weird. He'll every now and then just get like, a single rebound, but he's had quite a few nights where he'll grab somewhere around 15. He's averaging 2 blocks, and I've seen a few different games where he's had 4. 2)Delon Wright: Our sixth man has never let me down, he does a little bit of everything, and he does it well. I think we would have won 5 games total without this guy. If you look at the cutoff of the game against the Raptors, you'll see a bad Wright game. 4, 4, 4, and 2 steals on 40% shooting. The point total in that game isn't very inspiring, but if he's off on anything, he fills the stat sheet up somewhere else. 3)Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk: After trying to figure out what the hell was going on with this guy on defense and how his numbers are so good when his attributes aren't, I watched a couple games in the Simcast mode. His defensive awareness is pretty bad, he's got to get better on the mental part of defense. When he sticks with his man, they don't score. What's happening is his oFG% doesn't go up because when his man scores, it's because someone missed a rotation. His teammates probably shouldn't have to rotate as often as they do. He's got one of the lowest 20 oFG% in the entire league, though. His own shooting, from both 2 and 3, is really good. I'm a little surprised he's also not on the list for MIP. 4)Bogdan Bogdanovich: Like Wright, but less so. Has more position flexibility for our needs. 5)Aaron Holiday: If nothing else, he scores well. I'm less disappointed in him than I am in VanVleet. Freddie, baby, if you're gonna have the highest overall on the team, you gotta do better than that. I'm high on Windler and Kabengele. Harry Kelley is a project that we can nurture. I keep forgetting Al-Farouq Aminu exists and he's started as many games at power forward as Kabengele and Kelley have. At one point, he was out for a few weeks with an injury, I got a message saying he was over his injury, and my first thought was "What the gently caress? I have Al-Farouq Aminu on my team?"
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May 20, 2020 11:38
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I simmed up to the playoffs, and I'll have an update relatively soon, depending on when I can get to my screenshots. Let me know if there's something folks want to see before the dance begins. .......as a preview, I'll say that the injury report had me exclaim "Oh no" and then feel actually really sad for a second before my brain kicked in and told me it's a simulation game.
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May 21, 2020 18:38
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Chapter 2 2020-2021, Part 4, Second Half+Playoffs I simmed to the end of the season, because with the trade window gone, there were no real choices to make on anything exciting going into the playoffs. En route, Bol Bol took a minor injury and was out for about two weeks. While we lost a few games, we didn't necessarily tank like this seems like it could do:  Life finds a way. In most games, we got a good overall team effort, but here's Aaron Holiday stepping up and then going of for 36, leading us to a victory over the best team in the league. Thanks, Aaron. Life is still easier when we have Bol, though. Here's what his production sometimes looks like (first game back):  ....so as you can see, we're slightly better when he's able to play. As for the season awards:  Giannis lead the league in rebouds. O_o  No surprises here. This name will never not be funny, I am so glad he's a star.   Even fewer surprises for these two and then, though it's the least surprising award of the year:  Tripling your scoring, more than tripling your rebounds and blocks, and then adding something like 30% to your Free Throw% will do that. Brett Brown wins CotY for the 76ers, I both missed a screen shot AND decide that he can actually keep the award, as I felt no team (other than maybe ours, and I refuse to cheat awards to us) significantly overperformed enough to warrant a change. All NBA Teams: First  Second  Third  All Defense One  All Defense Two  First Team All-Rookie  Second Team All Rookie  As you can see, our man Harry there wasn't a bust. He was the best defensive big on our whole team, though that doesn't say much (it says much less than much, really), and he averaged about 6 rebounds a game. I think he'll be OK. Also, he's feeling "Jubilant" about the current situation. While scanning Bol Bol to see his awards in all their glory, something catches my eye:  What the? He wasn't named to the All-Star team. When I backtrack to the All-Star game, I do see Bol Bol right there, very quietly putting up 6 points on 2/2 shooting from the arc and nothing else. He must have been someone's injury replacement selection. Let's check out the injuries and see if anyone... oh. Oh dear.   That actually hurts to look at. You know who doesn't deserve this nonsense? Portland. Several years back, they had one of the most electric young players in the league, Brandon Roy, He had made the All-Star game 3 times and Kobe Bryant once said he was the hardest player in the league to guard with no weaknesses in his game. After only five years in the league, he had to retire because he had no cartilage left in his knees. Damian Lillard is in many ways his successor, and definitely just as electric (he's closed two playoff series at the buzzer, which doesn't seem like that many playoff series until you realize that only nine have been decided on buzzer beaters. Ever.) so seeing one of the potentially career-ending injuries show up on him is just a little much. (Portland also had a #1 draft pick completely bust out because of knee injuries within the last 20 years) I'm going to have to pay attention to what happens to Lillard in the progression phase of the offseason. Rather than post the standings, I decided to post the playoff table:  One season, friends, and we already made it. Also pictured: Minnesota's draft day shenanigans paying off with a big 3rd place finish, and Boston's going absolutely nowhere with them completely failing to make the playoffs. Gonna have to look at our finances, because rumor has it, Jayson Tatum wants out, and he'd definitely give our team a few things it needs. Traditionally, rosters cut their rotations way down going into the playoffs, putting even more minutes and pressure on their best players to give them the best odds at success. While everyone in the squad gets minutes, I cut our rotation of 11 down to just our best nine: Fred VanVleet, Bogdan Bogdanovich, Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk, Harry Kelley, and Bol Bol are our starters, and we have Delon Wright, Mfiondu Kabengele, Aaron Holiday, and Dylan Windler coming off the bench. Determining our top 9 players was easy: they were our only nine players with a positive number for "EWA" which stands for "Estimated Wins Added"---according to that metric, our team is actually probably better if none of the other guys steps onto the court. So, now that we have our squad, let's see how we actually match up.  ........not great, as it turns out.All right, well, this is basically hopeless. We're against a much better team, one with a bit more experience (but not that much), and better than our guys overall with the exception of our shooting-guard matchup which is even. I know our bench is better, but their second best player plays the same position as our best player, and has a higher overall rating of 9 points. Their point guard beats ours by 13, and finished either second or third in MVP voting this year. I expect to get swept, maybe win one of my home games, and make another go at it next season, using this invaluable experience to motivate us through the growing pains we still have to come. Our team has so much potential, and it's been a fun run, but the ride stops here. It's time to go into the offseason and start seriously considering what moves to make in the draft, and if we can make a play for Jayson Tatum or some other expected free agent. Just kidding. We  Kicked  Their  rear end.  