|
 AUTHOR'S NOTE If you don't care about a silly narrative introduction that doesn't actually have anything to do with the game itself, you can safely scroll to the next instance of this logo. It was around 6:30 when the acid finally wore off. AM? PM? I've quickly come to realize that it hardly matters. When its dark outside either way, one may as well be the same as the other. Linear time, I've learned, is a construct. It is late in 2021 and I watch as Joe Johnson, "Iso Joe," himself, puts a little veteran move on a guy and sinks a mid-range shot in the paint, a dying art in today's NBA. And a part of me that enjoyed watching him play when I was a teenager is thrilled, but the rest of me is stricken with horror and denial. Joe retired. He retired years ago. This isn't the first time this sensation has taken me. The cracks in what I thought I knew of reality had grown deeper, and the narrative my mind invented to explain these things became less and less plausible. The stories to justify the truth of what I knew to be false became ever more dramatic and world breaking. A global pandemic that has killed five and a half million people world wide, including 800 thousand in the US alone? This is why there are retired players on the court? As if any sport would be so irresponsible to expose their athletes every day to a vascular and upper respiratory infection. As if they would continue to play through these conditions as players are forced off the court in the dozens in order to quarantine. Was the rest of reality as broken? I scrabbled for reports on my other idle hobbies. Video games. What were the best games this year? Wait, one of these is Mass Effect. Mass Effect released in 2007. Mass Effect 3 released in 2012. Has it been nine years? Fourteen? Has it only been one? There's an idea. What were the best games of last year? Final Fantasy VII? That should have been 1997. For every year I look back, I start to see ten more. What about TV? The Simpsons is still going, but at this point, that's become a running joke that I am familiar with. Grey's Anatomy is too? The gently caress out of here. What about new shows? What's the top rated new show this year, according to IMDB?  Animated? Highly unlikely. Based on a video game? Impossible. Based on League of Legends?! I think I must be dying. Sobbing, I called one of my friends. I needed to reset my brain. I needed to break reality down to build reality back up. I had gone, if you will forgive me this narcissistic indulgence, slightly mad. 6:30, then. AM or PM. When I had woken up and come back down, the friend was excitedly reading the news on the Internet.  :"How much do you remember that awesome thing we were talking about last night? About how that new sport, Basketball, is actually getting its own, nationally televised league?" :"What are you talking about? The NBA was founded in 1946. Wait. What do you mean new sport? Basketball was invented back in the 1800s." :"VSM, basketball was invented about 4 years ago by a Twitch-slash-Youtube streamer named PeachBasketJN. It was supposed to be a more dynamic and fluid take on the popular Russian sport Rugball."I ran to Wikipedia on my phone. It backed my friend's explanation. PeachBasketJN, real name Jimmy Naismith, aged 25, came up with the idea on one of his popular Twitch streams of FITA2018. (Federation Internationale de Tapetebol Asociación, apparently.) The idea took off and has helped him begin to pay for his dream of attending grad school. :"You were ranting about some of these players last night, as though they had been playing for years. You looked at a couple of these guys on the Kings and talked about how you wondered what they could have been without injury. You talked about some like they were retired. Others like they were dead. It got weird, man. I'd have been put out by it, but hey, your weird time poo poo is why you called me in the first place. It's cool. You're cool. We're cool. You feel any better, by the way?"I stared blankly at the article my friend had pulled up. Sixteen teams were announced. Some familiar to me. Others I might have heard of in trivia. One I remembered as my own creation, a punishment I meted out to the Orlando Magic---themselves, maddeningly present---in my own Let's Play from the last year or so. That's it! My Let's Play! I opened up Steam to find which games I had the most hours in. And there it was at 446.9 hours played. A blocky, haggard Russian man staring into my soul above the letters FITA2020. I had to make a decision. Do I try to break the walls down further? Do I spend the rest of my days putting back together the broken pieces of my mirror into reality? Was it even possible to get them all back? And did that mirror reflect the world as it was, or merely another funhouse reflection of my diseased mind? Would any of it matter? :"I'm...fine. Everything is fine. Let's take a look at those teams."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Welcome to Basketball GM! Some of you may remember me from my NBA2k20 thread. Sadly, that playthrough had to end, as the time necessary to play became prohibitive for the amount of fun that I was having---seriously, that game is unstable dreck, and it started to take three or four minutes to load up a roster page. On any given update, I was pulling roster pages open probably dozens of times. Going from one roster to another was much faster, but going to roster from somewhere else was causing the issue. Just... bad. Also, it got to a point where every other update the game would delete several of my custom assets and I would have to re-download them. Basketball GM is a completely free to play (although you can pay a modest monthly fee to escape ads) basketball general management simulator, which, I mean, I guess the name is kind of apt. For a free to play program, it's shockingly robust in its database of players, scope of simulation, and features. You can start a game with either a completely custom league and manage a basketball franchise, including trades, signings, scouting, etc. Or, if you prefer a real-world version, the game will let you start in the NBA in any year, all the way back to the inaugural season in 1947. And it has an exhaustive database of players---if they played in the NBA, they are, somewhere, in this game. It may not have the overall production values (by which I strictly mean "robust graphics" and "attached arcade game") of NBA2k, but it more than holds its own on scope. By way of example, here is a partial list of what this game calls "Frivolities", a preview of the pages I intend to visit somewhat frequently during the course of this thread.  Now, understand that in a fresh league, these pages are blank. Unlike NBA2k, where it's impossible to see a view of records solely set during the simulation (because real world records are in the way) or, if you regenerate an old player, will lazily add their new career totals onto their previous one, the records and "Frivolities" that we create during our thread will be 100%, guaranteed, OURS. Our league's story will be unique, just like it. At any rate, either starting a custom league of auto-generated players or running an historical league set in 1947 or any other era would make for a fine LP, but because I'm loving insane and have a propensity for biting off more than I can chew that makes Daffy Duck look like George McClellan, I'm doing something a little different. No, what I have is a list. And on this list is about 5000 players from the NBA and the ABA (the latter of which are not in the game, and a pain in the rear end to mod, but you're all worth it) as well as some EASTER EGG characters that I will start adding in over time. (Think "Len Bias" or "Oscar Schmidt"---but also think crazier than that. The sky is the limit) And, starting with a modest league of 16 teams, a league that will begin to slowly expand over time, and every single player on every single roster is a rookie version of a completely random player from that list. Players from the 1940s all the way to currently active players might play together. And each season, I'll be adding a draft class---also comprised of players taken from the list. Some drafts might have multiple hall of famers. Some might have a bunch of guys who played less than a full season. In Basketball GM, everyone has a potential rating, but that's based off of their current rating and their age more than anything---about 25% of the time, a player will develop past their expected point. And potential in this game is adjusted year to year, so a player that doesn't look like much, say a modest 45 potential, might get lucky multiple times and become an all-star. Perhaps someone in the real world Hall of Fame never really develops or gets bit by the injury bug. Or the core question we'll examine is, if they are against wildly different competition, will players perform at all the same way? It's a brave new world outside of linear time, and we're here to see how this young brainchild of PeachBasketJN develops. Rather than controlling any one team, we will be playing the game in Spectator mode, letting the AI control the decisions for every team in the league, and watching history organically play out, outside the confines of causality, which is stupid anyhow. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment and thank the maker of BasketballGM, for just a terrific little free tool/game, Basketball-Reference.com, for my list of players, reference photos of some players, a number of ways for helping me to figure out how to assign values to the ABA players, and of course information on the accomplishments of historical players so we have a basis to compare their simulated careers to. I'd also like to thank LPix for letting me upload images, and finally Random.org for use of a random number generator that lets me include weird numbers, such as "4776", which incidentally will be the next number that I roll. Introductions aside, strap yourselves in. Let's take a look at what madness awaits. This first update will exclusively cover the fresh new rosters of our 16 inaugural teams. As I replaced the starting players on a custom league, all contracts have been assigned at random. So some teams are dramatically overpaying really bad players. This will sort itself out in a couple of years, and every roster actually has space to add additional players anyhow. Another thing to note is as the simulation continues, I intend for players who either played overseas, in the G-league, or who were like, 30 when the league started to be reset to a reasonable college age (probably 22), so there aren't 30 year olds floating around the draft. However, for this first season and its starting rosters, all players will be the age they were when they first played an NBA (or ABA) game. Also worth noting is that, instead of doing the sensible thing and copying/cloning real players, I'm by hand editing over auto-generated players and draft picks---this means that they'll be subject to things that real life players ordinarily cannot, such as "tragic death" (should apparently only happen about once every 50 years or so, to a single player). There is absolutely no destiny or determinism at work here. ALSO, for this first season, since every player is essentially a rookie, every player is kind of bad. I'll post the top players in the league after we cover the rosters, but BasketballGM is pretty mean to rookies, particularly in terms of their offensive IQ, defensive IQ, and Endurance. In addition, all 16 teams were themselves determined at random.  MEET THE TEAMS:The Boston Celtics  Author's note: Some of these initial images might be slightly blurred. This will cease to be an issue after this update---for some reason I was saving the initial file as JPG instead of PNG, and I have also decided that, rather than crop and resize on such a text-heavy game, I would be better served to just crop and post the image as a thumbnail if it still exceeds an 800 width. Notable Players: Carsen Edwards and Tremont Waters aren't just active players in the real world, they're actually active players for the Boston Celtics. I determined team rosters alphabetically, so this was the first team I filled out. So out of around 5000 possibilities, they somehow managed to land two players that are actually on the team in the first place. Absolutely wild. Skal Labissiere and Deyonta Davis aren't active players, but they're "active" players---they've played at some point during the last three years. Don't be surprised if either turns up, as, in the COVID hellscape the league has turned into, lots of teams are signing anyone with a pulse to hardship contracts. Hank Beenders is so goddamn old because he's an original player from 1946, and that was his age at the time. Reggie Williams is the one from 2010, not the one from the late 80s.  "Buddy" Jeannette, similarly, is an original player, but the frog siren is because he's also the first real-world hall-of-famer that was assigned to a roster. An early template of excellence, Jeannette, who only played for three seasons, is a one-time BAA Champion, a one-time All-BAA player, and during that year led the league in Field Goal%, True Shooting% and Effective FG%You may have noticed that the Celtics are rated at an imposing -19 out of 100 team rating. Part of this is because a lot of these players are actually bad at basketball, but a much larger part is what I mentioned earlier about everyone being a rookie. Basically, we're starting the league from scratch where even the best players who were real-world hall-of-famers would often be back-of-the-bench development projects. Gonna be a couple of years of bad basketball until a few guys start to take over. The Chicago Bulls  Notable Players: Giff Roux is an OG 1946 player. Larry "Ziggy" Siegfried is a five time NBA Champion. All five came with the Boston Celtics and, not necessarily to throw shade at Ziggy, it's probably fair to note that unlike a lot of that dynasty, Ziggy ain't in the Hall of Fame. He's nonetheless by far the most decorated player on a truly dire team. Greg Foster is a former NBA Champion Eric Maynor stands a reasonable shot at being an all-star this year by virtue of already having a passing badge. That's it. The Bulls are BACK, baby. Back at the bottom of the league The Golden State Warriors  Notable Players Maxi Kleber is a currently active player, and a reasonably effective role-player for the Dallas Mavericks. Jeff Green is, somehow, still an active player. Once upon a time, Mr. Green made an All-Rookie team, too. An impact role-player for like, a trillion years, let's see if he sticks around as long in this fresh league. Nathan Knight is apparently an active player, and no, I have never heard of him before. Isaiah Briscoe is an "active" player. Could he get the COVID call? Donnie Freeman is actually good. He's a former ABA Champion, a five time all-star, and four time All-ABA player, and was named one of the greatest ABA players of all time. Wil Jones is also pretty drat good! In fact, in my test run, he was in the running for league MVP somehow. Anyhow, in the real world, Jones was an ABA Champion, as well as a one time all-star and one time all-defense player. Frank Mangiapane is an original 1946 player. The Kansas City Kings  Despite all the putrid 30 OVR players, these guys are the early favorites for champion. See if you can spot why! If the Bulls got hit with the bad side of random luck, the Kings made sweet, sweet love to a Leprechaun. Notable Players: Jordan Farmar is a 2 time NBA champion and a marksman from range in this league, but you don't want me to talk about him, you're here for Anfernee Hardaway better known as Penny Hardaway is kind of a big deal, and exactly the kind of player we're running this simulation for. Even plagued by injuries, Hardaway is a four time all star, a three time All-NBA player, and was named to the all-rookie team in his first year. Grant Hill was named to the hall of fame for a fantastic career that included seven all-star appearances and five all-NBA selections. He was named Rookie of the year (and thus made the all-rookie team---funny how that works) and led the league in triple doubles on three separate occasions. The absolutely bananas thing about Grant Hill is, like his new teammate Penny Hardaway, Hill's career was also derailed by serious injuries. He could have done even more. Yet, despite these injuries, Hill remained an effective player until he was 40.Aleksej Pokusevski is an active player with a bit of a cult following. Tons of potential and guts, but man is he raw. Larry Spriggs is a former NBA Champion Shelvin Mack isn't active, but he's recent enough where he might be COVID active. (I'm basically making this same note on anyone Basketball-Reference.com still has bolded as an active player but isn't on an active team) Al Horford surprises me by probably deserving the Bold treatment, but the resume speaks for itself. A guy who only feels like he's been around the league since 1946, Horford has accumulated five all-star appearances, as well as an All-NBA and an All-defense selection, and he was named to the all-Rookie team in his first year. Two wings, a Big, and a sharpshooting point guard that's pretty used to someone else on his team playing with the ball for some reason, and the Kings really look like the team with the best odds to win the first ever NBA Championship. The Kentucky Colonels  Notable Players: Billy Donovan is the current head coach of the Chicago Bulls. Jim Pollard may seem old and rickety (hell, one of his nicknames is "The man with the long grey beard"), and maybe he is. Though he played in the 40s, Pollard is a five time champion, with the first being for the BAA and the other four being the re-imagined NBA. He is a four time all-star and a four time all-NBA selectionJames Johnson is a currently active player. Vin Baker is a four time all-star during a period many (wrongly) attribute as the golden age of basketball. He was also named All-NBA twice and was named to the All-Rookie team. Derrick White is currently active. He's all-right, I guess. Raja Bell is a two time all-defense selection, and once upon a time led the league in 3pt field goals. He also clotheslined the everloving hell out of Kobe Bryant once when the all-defense thing wasn't working out so well. The Las Vegas Neon  I didn't have a team planned for if I randomized a start location in Vegas, but then I remembered that the Neon were a team I used in NBA2k after the Orlando Magic became unbelievably bad and poisoned all interest for basketball in their city. This is the only fictitious team selected. All the others are previous or current sports franchises Notable Players: Corey Maggette is a guy that feels like he should have been an all-star once, but never was, and that's probably reflected in his nickname "Bad Porn" --- There was always a lot of penetration and scoring, but whoever was watching still didn't like what they were seeing. If I didn't go out of my way to make this comment, he actually would have failed the criteria for "notable" player. Sad. Wali Jones was a former NBA champion and all-rookie selection. Joe Caldwell was pretty drat good in the ABA, making four all-star appearances, one all-ABA appearance, and two all-defense appearances. He also made the all-rookie squad. R.J. Hunter played fairly recently. The Los Angeles Clippers  Notable Players: Justin Wright-Foreman played relatively recently. George Stone is a former ABA champion Alec Burks and Jared Harper are currently active. Dion Waiters is also currently active. He is an NBA Champion and was selected to the all-rookie team. Howie Shultz and Phil Walker are former NBA Champions. Robert Swift isn't notable in his own right in the real world, but in my test game he won sixth man of the year, so that's probably worth noting, right? The Los Angeles Lakers  Inexplicably still named the Lakers despite there never being a team in Minneapolis in this universe. The world may never know. Anyhow, when I randomly selected teams/cities, I rolled LA twice, and the first time, I assigned the Clippers. Mostly because I thought it would be funny to have the Clippers and no Lakers. Then I rolled LA again and decided "yeah they probably can fit two teams". Notable Players: DJ Mbenga is a two time NBA Champion. For the Lakers, as fate would have it. I once saw someone, I forget who exactly, get knocked down and spring up ready to throw hands. When he saw that the guy who bumped him was DJ Mbenga, suddenly everything was cool again. One does not gently caress with this man. Jalen Rose feels like he should be more of a legend than he is, probably because of his collegiate career and his career post-NBA. He was named to the all-Rookie squad, and later named the league's Most Improved Player. And those are his post-college accolades. What we were left with is this: a player that is significantly better than a very good rookie, but still not an all-star. Ryan Broekhoff, despite having a name that screams "1940s player" is apparently a currently active player The Miami Heat  Notable Players Allen Crabbe does not have a goddamn accent mark after his name, I have no idea how that got there and I didn't notice it until I was editing this loving post.  Stanley Roberts was once named to the all-rookie squad Anthony Mason had a fairly successful NBA Career and has a grab-bag of single-time honors. A one time All-Star, All-NBA and All-Defense player. He was also named sixth man of the year, once. Pete Maravich, or "Pistol" Pete, is a legend of a bygone era, a five time all star and four time all-NBA selection, Pete made his year's all-rookie squad and once led the league in scoring. Extremely influential in how guys handle the basketball, nobody moved like Pete at the time. For his impact on the court, he wasn't just honored with entry into the basketball Hall of Fame, he was also selected to both the NBA's 50 Year Anniversary Team (as one of the 50 best players all time), but the 75th Anniversary Team (ditto, but for the top  The New Orleans Pelicans  I almost didn't post this team at all, and only noticed I was missing one on my fourth or fifth draft Notable Players: Pete Cross tragically died at the age of 28, following an apparent epileptic seizure. There's a reasonably good chance he will actually be playing in this league past that point. Joe Hamilton made an ABA All-Rookie team. Arnie Ferrin is a two time champion, with one on either side of the BAA/NBA name split. Guerschon Yabusele played quite recently, is French so almost certainly won't get a COVID call, but hey, I've been pointing out players that are still bolded on BBR, so here you go. Devin Vassell is a currently active player and has been coming along nicely for the real-world Spurs. He will have arguably even more room to grow here. EDIT: Darius Garland is also a current player, and a dude I somehow skipped over, which was correctly pointed out. Garland is a promising young player on the Cavs that commits a few too many turnovers, but I like the general direction of his development quite a bit. Followers of my 2k20 thread might remember that he was a fictional one-time finals MVP for the Honu. The Orlando Magic  About the pink box: Technically, this is the team I am "controlling" however, as I am running the entire game in spectator mode, all this does is make them look slightly different on some screens. I'm pretty sure I can change which team this is true for at any time. Notable Players: Ernie Calverly is an original player. He was a one time All-BAA selection, and also led the league in assists at one time. Carl Meinhold is a former BAA champion. Marques Johnson is a five time All-Star and three time all-NBA selection. He was also named to his year's all-rookie team. In my test game, he was named the league DPOY. Red Robbins is a Hal Crisler played back in 1946. Cole Anthony hasn't really done anything yet, but he's quite drat good, and, coincidentally, probably the best player on the real-life version of this team. (Side note: Between Anthony, the team that features both Penny Hardaway and Grant Hill, and this being my "user" team, you'd be forgiven if you assumed that I'm from Florida and a big Magic fan. Nope. All of that is just random chance. My home-team was not randomly selected.) The Phoenix Suns  Notable Players Johnny Jorgensen is a former BAA champion. Sasha Kaun is a former NBA Champion (I think he only played in the NBA one year). He's super old here because after he was drafted in 2006, he hosed off to Russia where they paid him considerably more money. He was one of those guys that I would have liked to reset the age for, but when I started setting up the initial rosters, I decided that everyone would have their age for when they first played an NBA game. Bad luck for Kaun to be selected here. Bill Hanzlik was selected to the all-defense team once. Sekou Doumbouya is a currently active player and also, by my estimation, is the most wildly overrated player in the entire database. This guy's potential is nuts. BasketballGM has him as the third best player of his draft, which.... man, look, my home team is the Pistons. I've seen a lot of Sekou. He's had flashes. He's not terrible, but I didn't exactly cry when we traded him. To give you a better idea, he's currently on the Lakers, who are old as hell, in need of some youth and bounce, and of course there's the whole continual COVID protocols thing, and despite all of this, he's only managed to crack the rotation for two games this year. So.......... I'mma rock with his ratings and see what happens, but settle down, BasketballGM. Bill Bradley is technically a hall of famer as a player, so he gets the frog-siren. His resume includes one All-Star appearance, Two championships, and three selections to >rustles papers< something called "The United States Senate". Wild.Tim Breaux, whom I have never heard of, once won an NBA Championship. The Pittsburgh Pipers  Real talk? I love the name Pittsburgh Pipers. Fight me. I could have gone with "Condors" as that was also a name this team used, but gently caress it, I prefer Pipers. Birds of prey, like big cats and other predatory animals, are loving stupid and overused as sports mascots. Mascots should be unique and interesting and that is a hill I will die on. Ok, I also liked their color palette, especially since I didn't roll a New York team somehow Notable Players: Caleb Martin is a currently active player. Larry Johnson, sadly, is not the one you're thinking of, the one you could play as in NBA Jam. He's some one-and-done player that played for Buffalo in the 1970s. My margin notes for poor Larry here simply read "Not the good one". Oof. Art Harris was an all-rookie selection Doug Christie was selected to the All-defense team four times. Shame about the best players in his conference at the time never being ones he could defend from his position. Tom LaGarde is a former NBA Champion O.J. Mayo is a former All-rookie selection and, inexplicably, (Well, not totally inexplicably... everyone in this simulation is technically a rookie) one of the best players in this league. He starts super developed compared to basically everyone else and is something bananas like the sixth best player (by OVR) in the league. I can't believe I'm saying this, but there's a fairly reasonable chance that The Grocery List gets named MVP. ........but then there were The San Antonio Spurs   Notable Players OK, hear me out, I maintain that Kansas City are the favorites this year (even though they did lose my test game to this team), but that has to do with the fact that everyone is placed in their rookie forms. So San Antonio wants to leap off the page with its star power, but are they there yet? Is this a "now" team or a "future" team? Right. I'm off track. Instead of going in order, let's start with: Luis Scola, who