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The first and only WNBA dynasty in FOFC history
I realize this will appeal to like eight people, but I've wanted to do it ever since I managed to successfully do a women's college basketball dynasty with FBCB.
Right now, I'm just simming far enough ahead to able to normalize the league and get going. But I have a college league fast-simming to generate draft classes for me ahead of my where my WNBA league is. Eventually, I might wade into the waters of my college league so we can follow a woman from high school recruit to the WNBA, but for now, just want to get it started first. Not really sure what we'll do with this, other than playing it by ear. So stay tuned. |
So for clerical purposes, here's my setup so far. We have two conferences of eight teams each. Four teams in each make the playoffs.
I envision expansion down the road, but I haven't really fleshed out how that's going to look. Code:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I started letting my D1 league generate players for a while. Now I'm letting my D3 league do it for a while on fast-sim (where it doesn't generate box scores or stats, so it goes faster...I just want classes) and then I'll do the same with D1 and D2 at different times, so we have a cross-section of players showing up from different schools. Just keeps it interesting for me, honestly. |
I'm playing on Hard Cap only. The cap is set $1,330,676 and all of the teams regardless of city will always be in a small market. I sort of like the juxtaposition of not being able to pay huge salaries, though I haven't really begun to dive into the universe yet.
While I was purging the db of men the game stocked initially (I don't have the patience to build a woman file right now. Maybe someday...) I ran with a 1 game season so it'd get done faster with no playoffs. Now that we have all women on teams, I have set the league to a 40-game schedule and all of the playoff rounds are current best-of-three. The highest paid player in the league at the moment was a HS player named Aubrey Yost ($413,483) who went straight to the league (I enabled that in my universe for now...) and she's just been killing. Code:
PLAYER DETAILS |
Oldest looking 32 year old I've ever seen. :D
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I started super early on purpose, because I wanted to sim far far ahead and purge any memory of the fact that the league started with dudes.
I probably won't really begin "playing" in earnest until the 70s or so. |
I switched the league to a soft cap, though, because I found teams weren't keeping their stars or people were taking unnecessary paycuts. So the luxury tax threshold is $2.6 million and I have a mid-level exception $50,000 and a low-level exception at $25,000.
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Oh I know. I just found it hilarious that the college game is 3833 and the wnba thing is early 1900s.
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Oh yeah, that's weird. I think it's probably because I didn't import them from the same year. It's back to the future (tm) |
In 1942, I expanded to Nashville with a team called the Tennessee Smokies and to Colorado Springs with the Colorado Peaks. We'll eventually get to 20 teams, I've already simmed ten years from that last expansion.
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1954 All-Star Game
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East 163, West 155 - 2/7/1954 |
I have applied modifiers that increase scoring, because well..I like scoring.
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I'm going to take over the league in the late 60s or something with an expansion team. Here's a recent player I found running through the history. Great name.
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PLAYER DETAILS |
Can't decide whether she's a Hall of Famer or not:
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PLAYER DETAILS |
HOF or not, she's a cannonball. (5'6", 200?!)
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Damn yeah. I didn't even notice that. What happened is, my FBCB file modify heights, but doesn't modify weights. So they still end up with NBA weight, but not NBA height. |
Here's the current HOF. I put her in. She was top 10 in points and had six rings.
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WNBA Hall of Fame All Positions |
In 1971, expanding by two. Philadelphia and Portland (OR) are being added.
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Here are the champs up to now
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WNBA Champs |
Seems every team has won at least one title
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WNBA Historical Performance |
I have D3 players feeding the league all the way up through 1980, then we'll switch to my D1 league's players.
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Post-expansion league alignment. I'm taking over the Philadelphia franchise as GM.
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1970 WNBA Standings |
I sort of have two parallel stories going on at once. I have an FBCB NCAA women's league going that's a feeder for this league. I also have a D3 league that feeds this one, but that one I've stopped using starting in 1980 in favor of the D1 league because it might be easier to read this with schools you recognize.
I think I'm going to play Starting Ten, the NCAA game that we created last year and expanded this year in my NCAA dynasty, because it'll be a good way to track players. Instead of ten, I might go with five since it's just me playing. Right now, I've got William & Mary being actually good. They've moved to the American (AAC) thanks to their recent success, but can't seem to get over the hump when the post-season comes. After a few years, I've sorta gotten attached to seeing them get over the hump. In the WNBA, I'm going to be the expansion GM of the Philadelphia franchise. So that's where we're at. |
Ok, so the Philadelphia Fury have the 4th overall pick in the draft. We'll have to hire a coach, assistants and then I need to do the expansion draft.