Garbage time in game 3 against a higher rated team. loving beautiful. Actually, we won in 6 games, which is not really an rear end kicking, but we were up 3-0 before putting them away. Luka was dropping big numbers before I realized VanVleet couldn't guard him, and then I stuck Mykhailiuk on him. After we lost two games in a row, I moved Mykhailiuk to the bench (but kept him as Doncic's primary defender when he was on the court) and added Windler to the starting line-up. In one of the games I was actually watching (so I could grab screenshots like that Bol Bol dunk), a little stat I wasn't quick enough to snatch flew by: in Mavericks wins this season, Doncic had an average of About 35 points. In losses, he averaged about 30. Over four games, Svi held him to under 27 (since this was his average including whatever points he dropped on VanVleet). This crawled back up to 30 when I had to start Windler. I know I said this already, but I think experimenting with building him as a defender was a great success. During this series, I grab a couple of shots of our court, just to show off how pretty it actually is:   Now, I wanted to have several photos of our team celebrating after winning a playoff series, and just very frustratingly couldn't. While I could get shots of a couple of games, and despite several attempts to get the series clinching game to properly load, well, a bug I was able to escape in previous games would simply not go away.  .... You've gotta be loving kidding me:  Yeah, that's right, 2k20 has a glitch where custom jerseys (so you know, the thing every single custom expansion team will be wearing in literally all of their games?) won't load, and this has a side effect of making everyone wearing those jerseys (so.... again, the entire team) invisible. For the game. You can sometimes get around this by going into Jersey Selection on the pre-game and waiting for the jerseys to load up, and indeed, this is what I did for the game I was able to capture. Unfortunately, for the clinching game, no matter how many times I tried, I couldn't get this loving bug to stop happening. This game has been out for eight and a half months and this was a week one known bug that could affect anyone with custom teams, and it's still not fixed, nor is it going to be. 2k's garbage. Their actual tech support answers to invisible players in MyPlayer is "Delete your MyPlayer and make a new one" and to invisible teams in custom expansions is "uninstall and reinstall (a 100 GB game)." Neither solution works, by the way. Garbage. On to the next one.  LeBron and Davis are never what you want to see on the other side of you, but we're actually winning the back-court matchup, and our centers are essentially tied (with Bol definitively having a better season) The story of the playoffs is Injuries.   Two of the best players in the league go down to relatively small injuries in the first round, and while Jabari Parker tries to do whatever he can to lead the Bucks with Giannis out for 3 games, they can't hold off the Cavs. Without Embiid, the 76ers, who finished the regular season with the best record got eliminated by the 8th seeded in embarrassing fashion. It's somewhat less embarrassing when the Hawks also manage to take down the Raptors in round two.  Round two features two impactful injuries that decide their entire series:  Without the best defensive big man in the league, (and with their offensive big man already out from earlier) the Jazz can't hold back the Warriors. There was one more injury that decided a series.  And while he's not nearly the same caliber of those other three players, you might remember I said "I don't think we could win a game without Delon Wright?"  Turns out there may have been some truth to that. Lakers go over the Warriors, and the Nets crush the upstart Hawks, then:   ARGH. I've recently been to Brooklyn. Brooklyn was a cool town, I enjoyed myself immensely. I also think the Brooklyn Nets have one of the coolest home courts in the league. I just happen to hate the Brooklyn Nets. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving are my two least favorite players in the entire league, and that was before they joined forces. I'm pretty glad that in real life, at least in the 2020 season, they amounted to a whole lot of nothing, and I wish them both that for the rest of their careers. I do the early, boring parts of the offseason, where a bunch of proposals are rejected, I once again have to manually re-align the league, because for some fuckin' reason the NBA wanted to move Miami to the Western Conference, despite them being farther East than the other team in Florida. Actually, only four teams are further East. I have to scramble everything and then some idiot says "what's the point of realignment?" What indeed. I seriously consider turning this off. I actually don't know if teams can move automatically---it's something to look into. Staff Signing isn't really interesting, since I keep my entire Staff. Both teams in the NBA finals hired a new coach though. That was... somewhat strange, especially since neither coach retired. I watch the draft Lottery, which lines up the most boring way possible, and I'm greeted with this mind-blowing stat  The NBA draft lottery was introduced in 1984. This hypothetical series is in 2021 now. The actual real life Spurs only ever missed the playoffs three times since 1984. The Admiral was great, but Tim Duncan needs more paragraphs in the GOAT discussion. After the lottery, the draft order looks like this:  And, while I named the file "rigged" it's not rigged if the worst team in the league wins the lottery. It's just funny that they won back to back years. Because the Knicks suck. But if this year's #1 is as good as Wayne Newton, then the Knicks might be a contender in like, five seasons. VOTING TIME The time has come for the NBA draft. Our team is a merciless young team of gunners. We hit more threes than anyone last season, although our percentage isn't great. We get to the line a lot and hit them at a top 10 percentage. We force a ton of turnovers and were second in the league in steals and fourth in the league in blocks. The drawbacks of our team is the entirety of the interior. We're one of the worst rebounding teams in the league (maybe the worst), the worst team in the league in Points in the Paint, and the worst team in the league on interior defense (Near as I can tell, our block score is largely Bol Bol help defense) HOWEVER, last year, we took Harry Kelley, who is still developing, and is developing along the path of a rebound focused power forward. VanVleet is not a permanent solution at Point Guard, it's unknown how much of Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk's season was a fluke for his defensive numbers. Delon Wright is a shooting guard and our sixth man, so two of our top six guys play that position, but Diallo is going to walk, so we'll only have two Shooting Guards on the team. Picking at 19, I'm unlikely to get all-star level help: ROUND 1 (Pick 19) A)Pick the best player available overall (according to my scouts) B)Pick highest potential overall (according to my scouts) C)Pick the best rebounder overall (surely you get the idea) D)Draft for position (Specify) ROUND 2 (Pick 51) A)Best Overall B)Best Potential C)Best Rebounder D)Position (Specify) E)Best Name Available As always, you can specify something I haven't covered for a choice, just articulate it, and it'll be considered. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 06:03 on May 23, 2020 |
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May 23, 2020 05:43
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If anyone wants to hear basketball anecdotes or has questions about my take on certain basketball related things, just ask. If I notice a question, I'll answer to the best of my ability.Guper posted:In case anyone is curious here's a very recent Bol Bol practice video. Crazy to see someone with his body (he's 7ft 2 in) moving and shooting so well (albeit, against random trainers). Somewhat encouraging. I know I said up thread that I didn't expect him to amount to much in the real world league (he looks kind of brittle, mainly), but I want to be proven wrong. There ain't too many kids that come into the league that I hope never accomplish anything. I make my enemies once they're already here.