I badly wanted to be one of the players I dialed back the age for, but, alas. Nevertheless, the one time all-"Rookie" (for a 27 year old rookie) gives a much needed veteran presence to a team oozing with more talent in three players covered in more accolades than any two other teams combined. John Havlicek is arguably as much a reason for the early Celtics dynasty years as Bill Russell. There are vanishingly few players as decorated as Hondo. He is a thirteen time all-star. A stunning eleven time all-NBA player. An eight time Champion (tied for third all time), An All-rookie selection, He won a finals MVP once, and the sole reason why he did not win more is because the award hadn't been invented yet. On the other end of the floor, he was also selected to the All-Defense team eight times. He is the NBA's 20th leading scorer in history, 36th in assists, 16th in minutes played, 84th in rebounds, 39th in Win Shares (15th in defensive win shares), and second to Kobe Bryant in shots missed. Well, can't win 'em all. Anyhow, obviously he is in the Hall of Fame. Obviously he is on both the 50th and 75th anniversary teams. There's pretty much no way in hell he goes as high in this simulation, but he is absolutely one of the guys to watch. Chris Paul isn't in the Hall of Fame (since he's an active player), but you're out of your goddamn mind if you think he's not admitted the first year he's eligible. Another player that is shockingly good all-round, Paul is an eleven time all-star, a ten time all-NBA selection, a nine time all-defense selection, he was the rookie of the year (and therefor made the all-rookie squad), and has led the league in steals six times and assists four times. He was selected to the 75th anniversary team as one of the top 75 players of all time, and would have absolutely knocked someone else off the list if they kept it to 50. He has the third most assists in NBA history, and the fifth most steals in NBA history. He has the tenth highest career Player Efficiency Rating, the ninth highest career win shares, the fifth highest WS/48 and Box +/-, and somehow manages to have the 2nd highest career Assist% while simultaneously being 44th in career points scored. He is unbelievably, transcendentally good at basketball, and in my test run won the league MVP (which he should have won one in real life too, but that's another rant. As it stands, he'll probably go down in history as the best player to never win an MVP). He also won seven other awards in my test run. (All-Star, Champion, Finals MVP, Rookie of the year, All-NBA, All-Rookie, and All-Defense) NBA Champion is the main accolade missing from his resume, and I wouldn't be particularly surprised if that were to change this year. Tracy McGrady is also kind of a big deal. He is a seven time all star, and a seven time All-NBA player. He led the league in scoring twice, and was once named Most Improved Player. Which makes sense, since he started as a 19 year old. He has the twentieth highest box plus/minus in NBA history. McGrady was absolutely snakebit during his storied, hall-of-fame career, somehow always managing to either be injured himself, or to have his best running mate injured during the playoffs. With a different throw of the dice, he could go even farther, and that is a scary thought. I wonder what he could do next to a top two all time point gu---oh. Hmm. Well, let's tune in.The San Diego Conquistadors  It's hard to follow an act like the Spurs, but at least they have a cool name Notable Players Jon McGlocklin is a one time all star and former NBA Champion Reggie Theus is a two time all star and former all-Rookie selection Kyle Singler is a former All-rookie selection, and is a sleeper to make some noise this season---his 50 OVR is quite high, and there's comparatively few holes in his game. Obi Toppin is an active player, and his terrible rookie season defense is going to be much less of an issue in a league where basically everyone has a rookie defensiveIQ rating. The Seattle Supersonics  Notable Players: Mike Butler and Gary Bradds are former ABA Champions Nassir Little is an active player, and one of the few bright spots for the Portland Trailblazers. Khyri Thomas and Theo Pinson are also active young players. Cedric Maxwell is a two time champion and one-time finals MVP. Is he the only finals MVP that was never an all-star? Let me know if you know. David Lee is a two time all-star, one time all-NBA selection, and one time champ. Matisse Thybulle, unlike the other active players on this squad, already has an accolade to his name: He was named to the all-defense team last year. One last frivolity.  Here are the top rated players in this league by OVR. Yes, I woke up to a world where OJ Mayo is the sixth best player in the NBA. Come join me as poo poo inevitably gets weird. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And there we have it. >PHEW< Anyhow, that's largely me setting the stage for the simulation itself. Expect a future update relatively soon that actually touches on "important" stuff like "gameplay" and "features." As I said, I've worked some on fixing the image/text blur, so expect future updates to be a little better looking. Please, friends, let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like me to focus on, or if you have any questions about the game or how I'm choosing to play it. Hopefully, someone out there is entertained by this nonsense. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Dec 30, 2021 |
#
?
Dec 29, 2021 21:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 3, 2024 17:11 |
|
|
This post is reserved because having a reserved post is probably a good idea.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2021 21:46
|
|
|
I appreciate all the work you put into pointing out notable players. That was a fun read!
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2021 00:12
|
|
|
KC and SA are so much better than everyone else, lol I enjoy the euphronius reference
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2021 00:57
|
|
|
As someone who enjoyed the 80 Years Thread and who's followed a LOT of NBA history (which might have peeked through a little in my posts in the last thread, perhaps), I am really interested to see where this goes. It's basically a Deadspin/Defector "Let's Remember Some Guys" and hell yes, let's loving do it. I would also like to curse out the RNG for not including the Cleveland Cavaliers in the group of 16. Now then, let's chat about some dudes, shall we? -Jeff Green (Warriors) has been on 11 different teams (or 12 if you count OKC and Seattle separately), which is just behind the record of 12. He seems like he'll stick around for a couple more years, so he very well might have the record all to himself soon. Ironically, the Golden State Warriors are not one of them as of yet. -You mentioned Grant Hill and Penny Hardaway as super talented guys who were derailed by injuries, but you didn't mention that Vin Baker (Colonels) was also a highly talented player, but he was unfortunately derailed by alcoholism (before straightening his life out post-playing career). I'm assuming the sim doesn't model quite that depressing outcome, so maybe he'll have a better career. -Raja Bell (Colonels), in addition to being a recent NBA player, is now a sometimes podcast guest on the Ringer's NBA podcast; gives some pretty good takes and information about what it's like actually being in an NBA locker room. -Darius Garland (Pelicans) should also be highlighted as an active player, one who's become quite promising this year. -Yi Jianlin (Magic) is famous for getting way overdrafted because he worked out against a chair and played so well it's like the chair wasn't even trying to defend him (being an inanimate object, it presumably was not). This may be apocryphal but it's funny so I choose to believe it's real. -Havlicek (Spurs) was also incredible at the collegiate level - in his three years, one ended in a national title and the other two ended with narrow losses in the NCAA title game; he likely would have made the Basketball Hall of Fame if he'd never set foot on an NBA court. Since the Kentucky Colonels are a team here, let's also enjoy some strange franchise history too: You might remember in the last thread, I described the story the St. Louis Spirits: The NBA agreed to hand them around 2% of the league's annual TV revenues in perpetuity (i.e., forever) to fold their franchise which was already on the verge of bankruptcy. It's generally estimated that the total value of the deal (including the price the NBA eventually paid to get out of it) was somewhere around $800 million dollars over 40 years for, worth repeating, folding a lovely failing franchise in a league that was about to collapse. It's widely considered to be the greatest deal in the history of US professional sports and one of the most incredible business deals ever made in any industry. But the Kentucky Colonels have their weirdness about ABA folding! The Colonels were the other existing ABA team that the NBA paid off to fold - partly because they didn't want to add 5 teams at once and also partly because the Chicago Bulls really wanted the Colonels to fold so they could claim Kentucky's star player Artis Gilmore. However, the Colonels owner, John Brown, wanted to stay involved with the NBA, so he asked for a $3 million cash buyout upfront to fold the Colonels in order to have cash available to purchase the Buffalo Braves (now the LA Clippers). John Brown then turned around and straight-up swapped team ownership with the then-Boston Celtics owner (...wait, this is a thing?) so Brown effectively went from owning a team in the failing ABA that the NBA didn't really want to owning the legendary Boston Celtics. It's not quite as bonkers as St. Louis making $800 million dollars for folding a team, but still a pretty wild chain of events.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2021 01:12
|
|
|
MagusofStars posted:-Darius Garland (Pelicans) should also be highlighted as an active player, one who's become quite promising this year. YES. Thank you. I knew I accidentally deleted one of my margin notes, but couldn't find which one. EDIT By margin notes, since I'm doing this the HARD way, and copying over guys instead of actually using clones/the JSON code, I was keeping a spreadsheet with the stats of guys to port over from their historical draft class into replacing a player. (The alternative would be creating a bunch of clones, deleting entire rosters, and then hiring all the clones----the difference in time saved would be fairly marginal and I think it'd still count the dude as a real player, which I don't want) Anyhow, I also used the spreadsheet to make notes about guys.  As you can see, I wasn't kidding about poor Larry Johnson, notheotherone. EDIT 2 I also gave up on recording badges when I realized that the game applies them automatically. EDIT 3 I probably use too many edits and should just post an extra reply, but I feel tacky replying to myself without a content update. Anyhow, since it was mentioned how much better San Antonio and Kansas City are: don't discount Orlando. The one-two punch of Marques Johnson and Red Robbins is legit. Not only were both those guys successful, they were both really successful early. Unlike most young stars who are waiting to bud, that particular duo is ready to go. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Dec 30, 2021 |
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2021 01:22
|
|
|
MagusofStars posted:-Yi Jianlin (Magic) is famous for getting way overdrafted because he worked out against a chair and played so well it's like the chair wasn't even trying to defend him (being an inanimate object, it presumably was not). Can't believe you left out his nickname The Chairman
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2021 06:11
|
|
|
This should be interesting.Veryslightlymad posted:but because I'm loving insane and have a propensity for biting off more than I can chew that makes Daffy Duck look like George McClellan, I'm doing something a little different. Just wanted to highlight this, because it mostly got lost in the rest of the massive effort and I found it to be an inspired comparison.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2021 09:38
|
|
|
since my beloved NEW YORK KNICKS aren't featured I will be an unashamed SEATTLE SUPERSONICS homer.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2021 12:19
|
|
|
So are there other players in a FA pool to cover for injuries or how is that managed?
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2021 16:53
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:This should be interesting. Thank you. I almost took that out because I thought no one would understand. But you did. You did understand.  Canopus250 posted:So are there other players in a FA pool to cover for injuries or how is that managed? Unlike the actual rosters and my plans for the draft classes (we'll get into that later), where I am replacing players, the extant free agent pool for the first season was straight up deleted. It's the first year of a fresh league. poo poo might get ugly. It will take a few years for the teams to build up that safety net.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2021 17:48
|
|
|
Oh, nothing could go wrong there then. Every person who knows how to remotely play basketball is in the league already is one hell of a jumping off point.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2021 19:19
|
|
|
No Honolulu Honu. 0/10. Will always be one of Bol's boys.  I'm messing with you! I also think Piper is a good name for Pittsburgh's team.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2021 22:09
|
|
|
I'm very excited for this! Also, as a Nuggets fan I need to say that Earl Boykins on this universe's Lakers team is notable as the 2nd shortest pro player ever (he was 5'5") behind only Muggsy Bogues (5'3").