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Ok, here's the first head coach in Fury history. He was an assistant last year on the Western Conference champion Colorado Peaks.
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COACH DETAILS |
Not exactly sure how to go about this expansion draft. I think it'll merely be a game of best available talent? Not sure I want to load up on overpriced veterans who can't help us anyway and then get stuck with their contracts.
We'll do this thing the "right" and build from the ground up. Really just need to see what kind of talent is in there. |
Here was Portland's top pick in the expansion draft
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PLAYER DETAILS |
Ok, so after looking at the draft pool, my thought was to go with youth and talent over experience. I figure this way, if we do it right our team grows together and we fill in the blanks with veterans as needed.
So with that, here's our picks: Code:
PLAYER DETAILSFor my next pick, I wanted a point guard. I had to choose between Rachael Dunham, a 9-year vet who played for Houston last year. She had a PER of 15.1 averaging 11.1 MPG last year. The alternative is 21-year old Miranda Albanese who played for Connecticut. Well she barely played. The former 2nd rounder seems to have potential, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's worth passing over on Dunham even though the latter pick would be way cheaper. So in the end, I go with Dunham. Code:
PLAYER DETAILS |
Ok, so here's our post-expansion draft roster. Next up is the amateur draft.
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Philadelphia Fury Contract |
Ok, so the salary cap right now is at $19,637,650 and the Luxury tax threshold is $33,516,121.
I've turned inflation off for now, I'd like salaries to remain here for a while and we're still playing with a soft cap, so I'm not playing with full finances and not sure that I ever will be. We've got $14,434,186 in cap room, 2nd behind the other expansion team Portland. The mid-level exception is $661,493 and the low exception is $330,762. |
1971 DRAFT
It looks like I'm either going to try to move up in the draft or move down. The best three players are pretty definitive and so, I'm not sure I want to bother with taking the 4th best player on the board. She might be useful, but if I can package that pick for other assets, it might work best for us. So I'm going to shop the pick and see what I can get for it. What's cool is the possibility of four-team trades. No idea how to work these out yet -- like I need to evaluate the player base a bit more -- but I like the possibility. |
I could literally sit and orchestrate trades all day. It required me to move some draft pick pieces, but I wanted to really set us up well. I'm not sure I'm done tinkering yet.
This deal was done originally with three, but I felt like I was taking back too much salary. You could argue I gave up too much, ditching future picks the way I did, but this year's 1st rounder wasn't doing much for us. I guess losing out on the 1sts for the next two years just means we have to be good or else, we'll end up like the Knicks of the WNBA for a while here. But I'm convinced the Philly faithful want a winner straight up. So anyway, here's the damage from the final trade. Quote:
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In case you found that as confusing as I did, the bottom line is, we've traded all of our picks for the next three years including this season. I didn't think this year's draft was worth a damn and I'm gambling that I can build a winner so that we won't need to deal with draft picks anyway. If I'm wrong, we'll pay for it for years to come...but I've never played this game and I wanted to tinker a bit.
What I did was deal not very many assets into pretty good talent, while we took back some salary, the real coup was being able to get other teams involved to the degree we did. New York seemingly did it to cut payroll, since McDermott is a legit player that they dealt to Indiana for picks. Meanwhile, we pick up three starters two guards who'll surely be part of our lineup and a forward in Davis who I think can help us a lot. My only FA goal is to pick up a big and maybe some depth. But otherwise, I feel like we're in good shape. Code:
Philadelphia Fury Offense |
Free agency was sort of crap. Lots of guards, but not a lot of skilled bigs. I got what I could though and so, here's the players we signed.
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PLAYER DETAILS |
Ok, no idea how this will work out. But we'll see how it goes. Regular season is 42 games. We'll stop at mid-season to how things are going.
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Here's the 1971 all-star break standings
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1971 WNBA Standings |
Here's our stats so far. For not really having any idea how this would go, I think we're doing pretty well. The game says my roster talent is poor, by the way, so you know...not really sure, but I tended to ignore ratings in this game and looked at stats because well...it's just easier that way to make a measure of who is good and who isn't.