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May 23, 2020 21:35
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Namtab posted:Lets begin with why you hate both(?) of the new york teams. I actually only really dislike the Nets, because of their star players. I just find trashing the Knicks to be funny. Mostly because of what MagusofStars just said a moment ago. They get a lot of attention like they're historically a great team that deserves all the attention in the world, but that's almost never been the case. They're actually in the bottom half of the league in all-time win loss record, but not as low as I would have initially guessed. Their current owner is a self-obsessed dumbass, and then they had all the nonsense with Isaiah Thomas (the first one). While Thomas had an honest knack for scouting young talent, he wasn't that much of a GM outside of that, and also, you know, the gross sexual harassment stuff. Yet, despite decades and decades of foolishness and bad teams, there's talk every single offseason about players being desperate to go to the Knicks, or having the Knicks as the top of their list, and it's never actually true. It sticks in my craw that the take on these young men is that they're obsessed with the limelight and fame or the party scene or goofing off instead of capable of any deeper thought into where they go in the off-season. Is stuff like that considered by the players? Sure. There's a reason the worst team ever is the Timberwolves (sorry, Minnesota fans. But by the numbers, it's true). But, when you're dealing with a player's off-season moves, which might influence their entire career, particularly the big name free agents, they're pretty smart kids. Do they tend to go to larger market teams? Absolutely. Larger Markets can and do pay them better than smaller ones. But they're pretty particular about which larger markets they go to. Boston, the Lakers, Miami---these teams are in huge markets and also historically give a gently caress about actually winning basketball games, and have shown a knack for putting together good teams, time and again. This past season, Kawhi Leonard left the team he won a championship with for the LA Clippers, to be in a big market in his home town, but his decision was fueled by the Clippers swinging a trade for Paul George, and the evidence seems to suggest that Leonard and George played the involved teams like a bloody fiddle to get what they wanted. Also, current Clippers owner Steve Ballmer seems to be more about "Actually it's cool to win games" than previous owner Donald Sterling, who who cared about----well, he has been banned for life from the NBA. At any rate, the long and short of it is, New York is never going to seriously be in the mix until they start actually showing players, who are largely pretty loving intelligent, that they can accomplish actual basketball goals. ~~~ Which makes me sort of a hypocrite for why I despise the Nets. I don't really hate the Nets. I like a lot of their team, I just can't stand Kevin Durant, and I can't stand Kyrie Irving. Kyrie Irving is an overinflated dumbass flat-Earther. He has amazing handles, he's an excellent basketball player in general, but he's kind of a poo poo. He famously despised being the second fiddle on a team with LeBron loving James, and it drove him crazy, even when he's a huge part of the reason why Cleveland actually won their only NBA Championship ever. Because being a beloved hero wasn't as important to him as being the absolute best. And it's funny, because he's on a team with Kevin Durant now, he's not the best there, either, and if Brooklyn ever does something in real life, he's not going to get the lion's share of the credit, and I'm a little intrigued by the knife-fight these egomaniacs would get into over it. He was bitching about the Nets not having any help this season, despite Spencer Dinwiddie playing the best basketball of his career, and Brooklyn generally being a team of very solid to very good basketball players. Guys calling out their teammates is gross even when they are incompetent, but Irving is wrong, which makes it even worse. Kevin Durant ruined basketball for me for a while. He did make a smart, informed decision for his career, which I said up above is the sort of thing I can respect, but he also went what felt too far. He left his team to go play for Golden State, who just had set an NBA record in wins the previous season, and also who ousted his team from the Playoffs. (and who had three future hall of famers already) Durant's team wasn't good enough, you see, even though his teammate was the next season's league MVP who averaged a triple double. It's possible that the Thunder could have beaten the Warriors that year, but we'll never know, because Durant, ultimately, chickened out. Basketball is unwatchable when we know who is going to win. I quit watching as a kid for almost a decade because the Jordan/Pippen combination (with various degrees of exceptional roleplayers) was loving boring. And Durant does the same thing Kyrie does, with dragging his teammates. Actually, Durant's kind of a pathetic wimp. This is a guy who spends an inordinate amount of time trolling twitter for mentions of his own name so he can fight loving fans about his value as a player and to the league. And he'll do this over the tiniest criticisms of his game. I can't even wrap my head around an ego that size, but, you know what, Kevin, you did earn your MVP, and you're one of the best scorers of a generation. But as near as I can tell, Kevin Durant sees success as only ever because of himself, and any failure is the fault of everyone else. These two absolute fuckheads deserve each other. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 02:40 on May 24, 2020 |
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May 24, 2020 02:33
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CHAPTER 3: 2021-2022 Offseason, Part 1 Before we go too much farther, I want to announce that NBA2k, in continuing "is a trash fire" news, didn't program Trade Exceptions correctly. They're supposed to be good for 1 calendar year, loving period from the date that a player is traded, so that you can actually loving use it in the next off-season. NBA2k did not actually do this, and gave me a trade exception until the first day of the offseason, (despite me generating it on the last day) so.... it expired before any actual players could be signed in the offseason, which goes completely against what the hell the thing is designed to be for in the first place. Well loving done, lads, you continue to not understand the sport you're simulating. What's most frustrating is I can't actually tell if it's 2K's usual laziness (because it's easier to program exceptions as expiring at the end of the season) or if it's them actually fundamentally not understanding basketball's admittedly rather esoteric contract rules. But god drat, guys, don't pretend to be an immersive simulation and then not simulate. So we could have signed Paul George or Rudy Gobert this offseason (by feeding our exception to Bol Bol), but naw. We're not allowed to have nice things. Complaints aside, the 2021 NBA draft was less dramatic than the 2020 NBA draft, but on the whole, the actual players drafted were better. Similar overall ratings to the last class, but there were a lot more guys with A+ or A potential, this draft might go down as one of the league's best ever. It's hard to say, because guys with high potential can develop wildly different depending on teams, minutes, all kinds of stuff. New York starts the proceedings by taking this guy,  Who is an 84 overall A+ potential absolute monster. This guy has future league MVP written all over him, being something like 5 or 6 points higher than the next highest overall player, and the highest possible potential after it. Remember when I said the Knicks might actually become good? Well, both this guy and Wayne Newton are technically better than my entire team right now, but with them developing and presumably logging huge minutes..... I expect big things in future years out of the Knicks. A few more picks that didn't really interest me go by, and then the Hornets are up  And they're at it again. Note that they only traded down one spot. They also give up their only contracted center. OKC picks up this guy  Presumably to eventually replace Chris Paul?  