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 01:22
|
|
|
Guper posted:I'm very excited for this! Also, as a Nuggets fan I need to say that Earl Boykins on this universe's Lakers team is notable as the 2nd shortest pro player ever (he was 5'5") behind only Muggsy Bogues (5'3"). Welcome aboard! Also worth noting that Boykins' Lakers teammate, Mel Hirsch, is only 5'6. I'm nearly ready to start simulating. I just finished randomizing the coming draft class so we know who teams are tanking for, and I gotta say, this thread is already giving me exactly the content that I envisioned when I created it.  Yep, that's gonna be a bunch of teams scrabbling for the can't-miss sure-fire college sensation and consensus #1 draft pick Larry Hughes.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 03:20
|
|
|
Ryan "the Accountant" Broekhoff lol, where is he even playing, back in Australia? also the motherfucking spurs hitting the lottery again, how much luck can one franchise have watch them draft timmy the first year they don't win the title too ffs
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 09:34
|
|
|
 2021-2022 Season, First Half  The first thing I do is enable Multi-team mode, so I can look at the news of every individual team. Note that this doesn't actually show me the news for every team or indeed, anyone other than Orlando, who was already selected. However, very weirdly, it lets me change which team I have active and then it lets me read their news. So in order to see, for example Chicago News, while I can tab over to the Bulls on the news page, and I might see some of their news, such as their all-star selections, it won't tell me their buzzer beaters or injury reports unless I select my active team as Chicago and then select Chicago in the News. It's very weird. Not knowing a drat thing about programming, I'm not gonna drag the developer for it, though.  I then head on over to the schedule. Another weird thing is, while you can advance the schedule a week or a month, there's no place in the UI that I can find where it actually tells me the day's date. So after doing a quick week and a quick month on the sim to just see how that goes, when I do sim, I first sim all the way to the Trade Deadline, and then Sim to the All-Star Break. Because, well, there's no way of doing so that's more accurate. As you can see, I'm still nominally in control over Orlando, despite being in spectator mode and having true control over all 16 teams. This is why their game on the schedule is listed in an easy highlighted green. You may also notice that I have the option to force wins for one team or the other. This is because I am playing with God Mode on. God Mode is what allows me to control all 16 teams, but more importantly, how I am able to edit every individual player as they come into the league. Regretfully this means that I cannot score any achievements, which are a real thing that actually exists in this game. Pretty impressive for a free tool that runs in your browser.  If I click "Watch game" I am treated to this page. As you can see, it goes through the entire game, play by play. I will not be visiting this screen very often at all. HOWEVER, once the playoffs come around, I do plan on showing off exciting moments from important games, or at least if there are any. The game's news feed will helpfully tell you if someone hit a buzzer beater, and it will also very helpfully keep track of what it calls Statistical Feats, which it counts as any game where a player scores a triple double, a 5x5, 50 points, 25 rebounds, 20 assists, 10 steals, 10 blocks, or 10 threes. So we'll see if any of those things happened later in the post. As for the buzzer beaters, well, rather than taking 16 screen shots and posting the news articles, I'm just gonna have a list of every buzzer beater of the first half at the end of this post.  Anyhow, here is the results for that game. As you probably suspected, the Celtics got crushed by the much superior Spurs. Also, I find it unbelievably funny that the two players on this roster actually on the present-day Celtics both were DNPs.  For their victory, the Spurs clinched a playoff berth. For losing, the Celtics also clinched a playoff berth. Yes, I know, I can actually change the number of rounds and the number of games played per round for the playoffs, but, especially for this first season, I thought it would be kind of funny in a torturing fictional versions of real people kind of way, if I left it as the best 8 teams in each conference. Technically, the entire 82 game regular season is held explicitly for seeding purposes, and presumably, maybe also fan entertainment. Hard to say, really.  At some point before the trade deadline, I checked in on injuries to see if there was anything significant. And the answer is "sort of!" While no one had anything so bad as a season ending injury, we can check in on Andrew Lang here, and see that he's been injured badly enough to lose a point of OVR.  And if we check in on Andrew Lang's profile page, we can see the actual consequences suffered from this injury. He lost a single point of endurance, four points in jumping, and six points in speed. Ouch. Apparently, though, his potential remains unchanged. Scouts, or at least whoever is the scout for whoever I was controlling at this time, seem to believe this is a minor setback for Andrew, and shouldn't impact his overall career too badly. Certain Injuries are also not guaranteed to significantly impact a player. Later in the season someone else, I believe Al Ferarri, suffered a Fractured Foot, just like Andrew Lang did, however, Ferarri was luckier and didn't lose any stats. Even within the bad luck of injuries, there's potentially worse luck to be had.  At the trade deadline this first season, things are kept relatively quiet. The first story is that in half a season, Mel Hirsch has played for three teams (And his player page shows three different jersey assignments, so he actually had playing time with all three). The other big story is the Lakers got themselves absolutely fleeced, at least in the short term, giving up three players and two picks to the Kings for sharpshooter Greg Sutton. One of those traded players, the aforementioned Mel Hirsch, was enough of a chip for the Kings to acquire another player they had their eye on. One thing the game does that's really cool (and currently not shown by me, an idiot) is that you can keep track of who "won" a trade by looking at the Win Shares added (or lost) by each team afterward. As of the All-Star break, the Kings added 1.5 and the Lakers lost .5. So not only did they give up a ton of assets for Sutton, he also didn't pay off, at least yet. Maybe they see something in his potential. Anyhow, on to the first ever All-Star Festivities.  OK, first note: Yes, the characters have faces. Yes, I made the faces. Yes, I put the minimum possible effort into the faces. Literally hitting random several times before saying "good enough" on each player. If a player was very, very lucky, I'd edit in specific hair or facial hair. So some guys are going to look closer than others. No, I'm not going to take the time to make players look better/more like themselves than the luck of the rng. It was that or just keep whatever their old auto-generated player was, and while this solution isn't great, it felt better than, like, "Tracy McGrady is a balding old white guy with fiery red hair, albeit not a lot of it, and wolverine mutton chops" Since I am deeply embarrassed by these and they're mostly for my benefit, y'all can enjoy this hopefully rare appearance of them in this thread. If I were using the historical characters, they would all be a silhouette with a question mark over it. However, as I stated earlier, I don't want to do that, because the game will exempt historical characters from an unknown number of events. So these are all clones of their historical selves pasted over an auto-generated player. Anyhow, loving Pete Maravich is in the dunk contest again. Now, the dunk stat is actually "Dunk/Layup" so presumably, someone very good at laying the ball up in traffic would have a high dunk stat, whether or not they can actually dunk. More baffling is the 73 in jumping. Am I going crazy? Could Pistol actually jump? Anyhow, this year's dunk contest was more exciting/fun than it had any right to be.  First up is the teammates, Grant Hill and Penny Hardaway. They have a bit of a rivalry going all weekend, as these are also the two all-star captains, but we'll get to that in a moment. As the event plays out, the most recent events are placed on top, and the bottom events are older. So what this depicts is that Hardaway threw down a dunk, then Grant Hill, (his teammate, remember) said "I can do that better" and threw the exact same dunk and got 10 more points. Ice. Cold.  For his second dunk in the first round, Hardaway once again attempts the 540 right at the rim, and the judges agree: "Yeah, it was better than the first time you did it, but still not as good as Hill's."  However, he has the last laugh as Hill can't even complete his second dunk, and scores a 0, finishing the dunk contest in last place.  And to add insult to injury, Waiters decides to score the first dunk Hill attempted and nails it on his first try. The judges only award it 39, though, so Hill wasted a lot of effort on what ultimately didn't pay off.  SERIOUSLY. What in the world?! Anyhow, Maravich jumping over a person lands him in the finals against Waiters  Which sadly end in a wet fart after he fails to complete his second dunk. Dunk of the night was by the new Dunk Contest champion Dion Waiters, a toss from the free-throw line, off the backboard, taking off at 12 feet distance.  The three point contest is much less exciting, but Ryan Broekhoff seals the deal with his final round, which is also the highest scoring round of anyone in the contest. Sutton looked like a real threat, with the second best round of the contest being his tie-breaker shootout with PJ Hairston to advance to the finals, but it wasn't meant to be. Congratulations to Ryan Broekhoff. Anyhow, Penny Hardaway is in every event of the all-star break, and Zoran Planinic is suspiciously absent from this contest, despite being one of the only players in the league shooting above 40% from deep.  The All-Star draft commences, and Hill and Hardaway pay extra attention to the coin toss to determine who gets to pick first (actually, it might go to the top vote getter, but give me this narrative license.) The first pick is extremely important.  Hill wins, and immediately drafts their teammate Al Horford with the first selection. Sadly unable to attend the game are all-stars Chris Paul (Back Spasms) and Dean Garret (....Sprained ankle? Something like that) Though neither will play, this accolade will still be on their award page. Things to note about these all-stars: Reggie Williams, Dean Garrett, Pooh Jeter, PJ Hairston, Zoran Planinic, Alec Burks, Jalen Rose, Edgar Jones, Vann Wiliford, Cole Anthony, Sekou Doumbouya, Luis Scola, Cedric Maxwell, and Mike O'Koren were never all-stars in real life. Pooh Jeter played less than a full NBA season and had a single NBA Career start. I think it's safe to say that the simulation version of him has already completely eclipsed his real career. Cedric Maxwell is an NBA Finals MVP but was never an All-Star. This almost feels like correcting an injustice. Cole Anthony feels like he is probably going to be an All-Star one day. Call it a hunch. Zoran Planinic's absence from the 3pt shootout makes even less sense in light of the fact that he's an all-star. John Havlicek and Tracy McGrady aren't there yet. Make no mistake: If the Spurs are really good (and they are) it's almost entirely on the backs of Chris Paul and Luis Scola. Edit Actually, Havlicek has a huge W/S number, so... Nevermind. Team Grant wins. Grant Hill is himself named All-Star MVP. I had a screen grab for this and then somehow deleted it. God drat it. STANDINGS  LEAGUE LEADERS     AWARD RACES  (Technically, everyone is a rookie, but the game insists some people were drafted in 2020. Lucky them, I guess.) ANYHOW, this was the first real update. Please let me know if 1)You need these images made into thumbnails instead of full size and 2)If you would like to see more of a dive on any individual content. If so, please specify. As I said, I intend to go more in depth when it gets to the playoffs. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Jan 1, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 23:27
|
|
|
It's gonna be Spurs vs Kings finals isn't it also the screenshots look fine on my end
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2022 19:48
|
|
|
I'm excited that someone else is playing this game so I don't have to. Let's go Russ
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2022 21:31
|
|
|
