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Season 64 tip off on Saturday. Looks like the BIG 8 got much stronger despite losing Retro Heat to promotion. Two very strong relegated III squads replacing them and a transfer squad that is capable. Going to be a battle to make the playoffs over there for our returning teams. Here is a quick rundown for all interested parties:

BIG 8
(Relegation) Pittsburgh Pressure - Well balanced team with strong attack and defense. Early favorite for promotion.
(Relegation) Wadsworth Grizzlies - Impressive attack yet average defense. Led by a strong backcourt. Strong contender for promotion.
(2) Holy City Hoopers - That's me. HP Villiard will hold down PG position moving forward instead of rotating training which should make me more competitive. But Brandon Ingles has 1 more season of training left so promotion bid is unlikely.
(3) Squidbeak Splatoon - Aging squad, probably needs to hit the transfer market to improve upon position.
(4) Typhoooon - Runner up MVP Ingmars Vaivods returns alongside 4th place Gan Congxuan. Despite individual accolades, seems to be at least one more player away from contention.
(5) Lewbowski Urban Achievers - No salary monster vets or rising stars, likely on the outside looking in again. Rookie Timothy Acevedo may be worth training to contend in a few seasons.
(Transfer) Maryland Pit-Bulls - Well balanced team, a bit stronger in attack than defense. Contender for playoff position, but not a promotion contender as currently constructed.
(Transfer) Hotties - Meng Jiun Tsong is a salary beast, but the ratings put up are quite poor otherwise. Outside looking in.

GREAT 8
(1) Fusion Strikers - League MVP Grzegorz Milczarksi and 3rd place Francisco Sastre lead the charge. Lacking balance in the front court to win promotion, but will likely contend yet again.
(2) Red Bull North Florida - Well balanced veteran squad. Need a transfer or star trainee to get them over the top.
(3) Crivitas - Aging veterans and not quite there yet trainees. Needs more time or money invested.
(4) Kirk Thuggins - Outside looking in as currently constructed. No focal point or exciting young trainee I can see.
(5) Chickens - Same situation, needs a lot of transfers or a crop of young trainees to make a move forward.
(6) Sons of Vulvan - Not a whole lot on the roster except for Daniel McCollum. Needs veterans and trainees.
(Transfer) Larranega Lobstahs - Very strong attack but lacking in defense. Serious contender for top billing but may need some restructuring or solid training program in place.
(Transfer) NYC Fighting Roosters - Doesn't appear to have a roster than can contend even in the weaker Great 8.

Last edited by Gccsteel at 03/07/2024 10:06:50

All-star break update:

Pittsburgh Pressure looks to be unbeatable. Wadsworth Grizzlies have the only chance but they came up pretty short in their first league matchup. Larranega Lobstahs look to be their likely finals challenger. They can score, but just don't have enough defense to slow a good offense.

The Hoopers are still a season or two away from threat of promotion. Our defense is rounding into form, but we neglected scoring to get there. A bit more focus there going forward should help round the young squad out and make them capable. But no imminent danger for Pittsburgh or Wadsworth.

I haven’t commented yet but I will do so now. The fact that I am 13-0 is not surprising to me. I actually do think in my current state that Wadsworth or Larranega could beat me and I don’t feel very comfortable about my position. I need more better players and WILL be buying more to make sure nobody can stop me. Winning the league is bare minimum I can accept. I do think it’s me and wadsworth for the conference and we will be facing Larranega in the finals. In all likelihood there be multiple promotions from this league, so it should be more open next season for Hoopers.

I will also say this league has been a lot tougher than I expected. I expected to drop down and go on cruise control for the season. I have not been able to do that. So credit to the league for that.

Retro Heat promoted last season and he was fairly strong. He's currently #2 in III.11 for reference. Yet somehow we got better as a division with two relegated III teams and a strong DIV transfer.

Hope you are right that we will get multiple promotions. But I suspect we will also get multiple demotions again and maybe a strong transfer. BB is making a concerted effort to focus active users into full leagues instead of spreading them out.

I am going homegrown so progress will be very slow. I've honestly screwed up Farmer and Morgan so won't be able to cap them. I was trying to train too many players, changed plans, and got too far behind on their progress. Good news is that Ingles will be capped in a couple seasons and should be good enough to anchor my squad into DIII eventually.

Ah to be honest man I’ve had this for like a year and I completely forgot about multiple promotions. I’m doing my best to balance my team right now as my older prospects are getting closer to becoming real offensive threats and I cannot play any defense for my life. I also started investing a lot of money in my stadium as my salary has dropped a ton since getting relegated from D3 2 seasons ago, I got promoted in my first season and it was completely unsustainable and I realized I needed to really build a foundation around my prospects. Also I have a general rule of thumb question, do you guys pay attention to ratings? They seem super conflicting to stats and what I would assume the players impact on the game is, but also still steadily increase as my prospects get better so it’s obviously somewhat working. Oh and with that new acquisition Pressure I am not looking forward to possibly seeing you in the finals haha

Ratings are a 10,000 foot view. When your players get better, so do the ratings. But the game is about individual matchups for the most part. USA Offsite had some really good analysis back in the day that is engrained into my memory about formations and percentage of matchups.

80% was PG-PG, SG-SG, etc. but zone defenses are different and sometimes your C gets isolated on an outside player even with man to man. You can see in-game what is happening because it will say "Player X takes a shot closely guarded by Player Y" which means they are comparing shooting of one to defense of another.

Assisted shots are the best in the game because they are "unguarded" so will work more like free throws. There is an unconfirmed theory that assisted shots are actually compared against the ratings but I have my doubts.

All that said, outside defense is THE MOST IMPORTANT stat in the game. Because it stops not only outside shots, but also works against flow to create turnovers and prevent assisted shots. You cannot win consistently without sufficient OD in my opinion.

Correction, just read BB-Justin's answers on the forum. Appears team ratings DO influence things happening in game. The difference is they are calculated real-time in the game and what you see after the game is an "average" of the ratings. But they are more important than I have been led to believe over the years.

I don’t really focus much on team ratings. It’s an ok estimate of skill but there are a lot things that don’t show up in the ratings. I do look at it though for areas I can improve the team. I mean you see the difference between a team like myself and the bot Kirk Thuggins but at the end of the day you can beat teams with higher ratings. I look more at player ratings as well as their positional flexibility. Basically, how many positions they can play. As for my additions, it seems they are having the intended impact. I am surprised how good Rizzoli is playing on 5 Game Shape. I can’t wait to see what he does later. I also think Elod is going to be big boost once I fix his game shape. I have never considered ratings to be an average even if BB-Justin says so. I always viewed as cumulative since OT games always have higher rating than regulation games.