Meanwhile the Hornets take this guy. Looking at him after the draft, Ralph Miller here is only a 68 overall (actually worse than the next guy the Hornets drafted this same year by 6 points!) but he's another A+ potential player. He's also, once again, the team's only center on contract. I expect them to sign someone over the offseason and for this guy to be benched the whole year, but for those keeping score, this is the second A+ potential player the Hornets have drafted in back to back years, and they currently have a lot of promising young players. I checked out their scout after their deliberate trade to get an A+ player last year, and discovered they only had a D rating. ......I dunno, he seems pretty good at his job to me.  The Celtics follow this up by immediately continuing their plan to acquire the good parts of the now-bottom-feeding Spurs. Giving up two more #1 picks, the Cs clearly still think they're championship contenders, even though they missed the playoffs entirely last season.  The Cavs surprise me by this trade. They had a surprise trip to the second round of the playoffs, and then followed that up by dealing away their best or second best player.  The Bulls meanwhile use that to pull this very safe trade. Love is better than Saric, and both the pick they traded and the pick they acquired from Cleveland are protected and in the same year. Worst case scenario for the '23 season would mean Cleveland misses the playoffs, so their protected pick stays with them, and Chicago also misses the playoffs, but does just well enough to fall out of the top 10, so their own pick gets traded to Phoenix. Even if that's the case, though, they'd just pick twice in '24.  Hornets doing Hornets things. They didn't intend to keep Gallinari after all. .........but..... where did he get the uniform already?  Atlanta, being good enough to win right now, actually trades a first round pick to get a marginal improvement to their bigs. Morris probably has more in the tank than Gasol, sadly.  Here's the draft sorted by potential. All three guys here are listed at A- potential by my scouts, so, all things being equal, I pick the guy that addresses a team weakness (and also the sole positional weakness I was told to look out for.)  Welcome to the team, Jimmie. (My scouts mildly burned me here---He's actually only a B+ potential, and there were guys higher than that later on in the draft the scouts completely missed, but all things considered, he's very similar to what Harry Kelley was last year, and Kelley wound up being pretty productive for us, and this gives us some depth in the PF position without having to rotate Kabengele over.  Check out that mustache. I have bad news, everyone. It's good that I was told not to compete in this year's Name draft, because I'd have had to trade up. As it stands, our thread rivals, the Vancouver Ravens, indisputably won this year's "best name drafted" contest.  .....Not just Barry White, but Barry White the Third. It's a shame he's such a low pick and almost certainly won't develop into a star, because I would love this guy to be rivals with Wayne Newton.  This guy was highest rated in potential on the board, and after clicking on the "pros and cons" on the player pages, he was the only one I saw where the scouts said he could be an all-star someday. (loving scouts. He's another B+.) Anyhow, we draft our third power forward in two years. I also figure out how to sign second round picks and have them totally OK with being stashed in the G-league. Apparently, if I have one available, I can offer a two-way contract. So not only do I get a reasonably high potential player (B+ is still pretty good. Everyone on our team is at least B+, which I like) but he won't complain endlessly like Kraemer did in his first season. Incidentally, looking over those images, it looks like Georgia Tech and Syracuse had a pretty good year, yeah?  Mr. Irrelevant 2021 is Omar Munoz, who I did not force the 76ers to sign, because, yep, he's terrible. I once again assume direct control over all the teams, and sign their second round picks, hoping to make use of my newfound knowledge in signing them to two-way contracts, so that the CPU also might not have the G-league penalty to its young players it might want to develop. It's here that I learn that 2k continues to be a garbage fire, and most teams I have the ability to give out a two-way contract with actually can't, because they already have the maximum amount of two way contracts already. Except that it's the offseason and literally every single player signed to a current two-way contract has already expired. God drat it, 2k.......So I just sign most of 'em to regular contracts. I think this caused me to waive one additional player I otherwise wouldn't have.  In the offseason, I get the option to extend anyone who has a team option, and see who accepts player options, if any player has one. None currently do. I extend literally everyone I can except for Cory Joseph here, who probably wishes he had 12 million dollars. I think I might have given this lucky son of a bitch a million dollars a game last season. I even extend Helmut Kraemer, just because I can, and hey, maybe I can turn him around on this team. Here's a small section of the top unrestricted free agents (there are many more guys mixed in there---notably Rudy Gobert---by virtue of "their contract completely expired")  Our contract situation is as follows:    The cap is a lie, by the way. While I don't have MY MOTHER loving TRADE EXCEPTION I have something called a "Cap hold" on certain players that I had signed last season, including Joseph who I didn't extend. This would allow me to potentially resign the players even if I were over the cap, but, notably, to sign a new player, I have to either have the funds to sign them outright, or surrender my cap hold rights to the players. Between him, Ariza, and DJ Wilson, none of whom I am going to resign, (thus, I will surrender their cap hold rights), I actually have something like 43 million dollars in cap space. Bol Bol wants $15.29 million to re-sign, and I make him an offer, no questions asked. Something like 5 years, 88 million. (I set the first year at exactly 15.29, and offer him Bird increases of an 8% raise a year) This seems like a fair loving salary for a 21 year old All-Star center (even though he's an RFA, so I could just match someone else's offer if the only other offers he got are less---flipside is, if he signs with me first, no one else will offer him a better one. Players usually ask for more than they think they'll get, but sometimes you can benefit by overpaying them or giving them a number of years no one else is offering, or giving them a player option if you want to play with fire.)Or, to put it more succinctly, we have about 28 million dollars to play with, not 3 million. (Oh, and also not 45 million, you loving garbage game. )The moratorium period for free agency starts. I first discover that Jayson Tatum was trolling the league with his "I want out" nonsense in Boston---he's an RFA meaning they could match anyone's offer and keep him regardless, so long as they extended him a qualifying offer. Which obviously they did. Also, they made him more than a qualifying offer, giving him one of those 4+a player option Super Max style deals (Iunno if they offered him the literal max--2k doesn't model this well at all), and he's got 100 interest in it. So.... a tale told by an idiot*, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. (*The simulation Jayson. I have no reason to suspect the real world Tatum is an idiot) There's a couple of potential gets in free agency, with this in mind. Assuming Bol Bol re-signs, I currently have 13 players on roster, and I fully intend to trade Al-Farouq Aminu for picks (Memphis is offering me two firsts O_O, The Clippers are also offering me two firsts, but in exchange for one of my firsts---this