 2021 Season, Second Half and Playoffs Somewhat disappointingly, the regular season finishes up without any further significant statistical feats or even any new Buzzer Beaters, which I forgot to post my collection of from the first half of the season. The short version is "there were a few. Only Dion Waiters got two of them, so unless some people do things in the playoffs, he's currently in the running for "Clutchest" in the NBA. (Note: People did some things during the playoffs) But since I'm a giant tease, we need to first cover the final standings, league leaders, and bracket! Standings  League Leaders     The thing that jumps out at me, at least as far as the three scary teams goes, is that they have crushing defense. All their stars are two-way stars, and they have some role-players that contribute hard on that end of the court as well. Another thing that this has shown me is the added danger of Kansas City---not only do they have the obvious three stars in Hill, Horford, and Hardaway, but they have two of the best three-point shooters in the league getting heavy minutes, as Jordan Farmar is their starting point guard, and Ryan Broekhoff is their sixth man. Just a really nasty team all around that the Kings put together. (I just realized..... Hill, Horford, Hardaway... They're the Kings and that's a Triple H. Bow down to the, bow down to the KINGs. You know they play that in their arena) Playoff Bracket  PLAYOFFS.  Some great playoff basketball right from the get-go, as the lower-seeded Celtics get a shock steal of home court over the higher seeded Heat, with Hank Beenders icing two free throws under pressure in the closing seconds of the game.  Although, Miami would respond to this affront with a vengeance in game 2.  Meanwhile, the Spurs are the first of the three super teams to show any cracks in their armor, with a balanced attack from Pooh Jeter and Wil Jones' Warriors (Jeff Green was definitely a factor here)  Bit of a wild sequence closed out the end of the third game in the LA vs LA series---Lakers point guard Sidney Lowe nailed a three pointer with less than ten seconds on the clock, then Jalen Rose intercepted a pass and got it tipped out to Lowe again, but before Lowe could get into his shooting motion, the head coach of the Clippers indicated that Lowe needed to be fouled, since two free throws isn't enough to win. Lowe sinks the first and then intentionally misses the second, but Clippers Star Zoran Planinic read the play and cut him off to his own rebound, sealing the game for the Clippers.  Some great stuff by the lowly Conquistadors here, to earn them back some pride. Obi Toppin comes through with a clean finish in the final seconds, and then teammate Reggie Theus picked off a desperate pass on the final play. The Conquistadors would go on to lose in 6 games, a respectable series.  The Boston/Miami series continues to be a highlight of the first round, with the game being forced into overtime through... two free throws from one Hank Beenders. Unfortunately, the Celtics couldn't hold on and Miami ties things back up.  Another series finds itself tied as the Warriors pull another shock upset on the much stronger Spurs. Early in the second quarter, Hondo took a nasty looking fall and had to be taken off the court. This was after the Sixth man of the Spurs, Semi Erden, banged his knee hard in the first after under a minute of playing time. The two misfortunes and a gritty overtime performance orchestrated by Pooh Jeter's passing is enough to get the Warriors to smell blood.  The bruised knee for Erden is trivial, but concussions are bad news. The Spurs might find themselves without one of their key pieces when they need him most.  Or so I, a person that respects brain injury, would think. Havlicek does the John Havlicek thing and not miss games, though he probably wasn't needed in game 5. If you can't tell by Chris Paul's +/- of forty, they won the game fairly easily.  A desperate Planinic puts up an heroic last stand against the Lakers, but it's to no avail, as the other LA team spoils his triple-double performance and advances to the second round.  If you're dumb and close out of a game, you can go to the schedule and then click backward. This will show you a shortened version of the Box Score, (and allow you to click the actual box score) with the final score and each side's player of the game. Here we see Boston forcing a game 7 off the back of.... Hank Beenders. Beenders has been really terrific in these playoffs.  Also forcing a game 7 is Golden State, and what a way to do so, with Bob Brannum taking advantage of the scrambled transition defense and throwing down a dunk in the final moments in front of a screaming Bay Area crowd.  It would be their final view of their beloved Warriors this season, as the Spurs effortlessly took care of business in game 7. John Havlicek was terrific on both ends of the floor, lingering concussion symptoms be damned. Round 2 will see the Spurs vs the Lakers, The Neon (who mostly effortlessly dispatched the Sonics, losing one game in not-terribly interesting fashion) vs the Suns, The Kings vs the Colonels, and the Heat vs the Magic  Also, since I have no idea where else to fit it, one shocking thing I discovered during the first round is that Tracy McGrady is the Spurs' starting CENTER, for some reason. At 6'8, in today's NBA, that actually isn't as crazy as it first sounds, but man, does it first sound weird. The second round kicks off, and Orlando is caught sleeping by Miami. A peril of walking effortlessly into their round, a somewhat rusty looking Magic find themselves run off their home court by a Heat team that had to fight and scratch and claw their way through Round 1. Ruffin and Glyniadakis have particularly great games. The Magic would get back to feeling themselves in Game 2, and take it fairly easily...  ....only to find themselves on the end of some stifling defense. Usually, that's their calling card. (Only the Spurs have a better defense than Orlando)  Speaking of the Spurs, they lose game 3 to the Lakers, thanks to a free throw from Howard Wright. Wright missed one of those shots, but more importantly: what the hell are you doing, Corey Benjamin? You can't be fouling in that situation.  The mistake gets even more costly as the Lakers take another nail-biter of a game in the closing moments, with Lakers Point Guard, Sidney Lowe managing yet another late game three. Sidney Lowe and Hank Beenders have been the unexpected heroes of this playoffs. (Shout-out to Zoran Planinic) At this point, the Kings advanced past the Colonels without much effort used at all. They have to be feeling pretty good with their two most likely rivals desperately fighting for their lives. Shortly after, Phoenix would defeat the Neon in 5. None of those games were particularly interesting, even the one the Neon won. Orlando would go on to crush Miami in their last two games, leaving only the SAS/LAL series in doubt.  The Spurs take game 5 off a masterful performance from Chris Paul.  But the Lakers are right there, stifling everyone but Paul and Havlicek for the Spurs, and Howard Wright, who has shown himself to be fairly big in the clutch, getting the dagger three.  But that would be enough. Despite a rare off game from Chris Paul, John Havlicek and to a lesser extent Tracy McGrady absolutely dominated the heroic Lakers in game 7. The wheels nearly came off and this is a team in desperate need of a break.  OK.  Unfortunately for them, the Kings continued their undefeated run through the playoffs, sweeping their entire conference. Although this series was certainly closer than it looked, with Orlando up in the fourth quarter in two of the four games, they just could not handle the Kings' balanced attack. It's around this point that I took notice of that thing I said earlier about the Kings' roleplayers. It seemed no matter what Orlando did to shut down one or even two of the Kings' big 3 players, both Broekhoff and Farmar were reliably dropping about 8 to 14 points each. That's a huge safety net. So, as most predicted, the finals will see the Kings vs the Spurs. And after 2 games, it really looked like the Kings were going to sweep the whole playoffs. Even the star-studded Spurs couldn't seem to hang with them. Although, I've noticed that the Spurs have had better success dealing with the role-players than Orlando did.  The Spurs started to make it look a little interesting in game 3, only to get clamped down hard in game 4.  Game 5 opened things back up. Despite a (probably) off night for John Havlicek, the Spurs not only showed what they were capable of, but Penny Hardaway left early after coming up grabbing his elbow after scrambling for a loose ball. If Hardaway has to sit, that could be the window that San Antonio needs. But Penny Hardaway played.  But more importantly, Grant Hill played.  This gorgeous closing minute. What an exciting game. Paul sets up McGrady for a game tying bucket, the Spurs force a turnover, get Paul a look at 3 which he can't find, and then in the final second of the game and no time outs left, Hill nails the championship icing shot. Hill was almost certainly the finals MVP before that moment. Maybe one or two people argued for Al Horford, but even they shut up. Congratulations to your 2021 season (it doesn't say 2021-2022 so I'll stop doing so) and inaugural NBA Champions, the Kansas City Kings. And finals MVP Grant Hill.  Unlike the real league, BasketballGM doesn't show award results until after the playoffs, so I will follow suit. Hill had a season for the history books, winning the triple crown of MVPs, the regular season, all-star game, and finals MVP, to go along with a second-team defense selection and of course an all-NBA first team selection. The season really was lopsided toward three teams, with Kansas City, San Antonio, and Orlando dominating both the ALL-NBA and All-Defense teams. What's your favorite part of these awards? I think my favorite thing so far is "somehow Zoran Planinic is legitimately one of the best players in the entire league" but as a kid who grew up in the 90s in Michigan, Grant Hill's success warms my cold dead heart. Tracy McGrady not just being a center, but apparently a dominant defense-first center in his rookie season is also a delight. NONETHELESS. That's just one season. There's still several thousand historical players, and who knows how many Easter Eggs, to churn through. The NBA draft is coming, to introduce about 37 of those guys, of whom, 32 will be drafted. The top prize? Almost certainly a can't-miss shooting guard prospect Larry Hughes, although there's some talk about Bringham Young's defensive stopper Mel Hutchins, and even some late season rattlings about a certain guard out of Iowa State who looks to have the best court vision in college. (I will post the actual draft class when I post the draft.) The bottom four teams await the announcement that could set the stage for their franchise's future.  And the two with the better records scoop the number 1 and number 2 picks. Remember kids, never, ever tank. Mini-Contest Want to add an Easter egg character to our enormous pool of possible draftees? I mean, it might take quite some time before they get drafted, as there's still 4739 real world players, and who knows how many of my own Easter Eggs. (I have named two). But nonetheless, that's the prize! What's the contest and what are the rules? Y'all each get one guess and one guess only. Guesses are first come, first serve. I mentioned a guard from Iowa State being in the draft pool as a possible number 1 pick. Realistically, I believe they will be picked between 3 and 7. Your challenge is to use the highly misleading description of that guard that I gave, and identify that player. (Note: it is not misleading for the BasketballGM rookie attributes of the player) if anyone names that guard before I post the actual draft class (most likely sometime Tuesday) and off-season update, they win and can submit an Easter Egg character for me to come up with stats for. And as always, any thread feedback and requests for closer looks at things are always welcome.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2022 03:36
|
|
|
I remember watching him on the Suns, so Jeff Hornacek would be my guess.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2022 04:35
|
|
|
I'm going to go with Jamaal Tinsley. Played for some really good Pacers teams in the early and mid-2000's, put up a decent number of assists early in his career, pretty reliable player overall.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2022 17:08
|
|
|
Air Bud
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2022 22:15
|
|
|
NEWS: I am an idiot and just discovered the following:  VIEWS: I'm going to continue doing this the hard way because 1)I already started, 2)I'm as stubborn as I am stupid and 3)I want my drat Easter eggs and ABA players, and I want my players to face consequences. Speaking of Easter Eggs, Ninurta guessed the green room invitee, Jeff Hornacek, I was hoping that'd have gotten more guesses, as, there's also guys like Tinsley, Tyrese Haliburton, Monte Morris et-cetera. Nonetheless, you've won the mini contest, like, immediately, and thus can come up with an Easter Egg character that will hopefully eventually become drafted.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2022 00:13
|
|
|
Ninurta posted:I remember watching him on the Suns, so Jeff Hornacek would be my guess. VSM should have kept us in suspense longer.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2022 20:46
|
|
|