For some reason, the computer seems to overfocus on guards for these AIs teams, you'd see teams without as many bigs or emphasizing a full roster plus depth, so we managed to get some talent that fell through the cracks. Code:
Philadelphia Fury AveragesThis isn't a superteam though.  My colors might throw you off. But my order from best to worst is black, gray, pink, blue and white being worst. Davis and Blakney were our All-Stars this year. |
With about four weeks to go in the regular season, we were leading the North division and then Teresa Cribbs, our best player went out with a broken foot that'll keep her out for until early May. So if we can get to the 2nd round of the playoffs, we might get her back by then. This is where the depth will come in. Elysa Pastor will take over in the starting gig for her.
We were 26-11 at the time of the injury, so we'll see how the last month or so goes without her. We go 5-0 without Cribbs and end the year at 31-11. Jordyn Davis was All-WNBA 1st team, All-Defensive 2nd team and Rachel Chamberlin was named most improved player. The expansion team finishes with the best record in the WNBA this regular season and are the top seed in the Eastern Conference after winning our first division title in franchise history. Code:
1971 WNBA Standings |
So we're taking on the Washington Mystics (25-17) in the Eastern Conference semis. They're more talented and we're missing our best player, so you can't take them lightly at all.
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EASTERN CONFERENCE SEMIS Game 1: Philadelphia 146, Washington 137 Game 2: Washington 157, Philadelphia 137 Game 3: Philadelphia 154, Washington 138 (PHI wins series 2-1) In the Eastern Conference Finals, we take on the New York Liberty (28-14) who finished 3 games behind us in the Northern Division, they beat Charlotte 2 games to 1 to advance here.
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Cribbs is still out 12 more days. I forgot the 1st round is best of 3, so we might not get her until late into the finals, if at all. It would be a bummer to end the year like this, but it is what it is. EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS (Best-of-5) Game 1: New York 134, Philadelphia 119 Game 2: Philadelphia 131, New York 126 Game 3: Fury 133, New York 130 Game 4: New York 141, Fury, 132 Game 5: Code:
Liberty 134, Fury 131 - 5/4/1972Despite a valiant effort and the return of Teresa Cribbs who was day to day by now, we still couldn't put out the victory. Still, a hell of a first year for the entire franchise. Not bad for not really knowing what I was doing. And obviously, the trick here is playing with women players the whole game is turned on its head almost because its often like reading Greek. |
New York Liberty beat the Houston Comets 3 games to 1 to claim the 1971 WNBA title. It was New York's first title in 31 years and the first time they'd made it out of the 1st round since their last Finals appearance in 1953 when they lost to Seattle.
Meanwhile, that was Houston's 3rd trip to the WNBA Finals since 1966 (both previous times they'd won) and have won 9 titles overall. |
What the points???
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I didn't realize the modifier would do that, to be honest. I dunno if it's just that I've got players who are importing too good (they're pretty terrible in FBCB) but my stat modifiers are 500 pace, 500 inside fg, 500 field throw %, 750 jumpshot fg, 750 3p %, 500 tunrovers, 750 steals, 500 blocks. Maybe I ought to turn up blocks and turnovers. But I'm sort of fine on the whole with the high scoring games. |
136 possessions in 40 minutes is intense.
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I just realized it's because we had a 24-second clock. I'm going to experiment next season with a 48-second clock and see what that does to scoring.
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Apparently, it's pace. I just saved a test version because I don't have the time to play through my dynasty (or more like, I have other shit I need to do..) and I didn't see much change. Lowered pace to 100 and got scores over 200 points. Raised pace to 1500 and saw a 57-46 game. So it's all in the pace, not anything else.
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Ok, so I simmed the next season while my internet wasn't working last night. It was a pretty fun off-season, I got my targets including re-signing Jordyn Davis and Jennifer John. I managed to get some depth. Remember Miranda Albanese, the one PG I thought about picking up in the expansion draft?
