Testing Free Agency: An NBA Hot Stove Dynasty
 

The Durant free agency thing has me thinking about the ways that text sims model free agency and even looking at draft picks and players.

I don't know that there's a better way to model the experience. Right now, players just go to the team that offers them the most money. OOTP has tried to inject things like "role" into the decision, but ultimately there aren't a lot of complexities that go into the decisionmaking process unless you're in an online league and then (in theory) the free market should help determine what a team will do for a player.

I suppose one of the alternatives could be to just run all 30+ NBA teams, each with different philosophies and let that dictate things, because that'd inject some realism. When I first wrote this, I was just thinking about it from the player perspective and trying to figure out how players make decisions and to spend some time evaluating the ways players make moves, seeing whether those deals work for both the players and the teams.

But I'm still debating precisely how we'll do that.

For now, here's the backdrop of the league.

I have a 32-team NBA (Kentucky, Seattle) and a parallel college league that feeds the NBA with players. My goal is to introduce you to interesting players -- stars and others -- discuss contracts, look at the salary cap (which we'll control increases via a randomizer starting next season) and try to come up with ways to perhaps have readers get involved in the story too somehow as we move forward and you start to get a sense of who some of these guys are.

So if you'll come along with me on this journey, we can see where it takes us.

Interesting dynasty idea. I don't think 'whoever offers the most money' is necessarily completely accurate though. Golden State wasn't the only team who could offer Durant a max contract. For above-average to good players it's 'who is dumb enough to offer me more than I'm worth'(see: Lakers and others), but for the best players they can also demand the right situation(playing with Curry et al., etc.).

Take this whatever direction you want of course, it's your creation. Just thought I'd throw my .02 in .

No we totally agree. What I'm saying is, text sims don't model it right (or just sports video games in general) because they're designed for simplicity to maximize the $ return for a player. Occasionally, we see them designed a bit different where chemistry and "desire to win" or "desire to start" end up playing a factor, but at the end of the day, dudes end up making really rational decisions based entirely on max contracts to maximize their value/return and locking up their long-term value even if it's not always the most advantageous move.

In a text sim, Durant stays with OKC because it nets him the most money long term, without regard for the fact that taking a shorter deal with GSW means he has a chance to win. I can't envision a text sim that'd have sent him to Boston, even though that deal would've made sense from a "the eastern conference is easier and they have a lot of assets" perspective.

So there's no accounting for culture or intangibles. I know it's hard to model that, but I'd like to attempt it by replicating the GM functions of the various teams and start making "rational" decisions for that persona and see if the game responds. It'll require doing a bit of fudging (thinks like ensuring that no team offers a guy a 5-year deal if he asks for one, etc.)

There's always that free agent that overplays his hand in real life and ends up getting less than he'd gotten if he stayed with his existing team. In text sims, we don't really ever see that. (And console games of course are terrible at modeling this stuff, too.)

I'm just intrigued by whether or not we can force the game to create more realistic market conditions and if it means I have to take over every team to do that, I'm kind of cool with it.

So that's my idea.

Appreciate you chiming in, as always!

Just kinda idly, one text sim that does seem to have long-term earnings in their equation somewhere (aside several other factors of course) is TEW.

Younger workers will tell you in a heartbeat that they don't want to be tied to a 3 year deal, veterans are often reluctant to take a short one.

I know it's really the bigger picture/generalities you seem to be looking at here, just thought it was worth mentioning at least one that does do some of this stuff.

I have never played that one, but that's awesome you bring that up.

I am very much liking this. I've been doing an outlier dynasty at SimNation, where I maxed out a player's ratings just as he entered college (right at the end of the season, so he was a wunderkind who couldn't get recruited by the bigger schools). He's now in his seventh year in the NBA, and simply destroys.

I write that to write this: In his first go at free agency, he re-signed with the Bulls for less money; the Bulls, who have had a plug-and-play roster built around him, were able to sign the second overall pick in his draft, PG Richie Russell. Richie was drafted by Milwaukee, and it appeared that a brilliant rivalry was to be born...until he got hurt. He's about 80% of what he was, but he's still a seven-time All-Star, and a multiple-time All-NBA selection.

He signed for more than Jack did, which I found astounding. I'd link it, but I'd have a hard time finding the post. The entire dynasty is now on Page 535 (in Word).

