The NHL Expansion Draft hubub and NBA Draft have left me in the mood to build a team. So I'm going to do parallel expansion drafts for both baseball and the NBA because I don't think I could write an especially convincing hockey draft dynasty yet.
So first, the NBA.
My NBA sim has a parallel college league that it pools from, but that league is 20 years ahead, so we're gonna sim the next 20 years to catch up and stick with our expansion team for those 20 seasons and see if we can turn them into a winner with whatever we've got.
My only requirements so far for expansion teams is putting teams in non-real life NBA/MLB markets because it makes for a more interesting story for me.
We have a league of 32 teams, with 8 teams in 4 divisions.
For the purposes of my story, I'm just going to expand the league to 33 teams and take over this team for whatever reason.
NEW YORK RENAISSANCE
The Harlem Rens are the 33rd team to join the NBA. They'll actually play in Queens at an arena built next to the home of the Mets.
We get the 4th pick in the draft, but before we can do that, we'll have to expansion draft.
My goal is to field a competitive team from the start, so we're going to go after dudes who can actually play and go from there. That said, we'll want to be careful and not spend so much that it limits our ability to be competitive later. It's not like this team is going to win a championship out of the expansion draft.
To make it more realistic, we're going to operate similar to the NBA expansion draft that the expansion team's salary cap is 66% of the NBA salary cap. Our current cap is $80m, so that'd $52.8 million. We're not going to spend to that, but it gives us a good benchmark to work with in terms of how not to go too insane in the expansion draft.
Here were our selections
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2033 Draft Order Draft Preview
# Team Selection Pos Previous Team
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1 New York Rens Kaan Koprulu SG Miami Heat
2 New York Rens Sammy Swafford SF Orlando Magic
3 New York Rens Mauricio Vidal PF Cleveland Cavaliers
4 New York Rens Brock Abbott PF Oklahoma City Thunder
5 New York Rens Billy Ashby PF San Antonio Spurs
6 New York Rens Alvaro Hooper PG Dallas Mavericks
7 New York Rens Lee Coley SG Chicago Bulls
8 New York Rens Alejandro Basham C Los Angeles Lakers
9 New York Rens Earnest Rankin SF Portland Trail Blazers
10 New York Rens Aaron Benjamin PG Oakland Warriors
11 New York Rens Howard Poe SF Charlotte Hornets
12 New York Rens Bert Concepcion SF Pittsburgh Nets
Our top pick is probably the best guy we got in this whole thing. We went cheap and young deliberately, I avoided paying $ for overrated washed up guys, though it was tempting if it was going to get us a few extra wins. Instead, we have a lot of young guys and we'll be bad, but it won't cost us a ton of money. Our payroll is about $35.9m right now. We'll need another big in FA, but besides that, we'll play the trade market and leave it at that.
My logic: He's a team friendly deal as a veteran FA who came over from China. He's productive and if he has anything left in the tank, could be a useful starter for us. If not, it didn't cost us the bank.
I have ratings turned off, so it makes it a bit more difficult to scout using stats only, but I prefer it.4
POST EXPANSION DEALS
Sent PF Brock Abbott to the 76ers along with a future 2nd round pick in exchange for C Billy Dew
Just going to do season recaps. You won't know any of the players, but it shouldn't matter. I'm mostly just reporting on how the team did and noting anything interesting I might have done during that particular season acquisition wise worth noting.
I've never had a lot of NBA luck for whatever reason, maybe because I want to build a team like NBA teams play now, but the game still plays in the old NBA way. I have a custom file that tries to replicate a similar type of NBA basketball that we see now that's positionless and up tempo and it mostly works, but teams still use players the old ways.
Anyway, I'm kind of excited about this first Rens team. I made a few deals at the draft that give us some exciting young talent, coupled with a few veterans on contracts that are ending, so it won't be a terrible boring team in its first year in New York, but we're also not anything close to a playoff team.