Well she was a free agent, so I signed her this off-season as an insurance policy. Not that we needed it. Here's the stats from the past year. I messed with pace a bit, but forgot for most of the season, so it was normal scoring, too low and I'm not as big a fan anyway. Code:
Philadelphia Fury AveragesI knew we'd be more talented. I made some tweaks to the squad after a really rough Novemebr where we went 3-5. Code:
1972 WNBA StandingsIn the end, we ended up with the #2 seed in the east and had to face the Washington Mystics in the 1st round. We made a trade with them earlier in the year -- they offered -- C Erika Torrest for C Michelle McGee and a 1st. Torres was the better player, no doubt. But she (and McGee) are both free agents to be, so I did the deal because a 1st was worth it to me, especially since we don't have one in this draft. Starting next year, we'll have picks again tho. Anyway, this was the subtext of our series against the Mystics. EASTERN CONFERENCE SEMIS Game 1: Fury 128, Mystics 125 Game 2: Fury 125, Mystics 124 So two close games, but two Ws and we're out of there and back to the Conference finals for the 2nd straight year, taking on the defending champs, the New York Liberty. EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS Game 1: Liberty 144, Fury 121 Game 2: Fury 101, Liberty 99 Game 3: Liberty 129, Fury 99 Down 2-1, I just tried not to panic, really. I conceded that Game 2 was really a lucky win anyway. After the 3rd game, I made adjustments to our lineup. I went huge the rest of the way out, changed the defense to a zone and jacked up the pressure. Lowered 3s a bit, but mostly decided to force them to beat my bigs, because we had the size advantage over them and my bigs can get to the basket inside.[/i] Game 4: Fury 124, Liberty 117 Game 5:
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Our first WNBA finals is against the Phoenix Mercury.
I keep our lineup the same from the conference finals. I don't know much about Phoenix, but I just figure it might work okay for us. I did shorten the rotation, we had too many ladies getting into the games and gave Rachel Chamberlin more playing time. She's far too good to be not playing as much as she doesn't on our squad. Game 1: Fury 113, Mercury 100 Game 2: Mercury 116, Fury 113 Game 3: Fury 126, Mercury 116 Game 4:
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A title in two seasons is sort of ridiculous. But for whatever reason, WNBA teams are overemphasizing PGs at the peril of starting bigs. Even with that, we're not killing the system. Liberty probably would beat us in a long series. Mercury weren't better than us, but almost had our number. Still, really exciting to reach the mountaintop two years in. I sort of want to expand the league more now and take over a new team, because we've already won in Philadelphia. But I sort of like this ballclub, we don't lose many players and so, I might wait a year or three to do that and see if we can't at least repeat before I go on another experiment. |
Expansion will happen, but with no expansion draft. I'll stay in Philly.
The four new teams: Boston Blizzard Milwaukee Does Orlando Miracle San Jose Hustle We'll go up to 47 games now, the way I envision (not sure how the schedules in this game actually work) is you play your division 2 times, the other division in your conference 3 times and then the other conference teams 1 time to give you that total. What happens in reality, again, no clue and it doesn't matter all that much. |
47? That's a very odd number because it means imbalanced home and road schedules at least.
(Yes, I'm being anal, but I occasionally waste precious brain cells on these sorts of scheduling puzzles in sports, trying to find a way to come up with something that's better than how it's done in real life.) |
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This is why I keep you around. I'll go to 48? But not until next year, because my sleepy self simmed already past the off-season part where we could tinker. And chances are, we'll be expanding again in a few years anyway, so we won't stay at 48 probably through 1980 when we switch from D3 players to D1. |
In the draft, we were up to our usual shenanigans.
I traded two players who were bit players that I originally got in the expansion draft. I sent that 1st rounder I got from the Mystics along with SG Erin Ramirez and SF Kendall Proctor to the LA Sparks in exchange for the Sparks 1st rounder and two 2nd rounders. It enabled me to move up to the 11th pick in the draft, because I wanted to get a power forward if possible. The player I was targeting went 2nd rather than falling to us. So then I had this pick that I didn't really "need" per se. Still, a solid point guard fell to us in that spot and so, I thought I'd just go with it. Still, I needed to fill that big position. So I made a deal to acquire C Kayleen Wallace from the Houston Comets in exchange for two future 1sts and a serviceable power forward in Ashley Blakney. She's good, but Wallace is a much better player. See for yourself. ASHLEY BLAKNEY
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KAYLEEN WALLACE
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In free agency, we're not really going after any big contracts because our cap space isn't where it needs to be. But I might resign PG Elysia Pastor (13.5 PPG, 4.3 RPG, 2.3 APG, 15.8 PER last season) in a sign & trade situation, because she was useful, I just have youngster who can play that spot for a lot less money, especially since she's 33.