General Manager Profiles
 

This is from the original dynasty, I don't think I'll reuse it now, but didn't want to delete this work. I might refer to it later.
As advertised, we're going to create 34 GM personas. Each with their own quirks. To keep things relatively simple, we'll categorize each GM into categories.

GM CATEGORIES

Not every GM will be the ideal fit for their particular team, since I'm not going to necessarily create them that way or do the research to match them perfectly. It'll be more interesting that way. I'm just creating 34 guys and the rest will take care of itself.

In addition, each GM will have a "trading" rank, so we know which guys are the ones you call when you wanna make a deal versus the ones who will make you overpay for anything you want to do. These are listed here mostly for me, so I can just keep track when I decide to do things in the player's character. Not necessary to keep referring to this page, if I do it right stuff will make sense.

TRADE GRADES

Not sure how much that magical run nor even the signees have to do with your INI file changes. I'm playing pure vanilla, aside from adding a single 0 prestige team at the beginning of the career, but I've signed at least three overlooked 5-star players over the course of a three coach "career". Each one eventually declared for the draft early & went in the top ten of the draft (including a #3 overall). Honestly, none ever stuck around long enough to have the sort of impact you might think they'd have on teams with prestige below 60. At this point I'm actually leery of even trying to get them, typically they're poorly developed/high potential guys that aren't really as reliable during their short stays as nice solid 3-star guys that arrive more developed.

Over the course of 60 seasons - with conference prestige allowed to change but only minimal (manual) movement for teams -- I've seen similar mediocre to magical teams more than once. Southern Miss wasn't even a 20-win team when they reached my 2018 final, didn't even win their conference (CUSA has been a prestige 2/3 conference for most of this dynasty). The following season it was Charlotte, going to the final after a similarly so-so regular season. 2030 it was Santa Clara, though they were a WCC juggernaut all year and finished 30-8.

Campbell, Northeastern, Georgia State, Stony Brook, Hofstra, St. Mary's, they've all gotten to the final four with mostly similar backstories. That's one of those kind of teams about every six seasons, with virtually vanilla set up.

It's fun to notice but I'm just sayin that it could have very well happened. With the considerable number of 16/1 or 15/2 upsets that happen (about once every 2-3 seasons), there's a lot more chances for it to take place in the FBCB world than in the real world.

This is actually good to know from an online play perspective and I knew the code in the game is way more forgiving than in real life. I had not experienced the overlooked 5-star recruits thing ever happen to me though, so shout out to you for that part.

I'M GONNA STILL LIVE IN MY DREAM! :)

Dunno why this keeps crashing. I'm going to restart the league, since I have all of the college files. It might make it easier for me to get immersed too, this time.

I won't add any extra teams to the NBA in this next go-round, I'll just move existing teams. To go faster, I don't play with finances for the first 50 years or so. Cuts down on player movement, too, which feels more realistic.

Go Expos!!!

The Recruit Diaries
 

I'm basically running through a variety of ideas now and seeing what/if anything sticks. I've just been simming seasons galore without much care in the world.

My current idea is to follow some recruits through high school into college and then to the pros. I'm always fascinated by that idea, because it lets me sim a lot of years and then I eventually start to know who the hell these guys are.

This article in The Ringer made me start thinking about putting together U18 USA Basketball teams because both of the superteams we had on the Heat and the Warriors are borne out of relationships that started with that international play.

So maybe we see guys who after playing together on this team eventually head into the NBA and try to orchestrate their way onto the same team.

That could be a fun story and kind of what I was trying to achieve with this whole free agent dynasty in the first place, I just don't know these players well enough to assemble a roster of guys that I care about at all.

So I have to start with recruits and see if that'll make it easier for me.

To get you all involved, if you want me to create a recruit for you, I'll do it. With a twist. You don't get to name them, because you all are pretty bad at naming. But you can choose their hometown/high school/city/state, can choose their position (or if they're kind of a tweener) and if you have like a preference of where they go to school, we can try to get them there.

FIBA only does the U18 tournament every two years, but for the purposes of our storyline, we'll probably just do a team every year in some kind of format that allows us to showcase them. I might also look at the McDonalds All-American game results and see if there's anyone interesting as part of that class and worth following, too.

A man's only as good as his name, dawg. :) (Of course, if that was true, I'd be up ****'s creek.)

OK, I'll bite.

