Like Procta, i appreciate the acknowledgement -- and if you want to know how i really feel, i would point out that Coco and Solana Steve worked out wins per season for the great teams of the past (message= 195299.46 ), and Ice Storm was number one with 15.77 wins / season. this is my 10th season in the NBBA and i have 161 wins . . .
but really no trophies, and there's the rub. i remember you wrote somewhere that managers had a choice -- spend money to win championships today or stick around. i have long thought winning a championship was difficult, but once i reached this level i knewi never wanted to climb that greasy pole again and therefore chose to last as long as possible. i thought i had figured out to do this -- low salary squad, buy one good player each season for around $2 million, and thus basically stay around here forever -- but then all that changed around season 31 or so. now, as we all know, $2 million won't even buy a good bench player, and forget about buying youth.
so now my squad is older than it's ever been -- for god's sake, i have a 39 year old player that i've painfully watched lose a third of his skill points but i can't afford to replace -- and i can see the end. this season was my best chance to win a championship, but there are some terrific squads out there -- HPH especially, but also the Bucks, others, including the aging stalwarts FM and your boys -- so i now anticipate not even making the league championship. next season? changing to the Utopia-style elimination structure will make the league that much more brutal, and i won't worry any more about championships, only survival.
and that is, at best, for only two-three more seasons, i figure. by that time, i might be approaching the all-time top five and leave behind a win total that others will be impressed with. the financial headwinds are simply too much -- someone else is going to have to figure out how to stick around here long enough to challenge KDB's record.