We have just under $2.5m in cap space. Here's the players we have under contract for next year. It'll give you a sense of where the salaries in the league are right now. (I have inflation off for now.) Code:
Philadelphia Fury Contract |
I managed to offload Pastor in a sign and trade to Milwaukee along with one of our 2nd rounders, for a future 2nd from them and C Cassandra Baker, who I'd be surprised if she made our team.
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PLAYER DETAILS |
Most of the AI trade offers suck, but Sacramento offered me SF Marianne Solis, who is 34 and a future 1st for SF Jordan Davis.
I love Davis. She's 28 and has been a real linchpin to my offensive situation this year. But she's also going to be making $6m next year and I'm not entirely convinced she's one of the 5 best players in the league, which are the only players making in excess of $6 million in this league right now. Soooo...I'm tempted to do it, if only for the 1st rounder that I probably won't be able to pry from someone later on. But Davis makes us a better team and ditching her probably makes us vulnerable. This deal has made me sure I need to trade her by the deadline more than likely. Meanwhile, I dealt Miranda Albanese, a free agent to be to Boston along with a 2nd, in exchange for a future 2nd and a bit player. She was a sparkplug and I liked her, I just knew she wasn't going to play much for us, we're not going to resign her and so, to get something for her rather than having her walk seemed to make sense to me. Well and I picked up a point guard who was a former 2nd overall pick a decade ago and who was pretty solid in New York. Not sure why she got released other than probably we have such a glut of guards in this league that she was viewed as not useful. Anyway, she came cheap and I think she'll be more useful in the end anyway, so I flipped Albanese. |
Finished the year 29-19, 3rd seed in the East. Lost in the 1st rounder to Washington, who ended up winning their first title since 1958.
Meanwhile, we're going to add 4 more teams again this year. Stick to the 4 division format, no expansion draft (there's just a lot of random talent floating around the league that teams need to sign) again because it's 4 teams which would put us at 28 teams and we'll probably stay there. We're going to a 54 game schedule now. (See it's even!) Expanded the playoffs to 12 teams, from 8, because I somehow forgot that we only had 4 slots in each conference. Four new teams will be: Vancouver Vixens New Jersey Gems Detroit Currents and one more eastern team that I haven't yet decided on. Thinking a smaller market though, a "basketball crazy" city that may will add to the storyline. Not sure where tho. Also the Sacramento Monarchs are moving to Anaheim to become the Anaheim Amigas. Their only title came in the pre-pro era of 1906, they've never won a title in the modern years. After making the WNBA finals in '64, they've missed the playoffs every year since. |
In the end, I went with Des Moines, Iowa and the Iowa Cornets, who were a real team that you can read about.
Here's the alignment for next year. I moved the Fury to the Atlantic. The schedule turned out to be 56 games and like I said, we're bringing 6 teams in each conference to the playoffs now rather than just 4 in each. Eventually that might go to 7, but not right now. Code:
1973 WNBA Standings |
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Lessee here... you have 24 teams, right, with what, four divisions of six? 4x own division for 20 games 3x other conference division for 18 games (three opponents 2-for-1 at home, three other opponents 2-for-1 away) 1x each team in other conference for 12 games That'll give you an even 50. (Then again, I have no idea what flexibility you have in setting schedules, so this is just spitballing an idea based on your numbers.) Edit: Never mind. Miscounted the teams. Looks like you have 28 teams now. |
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Yeah 28 now. The game gives no flexibility at all. Just allows you to select a number all the way up to like 84, I think. |
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Hm, okay. And just because I can't help myself, here's an NBA-pre-30-team four-division realignment if you want to reconnect to some of those old rivalries: EAST Atlantic: Boston, Conn, NY, NJ, Philly, Washington, Orlando Central: Chicago, Milwaukee, Indiana, Detroit, Cleveland, Charlotte, Atlanta WEST Midwest: Tennessee, Iowa, Minnesota, Tulsa, Houston, SA, Colorado Pacific: Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, SJ, LA, Anaheim, Phoenix |
That's quite helpful. What I decided through free agency right now is that I actually just want to restart this league with the same player base, but with a new save starting in 1974. What's nice about it is I get rid of all of that old history when I wasn't paying attention, but also, I can create minor leagues and add foreign leagues to the mix too because I'd like to see more players get a chance to get PT and right now, there's not as much opportunity for that.