Hometown: Honolulu, Hawaii
High School: Moanalua HS
Position: SG
If possible, have him go to THE University of Hawaii.

Here's the Top 25 pro prospects in college basketball this season. Including our newest guy. (It was the off-season, so I just edited a walkon to become your guy.)

2011-12 HARDEE'S ALL-AMERICAN TEAM
-------------
FIRST TEAM
G Avondre Randolph (Villanova)
F Ezrah McDonald (North Carolina A&T)
C Cameron Richardson (Virginia)
G Ramello Harrison (Utah State)
F Kaleem Palmer (Butler)

These are all dudes from last year.

Here's this year's class of HARDEE'S ALL AMERICANS (2012-13) who are incoming recruits.
------------
C Jason Bailey (Louisiana)
(Committed to Oklahoma State)

PF Mac Montengro (California)
(Committed to St. Mary's)

SF Matthew Cohen (Indiana)
(Committed to Indiana)

SG Mark Griffin (New Jersey)
(Committed to Syracuse)

PG Tyler Crouse (Maryland)
(Committed to Virginia)

Awesome. Thanks!

Wow... North Carolina A&T is a powerhouse!!!

In his freshman year, Brian Yoshinori led the Rainbow Warriors to their first NCAA tournament since 1968. They were an 8-seed, but had a tough matchup against a Buffalo team that's always dangerous and probably deserves to be in a better conference, but nobody wants them yet.

Anyway, Hawaii lost, but I imagine they'll be back next year.


Can't imagine that Yoshinori won't have a few conference awards coming his way.

Yoshinori pulled off the impossible, becoming the first freshman to score National Player of the Year honors.

North Carolina A&T won their 2nd title in 3 years, this time, becoming the first team to complete an undefeated season since 1950 (San Diego State 38-0) and only the 2nd school ever to do it.

Georgia & Pittsburgh made the Final Four for the first time ever and Utah State returned for the 5th time (3rd time since 2005) in school history, but the first time since joining the Pac-12 replacing UCLA when they moved to the Big 12.

Here's the pro prospects list and who will be declaring for the draft.

Brian Yoshinori... the name certainly sounds like someone who would be from Hawaii.

Nice to see he's not a one-and-done kid, too.

2012-13 SEASON RECAP

The 2012 season was historic as the Aggies of North Carolina A&T finished with only the 2nd undefeated season in the history of college basketball.

It's been a stunning turnaround for the program that won only 8 games as recently as 2006. Head Coach James Keesee (and athletic director) took a voluntary demotion in 2007 and let young wonderkid Levell Garrett take over the program for two years. When Keessee returned in 2009 to helm the program - his alma mater - that he'd run since in 1989, it was a totlaly different program. Four straight NCAA appearances, a groundbreaking national championship in 2010 led the Aggies program to move from the historically black MEAC conference to the American Athletic Conference.

Now they've won two national titles in three years, it's an unprecedented run.

NCAA TOURNAMENT REPORT
Two 16 seeds lost for the first time ever in the same tournament. #1 Portland was downed by giant killers Louisiana Monroe & Albany took down #1 Butler. Neither made it to the Sweet 16.

ELITE 8 TEAMS
Utah State, Utah, Georgia, Baylor (coached by Levell Garrett), North Carolina A&T, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, Florida

St. Mary's won the NIT
Maryland won the CBI (a year after winning the NIT. They'll fire their coach.)
Brown won the CIT.


Here's the final polls of the season.

I require them to play two years in college. My NBA is stats only, so I need something to measure them by and all I have is college stats.

Here's the updated national championship register.

TRUST THE PROCESS Pt. 2

The New York Knicks are terrible. The year is 2014, they are one of three non-expansion clubs to never appear in the NBA Finals.

Our job here is to become Knicks savants. We're going to live and breathe the franchise and become their biggest fans.

We've made the playoff just three times since 1997. We've been to the Conference Finals just twice in franchise history. But now they've hired this stats guy to come in here and remake our Knicks entirely.

They've traded the entire roster, we're going to be playing with a bunch of no-name guys this year, they've gotten a bunch of draft picks and so, we're just gonna wait and see what happens.

I'll write recaps of each season for you, so you can experience a sliver of the pain of what it's like to be a Knicks fan in this timeline.