is actually the deal that I prefer, as I'm starting to get a glut of young players, and keep in mind I have the Suns first either this coming year or the year after. And then ANOTHER Suns pick the year after that.) (The second reason I prefer it is that the pick they're offering me is the better of their own or OKC's picks, with no protection, while Memphis is offering me a protected first. It's more likely Memphis is in the playoffs two years running than it is that both OKC and the Clippers make the playoffs, making the pick I'm being offered higher) Assuming we trade Aminu, our depth would then be: VanVleet and Holiday at PG Bogdanovich and Wright at SG Mykhailiuk and Windler at SF Kelley, Sharp, and Valentine at PF Bol, Kabengele, and Kraemer at C The new PFs can double as small forwards but are really raw. Kelley can play center, Bol is a center, period. Kabengele can play PF and often started there last season. So C is our deepest front court position, and I'm not considering signing anyone there, because there's less than zero reason to. While the new guys can play SF, and so can Boggy, it's definitely my weakest position by raw overall. Many guys on my team can play it, but few can play it particularly well. (Although, this is underselling both our actual SFs. Mykhailiuk is our best defender, and Windler is both an excellent shooter and a surprisingly good ball handler. I'm considering moving him to SG|PG instead of SF|SG Both point guards and both small forwards can sub in at shooting guard in a pinch. This is our deepest roster position, period. We don't need shooting guards. No one can double at point, this is our weakest position. The first player we might want to consider, despite PF being one of our stronger positions, is Julius Randle.  At 82 overall (and only 26, so he's likely to improve during the progression phase), he'd be the best PF on our team immediately, and could give us yet more minutes at center if something happens to Bol, who has admittedly scary odds of getting a foot injury. He'd give us considerably more of a presence inside, while fitting in with the gunner mentality of the team on the outside, being not great, but serviceable from the arc. I know he's saying he wants 15.57 million and that's a lot, but spy this:  The lakers are only offering him 5.7 Million, and he's at least considering it. I think we can finesse something here and get him for about half what he's asking. Something like a 2+Player option for about seven and a half million dollars might be seriously tempting to him. On the small forward front, we have a couple of options:  One of which is Gordon Hayward. Hayward has a pretty decent price tag for a guy that'd immediately be the best small forward on our team, he fits the team's structure, and he's reasonably good across the board as a basketball player. Guys who have been in the league for as long as he has really tend to be. He's already 31 and might begin declining, but we could sign him to two years, like we did VanVleet, and see what happens.  The other option we could consider is Kelly Oubre. He's much of what Hayward is, but he's less of a scorer and has less wily veteran intangibles, but he's a better defender and superior athlete, making him slightly better overall. He's also only 25 and has a ways to develop, still. The drawback to Oubre is he's going to want quite a lot of money, and Wright, Vanvleet, Holiday, Mykhailiuk, and Kraemer have contracts up next season. The latter two are almost certainly going to want a raise of some kind. Holiday wants about 9 million a year, and that might be a fair offer. So wrapping up 15+ million a year in a Small Forward investment when our own are pretty promising might not be the best idea. On to point guards:  First up we have perennial sixth man of the year winner, Dennis Schroder. He's better than VanVleet is, albeit only just, and also clearly doesn't seem to mind coming off the bench. He fits our team like a glove, and oh yeah, was the player we were destined to actually sign, if 2k wasn't such a mother loving garbage fire IT SURE WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE MY 17.1 MILLION DOLLAR TRADE EXCEPTION RIGHT NOW . .....sigh...... god drat it. Another potential option is Monte Morris. He'd also fit our team relatively decent, provides much of the same things as Schroder, and is only about 60% of the cost. He'd compete with Holiday for minutes, but he'd make our PG depth really, really good. The last PG option is this guy that New Orleans decided to not extend the contract of, because, I dunno, they're loving crazy.  See how he wants 8 and a half million a year? If NO extended him, he'd be making less than 3. Maybe even less than 2. I didn't check if he was a second or first rounder. The point is, he knows his worth. A 21 year old A- potential pure point guard who is already over 75. He'd struggle to get minutes on this team, but would have the potential to pay off big. I could try something tricky like lowballing him just a little, and offering him either four years or three and a player option and see how he develops. It might mean I wouldn't have to draft a point guard next season, and I probably otherwise really should. On the other hand, drafted players cost about a third of what Mitchell is asking for. On the other, other hand, he's exactly as good as a high draft pick point guard would be. Already. And finally, believe it or not, there's a shooting guard we might consider.  The argument for signing Grayson Allen is as follows: He's cheap. He's young with potential. He fits our system. And, oh yeah, he's cheap. I could sign this guy for four years and have a fringe rotational player that could develop to see actual playing time, but wouldn't really cost us anything if he didn't. EDIT I just noticed Gary Payton Jr beneath Allen. He'd be even cheaper, and he's a better perimeter defender, but he's older and has less odds of ever making our rotation. But there's definitely something to be said about him and his price tag. VOTING TIME 1)What, if any players out of the above should we try to sign? (We will have roster space for three additional players) 2)Which trade deal do I take for Aminu? (Reminder, Memphis' proposed deal gives me more picks, but are likely to both be lower value. We also have extra picks already. The Clippers will give us what amounts to one less pick, but they're more likely to be good picks.) I guess I could also not trade Aminu. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 09:45 on May 24, 2020 |
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May 24, 2020 09:04
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MagusofStars posted:
Oh, is that how that trade worked? That's fantastic. Man the league can be dumb. As for how it works in 2k, it's protected for exactly one year, regardless of level of protection put on it, and then in the next year, it's an unprotected first round pick. This is why I called the Bulls trade above "safe". Because they were getting a draft pick, still, just not necessarily in certain years. Guper posted:Also, is there anything we can do to reduce Bol Bol's injury risk? Is it just a matter of trying to play him fewer minutes/games? Just reduce his minutes and try to raise his overall durability, which.... you can't, really. I think one of the camps does it. To be fair, his overall durability is only slightly lower than the position average, it's just all concentrated on his feet. His injury earlier in the season was on one of his fingers, though. It's all luck.  This is how the protected pick looks on the Suns' end. We have their 2022 pick with a protection. Their own 2023 pick is listed as "Protection backup", and no one else has it. Which is good, because holy poo poo, Phoenix, someone else would have had that pick now, apparently. (They actually finagled their way into drafting a few players this year, and it was a good draft, as I said, but.... yikes.Accordingly, if I try to trade for their backup, I get this message:  The Suns can't trade their 2023 first rounder because there's a chance they already did trade their 2023 first rounder. To me.