Haven't decided whether I'll just launch a Women's D-League or if I'll activate some foreign leagues and have them play overseas (the latter seems likely since it mirrors real life...) |
So I did precisely what I said I would do. I took Wolfpack's realignment and used it to make a new WNBA in a new save game. Same players, but I activated the D-League (With the same teams for now...because I don't really care.) so WNBA players could get more playing time. I've got various foreign leagues showing at different times, mostly to diversify the player pool a bit, since I'll lose the D3 league soon (so many more schools in D3 than D1) and end up with the D1 league starting to feed the universe starting in 1980.
I've taken over the Fury again, but for all intent and purposes outside of the same players it's a "new league." At least the records and so forth will work better this way. I'll probably go crib a few other dynasties and see if I can't deliver this one a bit more organized. |
Here's how the '74 regular season shook out.
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1974 WNBA Playoff StandingsWe took on the Mystics in the 1st round of the expanded playoffs. |
Award Winners from '74
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1974 WNBA Season Summary Awards |
Our roster from this year and depth chart. We had injuries earlier in the year, so I decided that our stars were playing too much and decided to go with a deeper rotation.
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We swept the Mystics in 3 straight, now that the playoff rounds are all best of five. We had a few days off while the other Eastern Conference series had to finish between Atlanta and Cleveland.
WESTERN CONFERENCE 1. Seattle 2. Minnesota 3. Houston 4. Los Angeles 5. San Antonio 6. Anaheim (Look at that, they move to a new city and the playoff drought ends. Funny how that goes.) EASTERN CONFERENCE 1. Connecticut 2. New York 3. Atlanta 4. Philadelphia 5. Washington 6. Cleveland LA def. San Antonio 3-1 Anaheim def. Houston 3-1 Philly def. Washington 3-0 Cleveland def. Atlanta 3-2 So both #6 seeds advanced to the Conference semis and we'll get Connecticut next up. We split the season series with them this year, so it'll be a crapshoot. Looking at team stats....just to see where we match up and we're apparently the 3rd highest scoring team in the WNBA this year. We give up the 3rd most points of any team though, so lock-down defense we're not. The Sun give up the 3rd fewest points of any team in the league, so...it'll be a tough go. Code:
1974 WNBA Team Stats Leaders |
Here's the gameplan I constructed to go against the Sun.
 I also moved Sarah Northup into the starting lineup since she's a bit taller. Here's the team's scoring averages for this year. We'll see how it goes. Code:
Philadelphia Fury Averages |
1974-75 WNBA EASTERN CONFERENCE SEMIS
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Go go! And games are 48 minutes now? :)
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One of the perils of moving files is I forgot to bring the coaches from the old league over with me. Since I started this universe in the pre-season, we didn't end up getting to hire these people, it's just what the game gave us. I hadn't even looked at them until just now.
But I did go ahead and fix the coaching situation a bit to figure out who would be doing what. Not sure if it'll help, but figured it was worth doing anyway.  In the Western Conference, Minnesota beat Anaheim in 5 games and LA knocked off the Seattle Storm in 5. 1974-75 EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS It's against our nemesis the New York Liberty. They're still good and so, if we'll get back to the Finals, we're going to have to earn it.
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Yeah, no more 40 minute games. Thought it was better this way. |
The Spoiler tags are mostly to keep this from visually looking like such a stat dump.
If you hadn't read above, we are in the Finals for the 2nd time in 3 years. We're facing the Minnesota Lynx. They are led by Lucy Dinkelmann (35.7 PPG) and Dayana Felton (29.7 PPG) a lethal 1-2 combo as exists anywhere in the WNBA. Dickelmann was league MVP this year, which probably explains why they're here. She was all All-League 1st team defensive team as well as All-WNBA 1st team. She is not playing with you fools. I bet the real advantage we have outside of just gameplan and that we're really hot right now, is the fact that we have so much depth. We have lots of ways to beat you. It's clearly I'll need to start implementing some house rules or just starting playing with worse teams. But in the meantime, we'll rock and roll with what we have. I made some modest adjustments to our rotation, mostly getting Teresa Cribbs, a former Finals MVP more involved because she's been not getting much PT from me. She's old, but she can be valuable. 1974-75 WNBA FINALS
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Sidenote, here's the contract situation for next year. It's good I came back this year to run them, because most of the party will be broken up next year.