I'm simming through free agency entirely for this first year, after doing trade deals at the draft we have about $3m left in cap space but two of those contracts will expire after this year so it won't matter much.
I have a lot of foreign leagues in my game, so it runs a bit slow on the sim side during the off-season. Once it's done, I'll take a look at our regular season roster and we'll go ahead and dive into the year. I won't play out games or anything, but I'll likely recap the regular season for a bit because I'm intrigued to see who these dudes are, get a sense of the league itself and so forth.
Uncharacteristically, I probably won't be doing a lot of trading early on, because I don't know many of these players and also, I'd kind of just like to see how the team does with whatever talent we have/get through the draft and while we'll likely be bad for a while, it'll help me get my bearings rather than spending all of my time just acquiring the best players like I usually do.
We went 3-3 in the pre-season but it doesn't matter.
Here's our contract situation for this first season. We took on Giannopolous and Amos from Vancouver in exchange for a first rounder this year and some other stuff that went on in a four-team deal during the draft. That said, we don't have any long-term contracts of major value, by design.
As for who I'm actually excited about on this roster? Romeo Jackson, who I got from Tampa during the draft, but he's not willing to sign an extension right now.
I feel like he's the kind of guard we could build around, but we'll just be happy to have him for this year and go from there. If Amos and Giannapolous have anything in the tank, it'll be a fun team to watch.
I am interested to see how the younger guys develop, too.
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PLAYER DETAILS
#3 PG Romeo Jackson Jr. - Rens
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Height: 6-1
Weight: 212
DOB: 11/7/2006 (27)
College: Arkansas
Hometown: Mannford, OK
Exp: 3
Attributes:
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Type INS JPS FTS 3PS HND PAS ORB DRB PSD PRD STL BLK QKN STR JMP STA
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Current: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Potential: - - - - - - - - - - - -
Health: Good
Status: Active Roster
Salary: $1,780,493
Length: 1
Stat Averages:
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Season LGE TEAM G GS MIN PTS ORE REB AST TO A/T STL BLK PF
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2032 NBA TBY 82 82 35.4 13.5 0.7 2.9 8.2 2.5 3.32 1.1 0.1 2.7
2031 NBA TBY 82 82 36.0 14.6 0.7 3.0 8.5 2.0 4.23 1.3 0.1 2.8
2030 NBA TBY 82 0 12.8 5.6 0.3 1.2 3.1 0.9 3.43 0.7 0.1 1.2
Career 246 164 28.1 11.2 0.6 2.4 6.6 1.8 3.43 1.0 0.1 2.3
Shooting Averages:
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Season FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% InsM InsA In% JsM JsA Js% 3PM 3PA 3P%
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2032 5.1 11.5 .445 1.7 1.8 .953 2.1 3.2 .648 1.5 3.9 .382 1.5 4.4 .352
2031 5.3 12.2 .431 2.2 2.4 .910 1.7 2.9 .585 1.7 4.4 .386 1.8 4.9 .378
2030 1.9 4.3 .453 1.0 1.1 .945 0.6 0.9 .649 0.7 1.5 .435 0.7 1.9 .373
Career 4.1 9.3 .440 1.7 1.8 .932 1.5 2.4 .622 1.3 3.3 .392 1.4 3.7 .367
Stat Totals:
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Season LGE TEAM G GS MIN PTS OREB REB AST TO STL BLK PF +/-
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2032 NBA TBY 82 82 2901 1111 58 235 673 203 88 12 224 -371
2031 NBA TBY 82 82 2956 1194 60 245 693 164 104 12 231 -144
2030 NBA TBY 82 0 1053 461 26 101 257 75 56 5 100 -23
Career 246 164 6910 2766 144 581 1623 442 248 29 555 -538
Shooting Totals
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Season FGM FGA FTM FTA 3PM 3PA