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May 24, 2020 18:27
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Welp, I'm simming again. Here's a preview: NBA2k hosed itself all the way up again, wrt contracts. The Clippers retracted their offer and Memphis changed their offer, so I'm taking neither offer currently for Aminu, and will look to dump him closer to the trade deadline.
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May 25, 2020 20:09
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 SPECIAL EMERGENCY SESSION OK, thread, so here's where we stand right now and the problem I'm running into:  Remember when I said NBA2k20 was a burning garbage fire of unplayable stupidity? Like, many times? If you're not seeing what's happening in the screen shot, I'll explain: So when you possess a player's "Bird" rights, you they enter what's considered Restricted Free Agency. How this works is a team signs them to what is called a "Qualifying offer". Basically, it's a good faith offer of a contract that shows that the team that has the rights to a player is still interested in re-signing them. What it means is that the team that has the player could potentially go over the salary cap to sign their restricted free agent if that's the only way to keep them. By extending an RFA a qualifying offer, it gives the team the explicit right to match any offer sheet the player might get from another team, and, furthermore, the player has to take it. If a Honolulu RFA accepts a Vancouver offer, if Honolulu is willing to match, then the player must take the offer and can't just.... leave. Or, in very, very rare cases, a player can gamble on themselves and just sign the Qualifying offer. It's a contract, sure, but it's not actually a contract anyone takes.1 Nor is it a contract that Bol was agreeing to here--it' s a bug. Notice that the contract says "Match". It doesn't say accept RFA, it doesn't say "Sign". The game is treating the Qualifying offer that I made Bol to be an offer from another team, and it is signing him to that, instead of the 5 years, 88.62 million dollar contract I offered Bol. 1Every now and then players take the qualifying offer because they feel like they can get more money out of it that way. Most of the time, they bet wrong. Greg Monroe managed to get a max contract this way, though. Make no mistake, this isn't Bol turning down the contract I offered---it's an outright glitch. Some testing shows this is literally always what happens if you try to offer an RFA a contract during the Moratorium period instead of the first day of Free Agency. So, in the future, I can ignore this glitch by simply simming through Moratorium unless I want to make an offer on a huge name UFA like Paul George would have been, this year. I'll still have Bol's bird rights for next season, so he is still an RFA next season, as things stand. So, conceivably, I could eventually break the game this way, and eventually sign my entire team of supermen to tiny RFA QOs of 2-5 million dollars and field an unbeatable team of all-stars working for peanuts. Clearly, I am not going to do that. It has auto-saved after my signing of Bol Bol. I have a back-up, but it's pre-draft. We have two Choices. Continue as is. I've figured out (I think), the glitch. So next year, I should be able to sign Bol, and my other actual RFAs. Narratively, I could just claim that Bol was pulling a Greg Monroe/Ben Gordon move and betting big on himself. I mean, technically, he's right; I won't be able to sign him for 15.29 +8% per season next year. He'll want more and I'll give it to him. The advantages of this route is it does make some degree of narrative sense, even if it's not what actually happened. And it would be less work on my part, and undo less of the offseason. The disadvantage is it could seriously hurt the team financially going forward. Redo the offseason. I'd just do everything as close to the same as I could, but it'd skip the moratorium period entirely, since that seems to be what breaks the game. Then I'd make Bol the offer I made him (which, incidentally, his asking price goes down if you wait until after the Moratorium is up---I'd still offer him the higher full contract, though) The advantage is a gameplay one. This is what should have happened, and it could conceivably seriously wound our team's finances. After losing the 17.1 million dollar trade exception, the team has already taken a completely unnecessary financial hit anyhow. The disadvantages are narrative and work. I'd have to re-do everything. Although I'd still try to draft Swift and Valentine, I can't guarantee either would be available where I pick, and also everything the CPU did would be different. So I'd have to take another couple dozen screens to narrate the new universe. I'd like to get through the second part of the offseason today, if possible, so this will be a time sensitive vote.
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May 26, 2020 02:16
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Jadecore posted:This is baffling trashfire nonsense and everything seems designed to glitch itself into fiscally loving you over. Redo the offseason, I guess. To clarify, this one would only be loving me over financially, because of my own conscience. In the real world, if he opted for the Qualifying Offer and didn't sign anything else, he'd be an unrestricted next year, and could do whatever the hell he wants. Since the game is treating it as me matching a contract offer, it's also letting me keep his bird rights, which means that, since the glitch is repeatable, and because he's forced to accept a match contract offer from his Bird right holding team, I could force him, and eventually everyone else on my team into working for 1/5th or less of their actual value, forever. It's actually a game-breaking financial glitch in my favor, but if I went with option A, I'd be voluntarily letting it penalize me.