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Philadelphia Fury ContractStill this team has been a lot of fun. Kayleen Wallace will still be here, there's money to bring back any number of the others. I'd surely have to find a suitor to take Cribbs away, as she's finished in my mind. So many of our role players will probably want a lot more money than they're making now, though I have no idea. Jordyn Davis had a team option for next year, but I wasn't really convinced she's worth Top-5 player money, when she's not even the best player on her own team. So I declined it and she'll be gone. I don't think it'll be a rebuilding job, per se, but it'll be a challenge to really have the pieces come together as they did this past couple of years. Especially since there was no way of predicting what this team was capable of at the start of the post-season. I was just hoping not to choke in the 1st round, so a Finals appearance is beyond my wildest expectations. |
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On the last page, I was just thinking what awesome use of the spoiler tag to keep things clean. One minor suggestion maybe is in the playoff series always have 5 sets of spoilers regardless of how many games, otherwise the answer are given up. If that made sense. --t |
So I went ahead and started to sim to the next season. Looks like this upcoming year, we have the Argentine, French and Turkish leagues all joining the fray.
I am tempted to leave the WNBA behind for a while and see if we can't build a dynasty in a foreign league somewhere and coming back to the states later. I imagine that'll generate a challenge for sure. |
In terms of straight cash homey, the Turkish league is more prosperous than the French or Argentine leagues both of which have a cap at about $3m. The Turkish league has a cap of $5m. Weirdly, the French league has teams with higher paid players on the whole.
So it looks like for starters, I'm probably headed to either Turkey or France for this first year trip in foreign lands. The goal is simple -- win a title -- and I stay in the country until goal is achieved. No matter how long it takes. The goal being to rack up titles in multiple countries. With the foreign teams boasting entirely different rosters than what I've grown accustomed to, it'll be a whole different challenge winning in these countries. In a way, the basketball will be more conventional since it's not using my import draft files, but...it'll be different for me since I won't have a clue who I'm getting until we play. So maybe I'll narrow it down to 3 or 4 clubs and you all can help me decide. |
So I've narrowed it down to these three teams, each in a different league.
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Partially because I'm curious, going to fold one of the WNBA teams and create an expansion team in their place. I just want to see whether the dispersal draft actually happens as it's supposed to or not.
Now just need to decide who I'm nuking. |
Ok, so here's the deal.
We'll move Vancouver to Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Tulsa will be dissolved and a new franchise will be created in their wake, so there will be a dispersal draft if it works right and then we'll do an expansion draft for the new team that comes in, as well. Rather than go to Europe this year, I'm going to take the job running the new expansion team after being offered a huge contract to go build a new club from scratch. Foreign will happen, just not this season. |
Ok, our new team is the Tampa Bay Shock. Probably no real need for a 2nd team in Florida, but ...for whatever reason I liked the idea.
I'm not in the mood for staff hiring right now, so I'm letting the AI handle it under the guise that there is a Team President working over my head, who is the son of the owner. The salary is nice, but he meddles and this is just one way he's doing so. We'll see if it comes back to bite me later. There is no dispersal draft, because HR said that was broken and he'll fix it in the next patch. No big deal. We'll still go ahead and proceed anyway. Next up is the expansion draft. I'm going to go make dinner and figure out if I want to apply any house rules in the expansion draft, because I think last time I ended up so good out of the gate due to good expansion drafting and so, I'd prefer to hobble the team a bit and make it more like a real expansion team. That won't be "fun" but it'll be interesting to see how to build a real team using women players since the Philly experiment was kind of easy. As far as realignment, Indiana took Tulsa's place in the Midwest division and Tampa is in the Central. Vegas will remain in the Pacific for now. |
On second thought, the expansion draft was pretty shitty this time around. Maybe because the last time I expanded the league didn't have 28 teams. I forgot that would probably have a huge impact on the available talent.
Anyway...here's the players I picked. I will probably trade to make some deals, since I'm not entirely sure about all of these players.
Spoiler
 Lots of youngsters, like I said. We also have the 4th pick in the draft. My normal strat would be to trade down. But maybe I should suck it up and pick someone. |
Here's the draft pool for this draft:
Spoiler
I think as a bit of a new house rule, I think rather than relying on ratings, I'm going to evaluate/play based on stats only. It's a common OOTP playing way, but in FBPB where there is so much data, seems like a good tactic and a more challenging way to play. So we'll start using it that way and see what it yields. As mentioned earlier, we have the 4th overall pick in this draft. |
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