tadashi posted:VSM should have kept us in suspense longer. I thought about it. But on the other hand, I'd hate to make someone waste a bunch of time looking up Iowa State basketball players that went on to the NBA when they can't possibly win. Time is the only thing we have that matters.  2021 Offseason and 2022 Season Preview THE DRAFT  When you open up the draft normally, you get a list of the projected players from the next 3 drafts. If you were to open it up on draft night, however, you instead are treated to this page. I'll get into it after the draft, but just from this short preview, yikes. There's some definite talent to be had, but this is probably not on the stronger side of draft classes. I say that, but watch Larry Krystkowiak get into the Hall of Fame.  As expected, the much anticipated Larry Hughes goes first overall to the Pelicans. The rest of the draft shakes out as follows   The first thing I want to note here is that a lot of the guys who are 21 were actually older, in some cases, quite a bit older, when they entered the NBA. For all future draft classes, players will have a maximum draft age of 21 (thus making them have a maximum rookie age of 22). Unfortunately, the game does not model stuff like draft-and-stash players. This will probably make players somewhat better than they were in real life, particularly if they were rather old when they played their first NBA game. As far as noteworthy players, while some of these guys had longer careers than others, there's only a few real stand-outs. Larry Hughes, who was taken #1 overall, was a one time all-defense selection, and once led the NBA in steals. Mel Hutchins, the #2 overall pick, is actually the most decorated person in this draft in real life, with four all star selections. He once led the league in rebounds. Also, he is somewhat bafflingly an "unofficial" rookie of the year for the 1951-1952 season, which sounds fascinating, and if anyone knows what the hell that actually means, I would be pleased to hear it. The aforementioned contest result (and self-touch acceptance pioneer) Jeff Hornacek, was a one time all-star. It really feels like he did more, but that's it. PJ Tucker who is an active old grey-beard in the real world NBA, is a one time champion. That's it. Those are the entirety of the real world honors shared among this draft class. Robert Woodard (Not pictured, he did not get drafted) is an active player. Not pictured are the undrafted players: Tom Lynn, Tom Brennan, Robert Woodard, Gene Tormohlen, and Herm Hedderick were the players that were not drafted. Of these, all except for Tom Lynn were signed during the off-season. The game surprised me by immediately kicking me out of the draft screen after the final selection was made. I was intending to have a screen shot with the remaining prospects still on the board. Now that I know I can't do this, I intend to just have a snapshot of the entire draft class before the draft next time. It would be the lower half of what the first screenshot of this update was. Offseason Moves and Team Analysis Please note, since the offseason is still listed as 2021, you can safely ignore the trades---they all happened last year. Boston Celtics   Worth noting for Boston is they have -3 roster spots available. A few teams have negative numbers, but none so high (technically, "low"  ) as the Celtics. It will be interesting to see if they simply waive players, or if they make some trades before the games actually begin.Also shown for the first time is acquisition. Before, I hadn't bothered to show this field, (or, more accurately, it was much smaller as there was nothing in it) as it was blank for every team. However, now that some new blood has come in, it shows if you drafted players, or if they were had in free agency, or if you got them via trade. A nice touch to give you more of an idea of a team's feel and strategy. Finally, we see player progression. I have a few gripes about Player Progression. One is, I feel like they're entirely too static. That is, even though numbers can go up or down at different rates, they tend to almost universally go up or go down, with the sole exception, so far as I can tell, is that sometimes IQ stats will go up but other stats will decline. I feel like this is wholly unrealistic. If these things had a little bit more fluctuation to them, I'd be happy. My other major gripe is that teams see these progressions before free agency. This is wholly unrealistic, and just skips out entirely on an aspect of the game, either getting huge bargains on players, or dramatically overspending for a disappointing signing. My understanding is this is intended to not screw over players by having their 30million dollar stars suddenly drop 10 points OVR, but... personally, I think it would be a lot more interesting if progression didn't reveal itself until the beginning of the next season. A Neutral observation is "progression also immediately acts on new draft classes. So we can see here that Tom Brennan was a little bit better than advertised, probably why he was picked up by a team. Boston seems to have miscalculated on the value of both of their real draft picks. As far as other negative progression goes, you'll have that sometimes. Off years from players or whatever. I like that the game has a way of simulating that. I believe that this isn't a set number or anything like that. My understanding is that some of these guys will bounce back, and some won't. The only guy on this team I'm convinced is actually in time decline is the dutch legend himself, Hank Beenders. Boston had some bad luck with their stars getting worse, but some fantastic luck with some of their bench roleplayers making absolutely huge strides during the off-season. They're home to 3 of the players who made the largest personal leaps. Chicago Bulls   The big loss for Chicago is that of Dean Garrett, the franchise's sole star. Combine that with no off-season moves of note, lackluster development or decline across the board, and both draft picks looking less shiny than advertised, and it looks like dark times for the Windy City. Golden State Warriors   Golden State is similarly in a place of static. They lost two players in free agency, but not their all star, Wil Jones, who they got back at a fair price. However, their team also seems to be on the down turn, the unexpected development of Isaiah Briscoe is one of the only bright spots for this team, although Maxi Kleber doesn't look like he's on age decline just yet. Kansas City Kings   The rich get richer, as they get one of the largest name free agents available, former All-NBA player (and league rebound leader) Dean Garrett. Though Garrett looks to be losing a step to time decline, and Penny Hardaway looks a bit out of sorts lately, Grant Hill is expected to be even better than last year, Al Horford comes into training camp in absolutely incredible shape, and Mr Irrelevant 2021, Jack Turner, looks to be one of the major steals of the draft. The bad news is, the team didn't see itself as able to pay their starting point guard, Jordan Farmar, who was looking for a bigger contract. Kentucky Colonels   Able to afford that contract are the Kentucky Colonels, who also manage to improve their team by snagging the All-Star Mike O'Koren. Their own all-star, Vin Baker, might just have gotten a little better, too. Las Vegas Neon   Fly has been causing a bit of a buzz in the southwest. Reporters with their fingers on the pulse of GMs have him quietly pegged as the guy most expect to have a break-out campaign. Last year's all-star, Joe Caldwell also was looking really good in the summer league. Los Angeles Clippers   The Clippers, meanwhile, illustrate what I find annoying about the progression kicking in before Free Agency. Planinic, who was 2nd team all-NBA last year, had a tiny setback in his development, and accordingly, his contract went from a projected 14 million dollars to less than 6 and a half. There was no way for the team to know this, and Planinic's stunning campaign is exactly the kind of thing that GMs would definitely overpay in response to. Him getting 6.5 million implies that, not only is the Clippers GM psychic, every other GM is psychic too. Also logically psychic and shockingly humble is Planinic himself. Anyone think someone puts up an all NBA performance and says "I'll take the mid-level exception?" No? Me either. Not a lot of good going on for this team. Dion Waiters will have to try to carry, but he was already being outperformed by a guy who was 9 points behind him in OVR. Los Angeles Lakers   Both of the Lakers' All-Stars from last season, Jalen Rose and Edgar Jones, made some big strides in the off-season, gaining not just a ton of OVR, but a little bit of Potential, too. (Potential in this game is recalculated every season and is an over-estimate of their future capabilities. There is no mechanical benefit to Potential at this time.) The biggest news, however, is the terrific play of Larry Krystkowiak during the few exhibition games the Lakers took part in. Taken all the way down at ninth overall, Krystkowiak is looking like the absolute steal of the draft. Miami Heat   The Heat manage to get themselves some breathing room by re-signing Allen Crabbe (and his phantom accent mark ) to a new, much more sane contract than last year's. They're rewarded when he comes into training camp in the best shape of his life. Outside of Crabbe, Jeff Judkins had one hell of an offseason, but more importantly, both big men on this team show a marked improvement, with Stanley Roberts's being the more impressive.New Orleans Pelicans   A Tiny but of luster has already come off their #1 pick, but only a tiny bit. The Obi Toppin signing looks to have been a particularly smart one, and the young Devin Vassell seems to be turning a lot of heads lately. Orlando Magic   There's quite a bit of talk about how Marques Johnson was not happy, not happy at all, about being swept out of the playoffs by Kansas City, and the former DPOY has a particularly hungry look in his eye. Some of his motivation seems to have rubbed off on a few of the team's guards, and I would look for Ernie Calverly to move one of their projected starters to the bench. Phoenix Suns   Most of Phoenix's development seems to be taking place on the wings, although they probably wished they saw more development out of last year's all-star and sixth man of the Year Sekou Doumbouya, or the team's leading scorer, Rodions Kurucs. Pittsburgh Pipers   An example of what not to do with your offseason is the Pittsburgh Pipers. Already one of the worst teams in the league, they made no significant offseason moves, probably reached on both draft picks, and nearly the entirety of their roster looks out of shape, demoralized, and unmotivated. Some fans have taken to calling them the "Sewer Pipers". San Antonio Spurs   The projected off-year from Tracy McGrady might be of some concern if he wasn't still only 19 years old, with nearly a decade to continue to develop. I'm sure that the Spurs will take some growing pains when on the flipside they get some big gains from their other two young stars, Chris Paul and John Havlicek. They're also probably thrilled that the 28 year old Luis Scola is somehow still actually getting better. The biggest concern is that big dropoff in both OVR and potential for their starting shooting guard (and indeed, only real shooting guard on the team in general) Fred Hilton. Hilton quietly did quite a lot for the Western Conference champs, and that's potentially a major hole in their roster. They nevertheless go into next season at the top of the power rankings. San Diego Conquistadors   The big movers and shakers during the off-season were the San Diego Conquistadors. Unlike Larry Hughes, who looked a step off during exhibition games, #2 overall pick Mel Hutchins looks even better than advertised, particularly on defense, where he's quickly proven to be a menace both at the perimeter and inside. (The Di and Dp next to his name stand for "Defensive Interior" and "Defensive Perimeter". Having both of those puts Hutchins in some pretty elite company. Currently, the only other players with both badges are last year's DPOY, Marques Johnson, and last year's MVP, Grant Hill. The Conquistadors other draft pick, Zoran Dragic, also looks slightly better than advertised, and in fact, most of their team has taken some noticeable strides forward in development. If Pittsburgh is Goofus, San Diego is Gallant. Seattle Supersonics   You know how I said that progression happens before free agency? Well, that's true, sure, but I have no idea how they managed to keep hold of Thybulle for less than two million a year. Thybulle had the single largest leap of any individual player during the offseason and is likely on the short list for Most Improved Player, a new award that the league has announced will be given out at the end of the year. Hornacek, who got some buzz as the best player in this year's draft, also looks to be keeping that conversation alive. Somewhat shockingly, he has the second highest passing attribute in the league (behind Chris Paul). There's some pretty great progression on this team in general, although they'll have to make a cut or a trade before the season begins for real. Season Preview   While obviously some teams will perform worse than last year, since everyone in the league is young and developing, only two teams actually got worse. Pittsburgh, who for whatever reason did not develop, and Chicago, who lost an All-Star. Somehow, Pittsburgh got hit harder. That leap of 50 team rating by San Diego is huge, although quite a few teams took fairly dramatic leaps. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Jan 5, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2022 06:00
|
|
|
Veryslightlymad posted:NEWS: I figured Jeff was a longshot, but yay, go me. For an Easter Egg character would it be possible to add a pure defensive Center Vince Wilfork? Each update my brain keeps reading V. Williford as Big Vince and I'd hate to see him not play basketball.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2022 08:39
|
|
|
Zoran Dragič is also still active (-ish), the younger and probably more talented (but definitely more injured) brother of Goran. Shame he got hosed by injuries so hard, he almost certainly had enough to hang in the NBA for a couple of seasons at least if not for the knees.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2022 11:39
|
|
|
Ninurta posted:I figured Jeff was a longshot, but yay, go me. For an Easter Egg character would it be possible to add a pure defensive Center Vince Wilfork? Each update my brain keeps reading V. Williford as Big Vince and I'd hate to see him not play basketball. Sort of. I can't guarantee he would be a center without fudging his height stat, which I guess I could do, since it's separate from his actual height. On the other hand, the Spurs run T-Mac at center, so what the hell? Why not. And then just, whenever the time comes, make him all defense for starting stats? I can do that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2022 14:05
|
|
|
I think that if Wilfork isn't randomly picked for one of the next three or four drafts, I will add him as another player. I feel vaguely guilty having a mini contest prize be on potentially such a huge delay. I have determined next year's draft, and will be bringing back the frog siren.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2022 16:51
|
|
|
This looks fun, reminds me of the time I played a baseball sim on the Atari 800 with a few friends, drafting players out of a huge book that had every team/player from 1900 on. Thank god we have websites and poo poo for that now.  Also I'd like to nominate a player for a potential easter egg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Gathers I was following Loyola Marymount at the time because my oldest sister went there (she was on the renowned choir, didn't mix with sportsdudes as far as I know).