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May 26, 2020 02:51
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Guper posted:Wow, I've heard snippets of how hosed up NBA 2K is but this is nuts. Just basic functionality missing. Unfortunately, no. I can go into Edit Player, and there's a section for editing contracts, and there's even a spot that you can highlight to show you the current contract----but you can't actually edit it. But you can edit the original number of years of the contract, for whatever that's worth.  (And yeah, I won't complain if people use my thread as a PSA to stop giving money to 2k for any reason until they fix their drat games.)
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May 26, 2020 03:52
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I've opted to leave it as is. The vote was 3-2, but if I'm being honest, I'd have also voted for just letting it slide--this time. I sort of talked myself into it. I'll take a financial hit next season, but unlike in real life, I'll still have Bol's Bird rights. So assuming that I just wait until after the moratorium to give him my offer, even though I'd be paying him more than I would be now, I at least won't have a chance of him going to another team.
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May 26, 2020 05:09
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Chapter 3, 2021-2022 Offseason, Part 2 Before we begin, I didn't realize I had taken this shot.  Look at that, Bol actually accepted the contract offer I gave him. But then the game glitched out to this:  Also shown: Per instruction, I landed Monte Morris successfully. I signed Garry Payton II. I didn't get a lot of free agency directive beyond Morris, but I was told to add who I wanted without breaking the bank. GP2 gives us a potential rotational player (he's actually got the highest perimeter defense rating on our whole team now) for a couple of years for very, very cheap. The deal says two years, but I gave him a player option (which I assume he'll opt out of. Oh, well.)  The Jazz had to pick between Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert and went with the guard. Gobert went to the Clippers, giving the team an even more terrifying defensive presence than it had before. Jayson Tatum gets a supermax deal. The very good John Collins goes to the Cavaliers, Lauri Markannen and Deandre Ayton combine to make the Suns a fairly scary front court, and with Devin Booker there too, they might actually do something. We might actually get their pick this year despite the protection on it.   Derrick Rose rehabilitated himself up to a point where he could make 16 million a year and immediately went home. God drat that's a feel good story.Paul George went to the Spurs for some reason, we can see where lots of the other guys I had scouted in Free Agency wound up.  The Ravens have carved out an identity of a team that showcases players for a year while they try to score bigger contracts somewhere else. Boogie goes to the Spurs to play with Paul George.    Player progression this year doesn't go anywhere near as well as it did last year, with only Windler, Kraemer, and the newly signed GP2 gaining more than a single point overall. Not even Bol got more than a point, despite now being an A overall potential, only 21 years old, and playing three times as many minutes a game as he did his rookie season. I'm not worried about Vanvleet yet; his overall went down but he's still gaining in some places. We're not alone in underwhelming advancements; I notice that around the league almost no one gained more than 0-3 points. I wonder what causes that. I had the same sliders. Then again, maybe it's all down to the RNG. Maybe there are several systems at work here, but I assume none of them actually work. We now have three players with a natural A+ in three point shooting. Our team's best defender has an F/D+ rating in the two defensive stats. I don't understand how this game works. I assume the real Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk is pretty bad on defense, or maybe in general. I've somehow never seen him play even though he plays for my "home" team in real life.  Steppenwolf has degraded to a B+ potential player. He was an A+ last year, not just in the draft. I have no explanation for this. Indiana's A+ potential player also declined, but only to an A. A+ to B+ is pretty huge, but the highest gain in the whole league by someone who wasn't in the G-league was +6, and that was a guy with a B+ potential. Incidentally, other than Bol Bol's A and Windler's A-, all of our young players are a B+ potential, so I'm pretty pleased with that, but also wouldn't complain if it were higher on one or two guys.  Our rivals have the single biggest gain of any player, though. I think he was in the G-league. I have high hopes for Valentine down there this year---it'd have been nice if Kraemer didn't complain to the point where I had to recall him---if he had an 11 point gain in the offseason, he'd be the best player on our team. Summer league rolls around, and from players actually on our roster, Windler, Kabengele, Kelley, Kraemer, Sharp, and Valentine all suit up. Mykhailiuk does not, despite being the same age as Windler, and Bol doesn't suit up, despite being younger than all six of them. Presumably because he was an all star.  We do well enough in the prelims to get the first seed, but immediately blow it. The Ravens go to the finals and lose to the Bulls, who have quietly gathered a decent amount of promising young talent. Our best performers were Windler, Kabengele, and Sharp. Sharp, despite coming off the bench, had higher counting stats than Kelley across the board, and averaged a double double. Not even Kabengele managed that. However, he played considerably worse on defense than Kelley did. Their attributes seem to bear this out. It might be worth further focusing them both so that we can give opposing teams a couple of different looks, as needed. VOTING TIME Once again, it's time for training camps. As always, I have two. Please vote for two players to go to camp. And for the camp they go to.
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May 26, 2020 07:58
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Oh, I didn't ask, but sometimes the proposals in the off-season are absolutely insane. One of the rejected ones this year was "eliminate goaltending". Which would never happen. I have also seen "Change the shot clock to [x] seconds," with the highest I have seen being a bonkers 45. I think it can also be removed entirely. That would actually kill the league in real life. I can override insane proposals that pass. Should I? I could also decide to accept bad proposals incrementally; I could see raising the shot clock by 5 seconds (in sim), but 20 is just a shocking number.