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2032 421 947 142 149 127 361
2031 431 1001 181 199 151 400
2030 159 351 86 91 57 153
Career 1011 2299 409 439 335 914
Efficiency:
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Season LGE TEAM G TS% PPS AST TO USG ORR DRR RR PER VA EWA +/- OEFF DEFF
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2032 NBA TBY 82 .549 1.17 35.6 10.7 19.6 2.5 8.0 5.1 14.3 141.7 4.7 -4.5 111.0 116.8
2031 NBA TBY 82 .548 1.19 35.6 8.4 19.8 2.5 8.0 5.1 16.2 230.9 7.7 -1.8 111.1 112.6
2030 NBA TBY 82 .588 1.31 35.5 10.4 20.6 3.1 8.9 6.0 18.3 114.0 3.8 -0.3 112.4 114.1
Career 246 .555 1.20 35.6 9.7 19.8 2.6 8.1 5.3 15.7 486.6 16.2 -2.2 111.3 114.6
Playoff Averages:
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Season LGE TEAM G GS MIN PTS ORE REB AST TO A/T STL BLK PF
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Career 0 0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 A/T 0.0 0.0 0.0
Playoff Shooting Averages:
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Season FGM FGA FG% FTM FTA FT% InsM InsA In% JsM JsA Js% 3PM 3PA 3P%
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Career 0.0 0.0 .000 0.0 0.0 .000 0.0 0.0 .000 0.0 0.0 .000 0.0 0.0 .000
Playoff Totals:
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Season LGE TEAM G GS MIN PTS OREB REB AST TO STL BLK PF +/-
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Career 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Playoff Shooting Totals
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Season FGM FGA FTM FTA 3PM 3PA
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Career 0 0 0 0 0 0
Playoff Efficiency:
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Season LGE TEAM G TS% PPS AST TO USG ORR DRR RR PER VA EWA +/- OEFF DEFF
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Career 0 .000 0.00 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 - -
Career Highs:
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Type Pts OReb Reb Ast Stl Blk TO FGM FGA FTM FTA 3PM 3PA
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Season 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Playoff 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Career 30 4 8 20 5 1 7 13 25 10 10 6 11
Awards & Achievements:
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Season Award
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Total Player of the Game: 9
2031 NBA Rookie Game Participant
2029 2nd Team All-Conference (Southeastern Conference)
2025 Transfered from Auburn
2024 High School: Rated ***** and #803 overall by the FBCB scouting service.
Much more competitive in the home opener, but similar result. I'm going to make a change to the depth chart, we're going to play small the rest of the year and if it works or not, be damned, I just want to see how the experiment plays out. If we're gonna be bad anyway, it might as well be interesting.
New York Rens General
Player # Pos Age Ht Wt Exp Status College
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Alejandro Basham 45 C 23 7-1 272 1 OK Middle Tennessee
Darnell Amos 26 SF 26 6-6 221 6 OK UNLV
Tuan Blankenship 4 SF 21 6-6 238 0 OK Utah
D. Giannopoulous 9 SG 28 6-4 223 8 OK Arizona State
Jesús Velasco 24 PG 21 5-10 170 0 OK UNLV
Romeo Jackson Jr. 3 PG 27 6-1 212 3 OK Arkansas
Kaan Koprulu 23 SG 31 6-5 226 7 OK None
Alexis Denton 34 PF 23 6-10 274 0 OK Portland
Billy Dew 41 C 29 7-0 292 8 OK North Carolina
Trenton Pedersen 51 PF 24 6-7 246 4 OK Xavier
Sammy Swafford 10 SF 24 6-7 233 1 OK Dayton
Bert Concepcion 20 SF 22 6-3 196 1 OK Santa Clara
Mauricio Vidal 40 PF 24 6-8 271 1 OK Loyola Marymount
We lose a winnable game to the Wizards and fall to 0-7 on the year. Tomorrow night we face off against the hometown Knicks in a battle for New York. They're undefeated though, so...it's not gonna be much of a contest.