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2022 06:05
|
|
|
Veryslightlymad posted:I think that if Wilfork isn't randomly picked for one of the next three or four drafts, I will add him as another player. I feel vaguely guilty having a mini contest prize be on potentially such a huge delay. I look forward to Vince's reign of terror in the middle-ish. I didn't realize he was peewee height for the NBA, that's probably why he chose shoot putting.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2022 10:33
|
|
|
Ninurta posted:I look forward to Vince's reign of terror in the middle-ish. I didn't realize he was peewee height for the NBA, that's probably why he chose shoot putting. Yeah, he would be short for the shortest position, but bot terribly so. But hey, Basketball GM has a height attribute that is completely separate from the actual player height. I can't guarantee how teams will use him, but I can make him play "big". Moktaro posted:Also I'd like to nominate a player for a potential easter egg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Gathers Done. EDIT Oh, hey, looks like today's update allowed me to change people's draft positions on the edit players page. I won't do anything like take way Chris Pauls "rookie" of the year award, but I think I'll take away everyone's draft position if they were on an initial roster, since that will gently caress up frivolities. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jan 7, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2022 17:39
|
|
|
Next update temporarily delayed as COVID booster shot has me feeling like I am being electrocuted over and over and over.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2022 20:03
|
|
|
Veryslightlymad posted:Next update temporarily delayed as COVID booster shot has me feeling like I am being electrocuted over and over and over. I was definitely over confident in my ability to adjust to the 3rd jab. It was easily as bad or worse than the first 2.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2022 20:12
|
|
|
COVID jabs are the ultimate YEMV, I had literally nothing but a sore arm for a bit from the Pfizer after two AZ jabs.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2022 11:00
|
|
|
tadashi posted:I was definitely over confident in my ability to adjust to the 3rd jab. It was easily as bad or worse than the first 2. TitanG posted:COVID jabs are the ultimate YEMV, I had literally nothing but a sore arm for a bit from the Pfizer after two AZ jabs. I appreciate the understanding. Yeah, shot 2 took most of the day before it kicked in and I was able to sleep a lot of it off thanks to "fatigue" being one of my side effects. (Maybe. With the narcolepsy, I'm hesitant to ascribe sleepiness to anything else.) Fever never got higher than 101, and I killed the chills before I went to bed the next evening. Shot 3... well, there was no fatigue, no fever so far as I could tell, but oh lord, the chills were bad. Pretty much all of Friday and Saturday and on and off through Sunday. Pain that isn't pain, cold that isn't cold, just nerves firing over and over and over for no reason. I liken it more to being electrocuted than being cold, but YMMV when trying to describe something like Chills.  2022 Season, First Half  The first half of the 2022 season begins with some unceremonious cuts, including a particularly cruel one by Boston to their playoff hero, Hank Beenders. Boston would also trade much of its roster to Seattle to procure the rookie Chris Taft. Seattle then became over-staffed and revealed their true trade target was Tremont Waters, as the other two guys they got from the Celtics were both immediately cut. Rumors start floating around the league that the Leprechaun is cursed, with 5 men who started the season there now finding themselves out of work, hoping that someone gives them another chance in the next few years, before their bodies give out. At the trade deadline, those rumors only grow, as the number becomes 6. A second Boston/Seattle trade, perhaps showcasing the earliest good working relationship between two teams. And other franchises are noticing--both Boston and Seattle are on pace to outperform their previous season. The Dean Garrett acquisition doesn't work out for the Kings and makes their roster awkward, so they dump some future assets to get some younger, more athletic assets. EDIT: I misread this trade, I was thrown off by the 2022 pick that was originally the Lakers. So the Colonels have the 2022 Lakers pick via the Kings.   Now that everyone has gotten a feel for the new league, things are starting to loosen up, players are becoming more creative, and more and more are able to distinguish themselves with stellar individual games. Several players post triple doubles, Jalen Rose and Chris Paul each got two. The young Jeff Hornacek showed why some people had him at #1 in the draft with some excellent passing early on, including setting an NBA Record of 21 assists against the Miami Heat, turning some heads by getting the better of Pete Maravich, who is not only regarded as one of the better passers in the league, but whose Heat have looked a cut above everyone else in the early part of the season. Only a few weeks later, Erik Maynor overtakes that record, but needing two full overtimes in order to do so in a gritty win for his Bulls against a much superior Kings. The Bulls haven't had much success this season, but the killer instinct is there. In what's considered the best single-game performance in the young league's history, and with everyone else on the Spurs underperforming, the Bulls smelled blood and pushed the team hard for victory, but they were shellshocked by Chris Paul's masterpiece performance: A 54 point triple double going 10/16 from deep and a handful of steals tossed in for good measure. Paul's single game performance here is so good it actually qualifies for this Statistical Feats page three different ways: By being a triple double, by hitting 10 or more 3s, and by scoring at least 50 points. It is also the only performance this season (or I suppose ever in the context of the simulation) to achieve the latter two. (What's nutty to think about : A GmSc of 44.7 wouldn't crack the top 100 individual performances in the real world NBA) Several players are slowly gaining reputations of who is and is not clutch, with a number of performers having buzzer beating shots. Of these game winners, Eddie Robinson, Isaiah Briscoe, and Paul Dawkins each had two, but the 2022 Mr. Clutch is currently Las Vegas's own Max Morris, who managed 3 different buzzer beaters. (No picture for this, since I'd have to individually show every team's distinct news feed. What would be interesting about it is Chris Paul's performance against the Bulls was so good it's in every single team's news feed. It is the only "someone else's player" feat that shows up in the news feeds. All eyes are on Paul, and it's no surprise that he winds up captaining one of the two all-star teams. But first! The Dunk Contest!  ....is bad. Is really, really bad. With the best dunk in the first half, and indeed, most of the event, only managing to score around 7 points with the judges. The reigning league MVP couldn't even get on the board, failing to even put the ball in the basket in all six of his attempts. Pete Maravich found himself in the finals, having to this point only once getting a single judge to award one of his dunks a 6. When the judges unanimously rate his first dunk of the second round a 4, most of the audience were looking at their phones or scanning the audience for other players. There was even talk about eliminating the event from the future. "Dunks just aren't that exciting" was the call. "Rugball---- Excuse me, Basketball, is a game best played low to the ground. Maravich fails again, and that marks his second attempt. He's only got one more chance to pull ahead and these judges... they penalize you for needing extra attempts. I like Pete's breathing here, though. Good focus. His eyes are just glued to the rim, I don't even think he's blinking. Let's see what he does with his last--oh, he's starting to move and it's the jump, he rolls it back this time----Did you hear that?! That was like a pistol going off! I thought somebody shot a gun! With the silent crowd, that sounded like someone firing a pistol. Well, they aren't silent now, they are on their feet, and so are the judges and this one is a ten and that one is a ten and oh, my word, Pete Maravich. Who knew? Now it's unanimous. There's your new champion folks. Talk about saving your best for last."  There's some drama in the three point shootout as it looked like Greg Sutton, widely regarded least season as the league's best in game sharpshooter, was looking to unseat the current champion (ironically, about as far ahead as sutton in game now as Sutton was in the lead over Broekhoff then), leading in each of the first two rounds and his 18 points looking safe after Broekhoff made some uncharacteristic misses early in the final. He would need a perfect final rack to beat Sutton, and that's just what he did, throwing up two fingers before his final moneyball was even down. Indicating they were worth two points? That he won by two points? That he was a two time champion? Was it just a peace sign or a V for victory? Perhaps we'll never know.  The young demon looking to unseat the league's reigning MVP finds himself getting more votes than his rival, and looking to get some early revenge for last year's NBA Finals loss. In the eyes of the fans, at least, he managed more all-star votes, but only just. A few names from last year's All-Star Game aren't invited back-to-back, with the most notable absence being Anfernee Hardaway, who many consider a snub, even if his performance isn't the equal of last season. Two rookies, Larry Krystkowiac and Jeff Hornacek find themselves here, and what's surprising is Mel Hutchins does not. Especially since one of his teammates needed an injury replacement anyhow. How or why Doumbouya (presumably) got the nod here over Hutchins is beyond me. Hutchins has better numbers (maybe not blocks), is on a team with a better record, and is leading the league in Steals. I really, really don't know why Doumbouya is here at all. Of course, one big gripe I have about BasketballGM, is that it doesn't model player positions much at all. The position next to a player's name? That's.... I don't even know what that is. Perception? Who can say. Tracy McGrady is an F without a C that started at Center last year. Why not just call him a Center? Are there limits on the back-court and front court for the all-star game as in real life? Couldn't tell you. The All-NBA teams seem to be, but then there's a really weird blur between back-court and front-court that way. I would be much happier knowing how teams actually use players. Anyhow, other than the rookies, new faces include MIP candidates Skal Labissiere and Fly Williams. Dion Waiters and Robert Swift are here, too, two members from the woeful Clippers. Joe Hamilton represents New Orleans. Yi Jianlian has been excellent on both ends of the court and replaces his own teammate Red Robbins. Paul Dawkins gets some love for his clutch shooting. Kyle Singler has been having a terrific year, and now that San Diego is actually good, he brings Bob Duffy along for the ride.  The All-Star game is exciting, although, Paul soon takes a back-seat to the first guy he drafted, Edgar Jones. Jones had things looking comfortable for Team Chris, but personally commits two huge turnovers down the stretch to cost team Chris the game, and Grant Hill ices a 35 point performance by personally hitting the target number of 131 (The all-star game is currently set up with a weird rule of "after clock expiration, the game continues until one team hits a target number which is set by higher current score." That's why there are no time stamps. Team Grant had a huge comeback here.) Hill wasn't going to leave before sending a little message to Chris Paul, though. Your winner of his second consecutive All-Star MVP is Grant Hill. (Also, wow did that late substitution for Jeff Hornacek turn out to be huge.) LEAGUE LEADERS     AWARD RACES   On the Sixth Man award, we can see Now that there's actually been a season played, having an MIP award makes sense, and, as somewhat predicted by myself, Fly Williams is in the lead. As predicted by "actual OVR numbers", though, Matisse Thybulle and Skal Labissiere are close behind. Insanely, Chris Paul is sixth on the list of MIP despite being all-nba first team last year, and, as if the all league teams work the way I think they do, the league's second best player last season. He's having a pretty good year. Midseason Standings  Pittsburgh continues to be garbage, and Chicago is also pretty bad, as can be expected for a team that was bad and lost their best player during the off-season. Without Planinic playing at an elite level, the Clippers fell off a cliff---they have no business having two all-stars, but hey, there's only 16 teams. Maybe Chicago and Pittsburgh having 0 between them illustrates how bad they are. The big surprise, though, is Miami, who have looked like the most polished team in the league, especially when on the road. Maravich might be the only star player they have, but Calbert Cheaney and Stanley Roberts are legit defenders, Paul Thompson gets some buckets, and Jeff Judkins is exactly what you want in a utility small forward, averaging about 11/5/5. Allen Crabbe and Charles Bradley are a pair of excellent shooters coming off the bench. One of the reasons why Kansas City won the championship so easily last year was only a couple of teams could deal with their roleplayers' shooting. Is this ragtag band of misfits enough to overcome teams like the Kings? Or the Spurs, whose star player shines even brighter than Miami's, and whose supporting cast are, themselves, star players? It seems unlikely, but hey, so did interest in the dunk contest. Veryslightlymad fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Jan 12, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2022 02:31
|
|
|
Both conferences look way tighter this season compared to the last, particularly the East. The Spurs' winning percentage is down significantly, even with the performances by Paul. Still a lot of the same teams on top, and the bottom teams are way bottom, but it looks more competitive.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2022 06:32
|
|
|