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May 26, 2020 21:15
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Guper posted:Wow those rules! That'd still be a defensive three second violation. But every two and a half seconds you could leave and come back, or have another tall guy do it. Since a few people mentioned offensive goaltending or offensive interference, there is ba separate potential rule change that can repeal just that. Repealing Goaltending would probably benefit us specifically, since Bol was top 10 in blocks last season and we have no legitimate defense. (I still don't comprehend what sorcery was fueling Mykhailiuk's oFG% last year... It's not just missed rotations penalizing teammates instead of him; putting him on Doncic actually shut down Doncic)
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May 27, 2020 00:31
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...So potential isn't just how fast a player grows, it's actually the player's maximum overall rating (and semi-hidden, at that). It's a semi-static number, I dunno how it can change without editing it, but it can clearly at least decline. It also makes the game static and boring, and makes the draft classes a bit unrealistic. I'm thinking of occasionally (that is, once an off-season, before actually going to the progression phase) editing young players' potential at random somehow. Which would involve a lot of work, but I figure I could come up with an easy way to streamline it. Ideally, I would like to have a system that makes second round or late first round picks sometimes become really good NBA players, like they actually do. One of the better experiences I had in an NBA2k game was, weirdly, a glitch which caused Tyreke Evans to randomly decline and lose a ton of rating after his rookie season. Even more weirdly, this actually happened in real life, too. O_o No method of randomization in place yet, but equipped with this distressing dire knowledge, I now realize there is zero reason for a young team to invest in anything other than potential for either its youngest players, or for its highest potential players not yet in their peak. So, I was already instructed to use Bol Bol in a camp, and I send him to potential, Raising it to an A+ rating, and I send Dylan Windler, who remains an A-, but I know it's 3 higher than what it was before, raising his ceiling by 3 points. 2k's hideous, unrealistic, absolutely dire potential system is a curse, and somehow manages to be worse than the remarkably unrealistic FIFA games were you can just keep playing minigames until you're God. Unless you get lucky with players arbitrarily getting huge bonuses from the G-league or playing overseas, you'll never see breakout seasons. The AI will never generate a Manu Ginobili, or a Draymond Green, or even a Michael Redd. The AI will never in a million years generate a Nikola Jocic, who is a potential league MVP. (Not... not this season. I mean ever. And he's definitely done it in 2k sims) So I haven't come up with a system yet, but I've got 80 loving years to experiment, and I'll do it, even if I have to use heavyhanded brute force. Chapter 4, 2021-2022 Season, 2021  This is one better than our best projection last year. However, the other two power rankings at the start of the year have us at 21, which seems like a fairly big range. Everyone is confident that the Celtics (why?), Nets, and Bucks are the best teams. As I said, I sent both Bol and Windler to camp. Coach for some reason wanted to start Kabengele over Bol, and actually did for a few games. We start the season 1-10. I get this message:  Presumably, he smacked his forehead really hard in exasperation at some of the coach's rotational decisions. And while I can play Boggy through it, I decide to just bench him because he wasn't being productive yet, and maybe it'll shock the other players into shape. Amazingly, we do win our next game. After we pick up this second win, the coach's brain reboots and he starts starting Bol again, and we rattle off a ton of wins toward the end of the calendar year. By the time we get to January 1st, we're nearly at .500 ball, and have actually gained in the power ratings from the two that underestimated us, all three now have us at between 12-16. The end of the year was really good to us, and we had 3 weeks in a row without a loss. During this stretch, our young superstar puts up a career best 46 points against the Rockets.  .....and then immediately tops himself two nights later against the hated Ravens and also sets a franchise record of 17 free throws.  I check Bol's social media a few times during this stretch and it's mostly people praising his career highs, but I also spy this.  Sweet. I've been waiting for a "Player of the Week" award. Harry Kelly had a rookie of the month award last season, but I don't think I ever won a player of the week yet. I go into the Season Awards, and..... Luka Doncic got the Western Conference nod in the week Bol put up both his career highs. How is that even possible?  Oh. Because Doncic dropped seventy loving points against the Knicks. Fine. Well, hey, we're practically undefeated throughout December, and Bol has been sublime. Surely, while we won't win the weekly award, we stand a chance at the monthly honor. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand...... it goes to Doncic again. Come on, kid, like one good ga---  ....-oh. He also dropped seventy loving points again on the Magic. Two 70 point games in the same month. ......remember when our F/D+ defender held him to 27 points per game in the playoffs? Yeah, he mad, now. He mad. (Speaking of, Mykhailiuk's defensive numbers are no longer "hold opponents to under 40% shooting in the season, or 41% shooting in the playoffs if they're Luka Doncic, a player who just tied the tenth highest scoring game in NBA history twice in the same month"---he's holding guys to about 43% shooting. Which is... still somehow the best on our team. Our team is not good at defense. Worse, while we're really good at steals and blocks, we don't get a lot of transition points somehow. Our shooting is terrible, but our 3pt shooting is among the league's best. Our bench is still top 5. Our Offensive rebounding is top three, our defensive rebounding is league worst, and we average to middle-of-the-pack in total rebounding. We're still league worst in points in the paint. We are, somehow, the league leaders in assists as a team, maybe because three of our five highest rated guys are point guards.) Rather than bore you with more stats, we have important decisions to make:  Contract Extensions. Mykhailiuk has decided to see what he's worth in free agency, but could be cheap to re-sign if we did make a play at him----there's no hard feelings there, dude just wants to get paid. Aminu will sign for pennies on the dollar. It's almost worth it to consider him for that price, but he'll drop even more rating next season. I intend to trade him (and maybe Kraemer) by the deadline. The two decisions to make are Aaron Holiday and Delon Wright. Aaron Holiday is, as a sixth man, our team's second leading scorer. He has more or less completely supplanted Delon's role from last season. He is a top five player on our team both by actual overall rating, and by performance. (By performance so far, he's arguably our second most important player) Delon Wright has fallen off a bit from last season, but not in talent. Something just isn't clicking the same way. He's still a good rotational piece that we know can elevate his game. Any day now, his rating will start to go down, but I suspect not by very much---he didn't seem to be relying too hard on athleticism. Both players are asking for fair offers eyeballing the rest of the league's pay at their asking price. Aaron's is a wee bit higher than average, but definitely not unreasonably above his value, especially since he does good work for the team. I'm inclined to extend them both, and for fairly long term deals (three or four years) at that. I will, however, defer to the thread's wisdom: Do I extend either or both players, and if so, for how long? (NOTE: Windler hasn't made a decision on extending his contract, yet. That is not up for a vote--if I see the words "will re-sign", then I am extending Windler for 4 years. His overall shooting is down this year, but that is because he's starting, playing against starters, and taking way more shots. He is a very efficient player and it is neck and neck who the second best player on my team between him and Holiday. If Holiday were only asking for 6.4 million a year instead of 8.7, I wouldn't bother to ask about him, either. That's peanuts. Also, our SF depth chart goes Windler -> Mykhailiuk (who might walk) -> Someone playing out of position, likely Boggy, sometimes Kelley or Sharp. I see him as a core piece of our team moving forward.) We can comfortably extend all three and pay Bol 20 million a year instead of the 18 he currently wants or the 15 we should be paying him ( ).
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May 27, 2020 10:35
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