2013-14: THE REBUILD BEGINS
In the off-season, the Knicks cut about $25m in salary and then traded anyone else with a pulse. The core guys they kept were our last two top draft picks - Len Wells and Harley Shrader. Those guys will be gone by draft day, meaning the entire roster will be new dudes.

It really is a new day in New York.

EPISODE 1. THE FIRST SEASON

The Knicks were terrible. We knew they'd be bad, but I think we expected there would be something to root for, some sliver of positivity somewhere in the awfulness. They're a cohesive and terrible team destined again for the lottery.

The lone bright spot on the club was Doug Bailey, third-year guard out of Southern University who averaged 23.8 PPG. Another former top pick Harley Shrader (15.2 PPG) was also solid in his 2nd NBA season and last year's top pick Celino Moya (9.8 PPG, 7.5 RPG) was a solid defensive presence, but none of it mattered when the team featured leaky defense and an inability to stop anybody, ever. Undrafted rookie free agent PG Donny Ehlers averaged 13.7 PPG and was a First Team All-NBA Rookie. So can't argue with that signing for a bargain.

So we head to the off-season hoping for something better, but not quite sure exactly what that's going to look like and how it'll be possible. We're bad. We're going to keep being bad for a while.

With $66m in cap space, I imagine there are things the team could do, but I don't think they're going to do anything but try to build a team through the draft and see what happens.

The worst.

Two 7-seeds made the conference finals this year (Orlando, Minnesota) and a 5-seed (Kentucky) won the NBA title. So there are teams that were bad that are now good out here doing interesting things and we're floundering.

No idea what they're willing to do to make things better.

2012-13 SEASON RECAP

Brian Yoshinori won National Player of the Year honors as the Rainbow Warriors were the lone top seed to advance to this year's Final Four. In the school's season in program history, he led them to their national championship, defeating Cinderella story The Citadel to claim the ultimate prize.


He's declared for the NBA draft after his 2nd college season and will be eligible for selection, likely as one of the top picks.

Other Top Seeds: Indiana, North Carolina A&T, Northwestern

Final AP Poll

Hawaii Rainbow Warriors, national champions... I like the sound of that! :)

I'm kind of bored of every story. I don't care about the teams really. So I'm going to try something else.

Every year I'll create a new recruit from my high school and insert him into the recruit pool, we'll follow him through his career and I'll just track them. That's it.

I sim too slowly and it's getting boring and I just really want a reason to pour the through the history and I don't right now even when I sim massively.

So that's our deal. One guy a year starting now in 2014 and I just do season recaps on them, probably initially just posting their season stats and that's it. If anything else interesting happens, I'll start reporting on it.

The only other idea I have is that I'd like to take the New Jersey Generals expansion team in my league and move them. In thinking about it, I don't really think New Jersey needs an NBA team. MLB, yes. Basketball? Less so, just no natural central location for the fan base, Newark & Jersey City alone can't support a team especially when nobody in NY would care and in this league, we've got teams in Virginia and two teams in New York.

So I'd like to become a fan of that team, but only following their seasons and reporting on the sim as a fan of the team. I won't edit anybody in the NBA once they've left college and I won't change any outcomes by not saving. It'll just be a fan story.

So I'll have to decide where they're moving to and that'll be a story too.

So that's what we've got here, an alma mater story and a story about becoming a fan of a team that's decided to relocate.

The New Jersey Generals are moving to Chicago to take up shop. The Milwaukee Bucks moved to Pittsburgh, meaning the Chicago media market has room for another team and the new team will play a few games in Milwaukee too during the regular season to try to expand their fanbase.

The new club will be named the Chicago Atomics.

Here's their past history in New Jersey.

My computer crashed and I thought I saved but didn't. So have to start the Atomics first season over. Bleh.

Another 50 year challenge
 

I played Pick 5 for this year's NCAA tournament. I think it's something I'll do into the future, too.

2015–16 NCAA Tournament

2) UConn (21-9, ACC) 9
4) Air Force (24-9, B12) 10
6) Baylor (21-10, B12) 28
2) Michigan (28-5, B10) 9
3) Hawaii (30-7, MWC) 12

I honestly did a lot of picking based on who I knew were on these teams, but more by their coaches. The tournament is especially topsy turvey, but I'm curious to see how accurate (or not) I can be this year. According to the actual rules, you get a point for each round a team advances and then also the equal # of points to match their seed for each round they advance.

Here's how I did:

So I scored 68 points this year.