Yeah, a few teams fixed themselves in free agency, and some key players took huge jumps. The Spurs benched Tracy McGrady and lost their starting shooting guard and replaced them with PJ Tucker and Corey Benjamin. Tucker's production is nowhere near as good as McGrady's was last year, so I'm not sure I follow the logic. Benjamin's chipping a respectable 13 and a half a game, though. Miami.... really is just a solid all around team. I wouldn't have called that, looking at how stable the roster was and how few individual players on the team actually developed, but they're absolutely maximizing the use of the four guys that actually did. Good on them.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2022 08:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 3, 2024 17:11 |
|
|
 End of 2022 Season and Playoffs  Aside from a couple triple doubles by Chris Paul and another couple by Fly Williams, there wasn't anything spectacular in the back third of the season, but there was something somewhat interesting, at least.  There were a couple of serious injuries, and as we see with the second one, the one on Frank Mangiapane, sometimes they can be quite severe indeed. While last year's worst injury resulted in no loss of potential and only one OVR, Mangiapane's injury is expected to make him significantly worse, while also clamping down a little bit on his potential. The injury to James Johnson is also worse than the worst injury the league had seen. If there's a silver lining for Mangiapane, it's that OVR and POT have a fairly huge window of variance, so there's nothing to say that he can't bounce back from this, or even become a star, it's just an extra ratchet less likely than it was before. Playoffs  The final standings and playoffs shake out a bit like this. Eagle eyed readers can see that not every team played 82 games, which is something that I sincerely hope corrects itself as I slowly add teams over time. Oh yeah, that's a thing I plan on doing eventually. As for the playoffs themselves... hmm. Going into the playoffs, it certainly feels like there's more parity between teams. After the playoffs got started, however...  There were a lot of games like this one. 6 of the 8 playoff series would end in sweeps, and for the most part, bad ones. The disparity between a good team and a bad team seems much clearer than it did before.  That's not to say that the playoffs didn't have the odd exciting game and matchup. While Phoenix would be one of the teams swept, they at least managed to put a scare into Seattle with a miracle slam by Tim Breaux to tie the game at the end of regulation, only to not be able to hang on during overtime.  In one of the games where they were stomped, MIP candidate Matisse Thybulle put up a triple double on Points, Rebounds and Steals instead of Assists.  The closest series was definitely the 3/6 West Series between the Lakers and the Neon. Vegas managed two games where they looked fairly dominant. Every now and then Corey Maggette does something good, and Fly Williams has been really consistent for their team.  Maggette would go on to lose the next game almost single-handedly with bad decisions in the closing moments. A boneheaded foul sends a decent free throw shooter to the line in a tie game, and then he just... throws the ball away without getting up a shot.  After losing another one to the Neon, the Lakers eventually got tired of waiting to advance and blew them out in game 6. However, not before picking up a significant injury to one of their main stars, Edgar Jones---Jones twisted his knee here, and while it didn't lower his OVR, it was bad enough to where he as suspected out for 12 games---and also bad enough to where the Lakers' coach was unwilling to play him, bucking the trend of how we've seen playoff injuries handled before.  The only other top four seed to lose a game was Orlando. Look at the readout on the right. You gotta get a shot up in that 15 seconds, man. Anyhow, yeah, the first round had a grand total of 3 games won by losing teams.  Although, the Sewer Pipers did actually come to play in the fourth game in front of what few fans bothered to show up, but it was too little too late. Still, for about twelve minutes in the playoffs, they looked like a real basketball team. ROUND 2 Round 2 couldn't be any less like Round 1. What I think has happened is there's more parity at the top of the league, and more teams that can consider themselves at the top of the league, but the disparity between a good and a bad team is way higher than before. Every team that got to Round 2 is basically as good as one another, and what transpires is two weeks of some of the most exciting basketball the young sport has seen.  Seattle starts things off by shocking the Spurs on their home court, the rookie Jeff Hornacek getting the better of presumptive MVP (though we'll find out if that's true later) Chris Paul in their first post-season matchup.  More impressive is the Lakers managing to get a win over the Conquistadors. With the team's star center still unable to play from injury, Jalen Rose slid over man the position and puts up a fantastic performance, including a closing minute and a half where he basically did everything he could to will the Lakers to win. Side note---if you think Jalen Rose or Tracy McGrady at center is weird, I'm about 90% certain that the Conquistadors' starting center is Kyle Singler, who is dominant enough at the position to be an all-star. One weird consequence of this league where everyone is built like a wing, I guess.  Orlando also gets in on the upset train in their second game, though somewhat distressingly, they nearly threw it away by failing to box out---this is doubly damning because the top three players on the Magic, Marques Johnson, Yi Jianlian, and Red Robbins, are all big men. Nonetheless, a win is a win.  The Colonels follow up with perhaps the most exciting upset yet, absolutely pummeling the Kings and giving the defending champs one of the biggest thrashings they've had in the post season.  Against all odds, the Lakers continue to win without Edgar Jones, mostly on the backs of Jalen Rose and their star rookie, Larry Krystkowiak. Around this time, I start actively hoping for the Lakers to go all the way. But between being out a star player, not yet having faced the Spurs, and being the only team to more-or-less struggle in their first round, I figure it's, at best, a long shot.  Another team that started to earn my sympathy and good vibes is the Kentucky Colonels, who managed to win an incredibly Pyrrhic game 3, with 3 of their top 6 players going down with injuries. Only Pollard would not be able to play through, but the team is clearly hobbled.  Seattle continues to surprise the Spurs, clawing and scraping for their wins, but showing that they are able to get them.  And Jalen Rose is still gutting through an absolutely heroic performance without his co-star, going up 3-0 on the favored Conquistadors with a 32 point triple double.  The cracks start to show in the armor of the league's best regular season team--Orlando has seen that they can play Miami's bench off the court, and begin systematically wearing down the other team's starters. Add it up yourselves, that's 5 points total from the bench in this game.  To no one's surprise, Kansas City blows out the hobbled Colonels.  I'm really annoyed with the box-score summary here. This loss was yet another triple double by Jalen Rose, but the game is all "naw, man, everyone is really interested in his three steals." C'mon, son.  Orlando cracked the code, and their blueprint from game 4 is applied ruthlessly to game 5 to almost the same results.  God, somewhere in there Jordan Farmar got injured, too. That's 4 of Kentucky's top 6 players injured, and one of those four still unable to play. Regardless, the uninjured Vin Baker drops a 30/14 piece on the Kings, and the reigning champs are now in a spot that they have never been before in the young life of the league--potentially facing elimination  Matisse Thybulle really came through for the Sonics here, hitting a buzzer-beating 3 to send the game into overtime after Corey Benjamin threw a pass into the stands. The Sonics hang on in a desperate overtime, and now both of last year's finalists are hanging by a thread.  Over in California, this is apparently what happens when Jalen Rose doesn't drop a triple double. Though they're still up, the Lakers really look like long-shots.  Orlando's strategy of targeting the bench pays off hard when two of the top 6 players for Miami go down early, with less than three minutes going to Calbert Cheaney. And here, I'd like to state how I'm not a fan of how this game handles in-game injuries at all. No matter how trivial the injury actually ends up being, it takes a player out of the game entirely, for the rest of the game. You're not gonna see something like Isiah Thomas dropping 25 points in a quarter on an injured ankle. No, if a player even looks hurt, they're out for the rest of the game. What injuries did Miami have? Well, one of those players didn't even have one listed on their sheet afterward, so it was beyond trivial, and the other one had a bruised thigh. A bruise. Miami theoretically could have won here.   The former finalist teams both stopped loving around in game 6, attempting to send a clear message to their challengers to give up.  San Diego would attempt the same thing, and while they would win their game, they still had to fend off a fierce fourth quarter rally by a Laker squad that refuses to die. None of the underdogs would quit.  Seattle came out swinging for the fences, and it would take a ferocious effort by Chris Paul in the fourth quarter to finally vanquish Hornacek and his Sonics.  More successful are the Lakers, who somehow manage the impossible with Jalen Rose still going supernova playing out of position. Somehow, without Edgar Jones, the Lakers managed to win.  And, amazingly, so did the other beat-up squad. I didn't keep the final score (drat it) but I did capture the last lead change, as well as a fated turnover. Pretty appropriate that the Kings' fate was sealed by a key rotational piece they weren't willing to pay. Not that I can blame them. This coming off-season, both Penny Hardaway and Al Horford have contracts due, so they need every speck of that cap room to keep the band together. Conference Finals  Newly confident from defeating the favored Kings, the Colonels storm out the gate to take the first game of the Eastern Conference finals.  They're answered back in kind. The Magic have had their own share of adversity to get here, and aren't about to roll over and die. They would, however, lose in game 3.  And in game 4, I'm really mad at myself for losing my two live-cast screen shots. Kentucky's Mike O'Koren failed to hit a 3 pointer at the buzzer of regulation, which led to overtime, but at the end of the extra period, and in the same position, he was trusted with the same play and hit it this time. O'Koren is one of the guys that's been an all-star in both seasons thus far, he's legitimately a star in this league.  Losing a playoff game this way completely crushes the spirit out of the Magic, and a dominant looking Kentucky cruises to the finals after only 5 games.  Out West, the story goes another way, with the heavily favored Spurs getting a decisive game 1 win against a still short-handed Laker squad.  Shockingly, the two would then begin trading blowout games back and forth, despite the notable absence of Edgar Jones.  But then, wearing a brace on his knee, Edgar Jones finally turned up, and while 18/8, especially with the high turnovers, was nowhere near a career performance, the Lakers clearly needed him to win game 5. His steady performance helped them to win a desperate comeback and silence the San Antonio faithful.  ....twice. You never want to have to come back in the fourth quarter, but if you do, you're pretty happy. The Finals  With their All-Star Center back in play, and with Jalen Rose never looking more confident, the Lakers cruise to an early game 1 win in Kentucky.  Game 2 sees them back in some of their bad habits from the conference finals, needing a fourth quarter rally to win the game, but they got it.  The door seems to be closing fast on the Colonels, who attempt their own desperate comeback in the fourth, but their attempt fails, and the stifling Laker defense prevents them from getting off a second try. Does Kentucky have what it takes to come back from a 3-0 deficit?  No. Reversing their usual course, the Lakers get off to an early lead and never look back, closing out the series in a 4 game sweep in front of an elated Los Angeles crowd, when sports writers had written them off all the way back in the first round. Showing true grit in the face of adversity, the Los Angeles Lakers are your 2022 NBA Champions.  And what better way to cap off a sensational playoff run than with yet another triple double performance? Though Jones was also excellent over 4 games, Rose is rewarded for his Herculean post-season by being named Finals MVP. Leaderboards and Season Summary      The season summary is what finally got me to realize that the different all-league teams are not sorted by position at all. A bunch of swingmen and guards making up one of the teams is certainly inconclusive, but that second-team all-NBA squad is (almost) nothing but big men, who are fairly rare in this league. Marques Johnson continues to be a cut above everyone else on defense, Fly Williams ascended as predicted, and it's clear that the Pelicans drafted the wrong Larry. Mel Hutchins also had a hell of a first season, being regarded the league's second-best defender in only his rookie year. Another season comes to a close, and the four bottom-feeding teams are sending good luck charms to an event to see who will land the #1 pick. This is a draft loaded with talent at the wings--sadly where most of the talent in the league already is--but, particularly the top 2 prospects are causing a buzz with their off-the-charts athleticism and array of other skills. Or, if a team wanted to go a different way, there's talent at the point--scouts are particularly high on a fascinating young prospect out of Brazil, and many believe he would be the fastest player in the league right now, despite his juvenile conditioning. Not too many bigs available, though. Snagging a gem with size could likely turn a team's fortunes entirely.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2022 03:20
|
|