St. John’s beat UMass for the National Championship.

2015-16 Chicago Atomics
 

The ATOMICS, playing their first season in Chicago made the playoffs. They lost in seven games to the Clippers in the first round, which stinks. But they did make the post-season, the Bulls didn't and that's good for keeping the fan base engaged with their new team.


I hope they bring back DeShea Scott somehow. He's a great player and I think it'd help them continue to contend. He's the sort of star they need, but hopefully the GM doesn't screw it up. He's the league MVP, but they don't have his Bird rights, so he's probably gone.

2014-15 NBA STANDINGS

2016-17 PICK 5

Good news, La Salle made the national title game. Bad news, two of my selections lost in the first round. I scored only 52 points this year.

Indiana beats La Salle for the national title.

Cesar Zarate's grandfather is a hall of famer, so it'll be fun to see how he does as he's likely going pro.

2015-16 NBA RECAP

Atomics won the NBA title in their 2nd year in Chicago. Bulls lost in the 1st round to the Hornets in the East. Atomics resigned DeShea Scott like I hoped to a 7-year deal worth over $200m. They also had the #1 pick because of a previous trade made with the Knicks that netted them into the Atomics into the lottery and surely that helped too. Jack Short from Marquette is a wonderkid.

NBA champs through 2021

Basically I wanted to create the CFL of the NBA but based domestically in markets so the NBA doesn't have to expand anymore.

That way, all of those players whose careers we followed in college who maybe didn't pan out when they got to the pros for whatever reason, would manage to be somewhere centralized where I could find them. It's partially because the game is bad at discovery, but also because I'm just curious how a salary capped league attracting second tier talent and having to compete with foreign leagues for players, even with a bit of a salary advantage would perform.

What I really want to do is take over my favorite team - the Chicago Atomics - and just delve more into their story.

The New Jersey Generals moved to Chicago -- and the Western Conference -- in 2014 after five years as an expansion team playing in New Jersey and hoping to replace the Nets.

Their new owners decided that Chicago was a better market, the Bulls are not as relevant as they once were and they felt with the suburbs isolated from the city, that they could capitalize on the population there to create less of a cross-town rival and more of a team that gives suburbanites someone to root for. With the Milwaukee Bucks moving to Pittsburgh, this opened up more homes and the Atomics still play 3 regular season games in Milwaukee each year to burnish that fanbase.

The Atomics have been a success on and off the court. They won their first title just two years after moving to the city and claimed a second in 2017. Since losing in the NBA Finals in 2018, the team has missed the post-season two of the last three years and the franchise is at a crossroads heading into the 2023-24 season.


I remember vividly when the Atomics orchestrated the deal with Brooklyn to bring DeShea Scott to Chicago. It was a huge move at the time and it's been a success that worked for both him and the franchise. But Scott has a huge contract with several years left, the Atomics are in a weird place and Scott is getting older. Ownership is considering moving him elsewhere so he can win another ring and giving the club the best chance to start rebuilding.

That said, he's been here for nine years and there hasn't ever been a Chicago Atomics team that didn't feature DeShea Scott in the lineup. Forget the sentimental, he's still a very good player.


The Atomics only have three guys under contract -- each making around a third of the salary cap apiece. Needless to say, this isn't a tenable way for a club to move forward.

Anyway, DeShea Scott will be dealt to the San Jose Clippers in exchange for two future 1st rounders (2023, 2025). It's a hard move to make, but that salary space for a team that's not winning is crucial and it's really a favor to him to end up on a team that could be a winner with him at the helm.

No doubt he'll always be an Atomic.

The other star on the existing roster - Avondre Randolph - was also too expensive.


We found a three-team deal that sent Randolph to St. Louis in exchange for a 1st round (2024) pick, PG Bryan Gump (last year's 1st rounder of the Hawks), C Merv Peters & SF Brooks Fallon.

The Spurs acquired PG Richard Dimmick (via Chicago) from the Hawks and sent a '23 1st rounder to the Atomics.

Rebuilding mode has officially begun in Chicago, we'll see how long it lasts, though.

Here's how Brian Yoshinori is doing.

The Albuquerque Dukes were bought and moved to Oklahoma City last year, a group of people who grew up Thunder fans rebooted that franchise, meaning they got to acquire the records & history of the old team, 18 years later and the Dukes were essentially folded.

Montreal Expos forward Cassius Moses, a 4th year player out of Duke had a monster year in '24-25, winning the NBA MVP. But a thing he did that I stumbled onto was breaking the 67-year old single-game scoring record.

He put up 71 against the Chicago Atomics in a regular season game this March. Had to save the boxscore.

The History of Basketball

Normally when you start a new pro league, the pro league gets stocked with players the game generates before you're able to use FBCB imports in your new league.
I decided I wanted an entirely college derived of dudes who only came from the college game.

So I started with a 30-team NBA setup with Seattle not OKC (the Sonics last season in Seattle) and simmed about 40 years into the future. Once I knew the file was comprised entirely of only college derived players, I exported the player file, started a new league and then we'll start with that new pro/college setup starting in the early 1940s sometime.

Then I'll sim the seasons from the start and pay more attention to who some of these dudes are, because the problem with my existing league is that I didn't really get immersed with the early history or have a system for making it make sense to me.

It'll also be interesting to see how it impacts history if at all with the initial group being players that came from the college game entirely.

I'll probably spin this off as a result.

Here's how my ratings work. Developed my own color system a few years ago, the initial one in the game was just hard for me to follow for whatever reason.

The History of Basketball: 1939-1968
 

The first thirty years of this NBA timeline is bookended by dynasties. The league has 29 teams, deliberately because I wanted the 30th team to be a team I put in a city and run in perpetuity. (Or until I get bored..hah)

Here's how the teams have done over the first 30 seasons.



Here's the first set of MVPs.

The History of Basketball (1939-1968)
 

Ideally, what I'll do here is set the stage for this league and then break it off into a separate dynasty. But there's no point in cluttering the forum with another half-eaten dynasty if I'm not going to continue the story, so I want tj just sandbox in here first.


The 8-time MVP and consensus GOAT is Felton Peters who is a free agent now, but spent his whole NBA career with the Celtics. He's 2nd all-time in scoring, but despite winning 8 MVPs, the Celtics have only won one title during his tenure, which tarnishes his legacy slightly.




Here's the Top 50 leading scorers as of the start of the 1968-69 season.

Most rings? Four guys have won 5 rings. Three of them were on the Warriors. The 4th is David Petro, who is still active and has won rings with three different teams.

Another Michigan man is probably the consensus 2nd best player in league history and if you ask some people, he's even better than Felton Peters. This is 5-time MVP Wil Buckner, who spent the bulk of his career with the Timberwolves. Like Peters, he's only got one ring to go with all of those MVPs.

To diversify the player pool a bit and to enable me to cut down on doing anything other than renaming guys when the modern era starts (the game generates too many old names and I've edited the name file before, but it's a bit laborious) I've been running parallel D2 and D3 leagues. At a certain point in history, those guys enter the draft but not through the NBA.

They essentially get drafted into foreign leagues as imports. That's how they start their careers. If any of them are good enough, you'll see them eventually end up in the NBA and because of my talent distributions, it happens, but you also see a lot of otherwise good players who should be in the NBA who never end up on teams because they're too old, they were overlooked and teams just signed guys they knew already.

I did this in the early part of this sim, but then stopped for over a decade because I didn't have many foreign leagues activated and so, there'd be nowhere for them to go. As I add more foreign leagues, it starts to make more sense to have these guys entering the pool.

It keeps rosters interesting across the board and I find the dynamics super interesting to watch play out. I think we'll bring back D3 in 1970 and add a D2 league too. Where they get fed? I dunno, probably Australia and Canada, eventually it'll be China, but I don't bring that league into play until modern times.

This time, we'll get to follow these guys and I can start looking at overlooked dudes who might be good enough to play in the league, highlight careers of star D2/D3/undrafted guys who dominate overseas, too.

There haven't been a ton of #1 pick busts, but there have been a few guys who were clearly picked too high. I couldn't find more than two consensus "busts" though there are other guys who were probably reaches.

Charles Holm

James Tapia

The #1 pick in last year's draft is not an impact guy yet, but that doesn't mean he'll be a bust. But after his first year, it's clear they wasted the 1st overall pick.

The former Brian Larkins, who played college ball at Tennessee changed his name to Abdur-Rasheed Siddiqui in 1974. This is mostly to remind me later.

Was going to use the same thread, but decided to just move this off to a new one.

This dude averaged a triple double in 1946 and somehow didn't win the MVP.