BasketPulse - The Minnesota Muskies

[brett32z]

Over the last few months I’ve really gotten into Basket Pulse, an online basketball management game, and thought it might be fun to document my progress here. You only have one game per day so updates will be relatively slow coming. But it appears there is a decent amount of depth to this game so there will be other things to talk about in addition to the actual results.

I’ve decided to begin my story today because for the first time since I started playing, I’ve hit a point where I need to make some interesting long term strategic decisions. Previously it had been a simple matter of signing the guy with the highest rating and plugging him into the lineup. But now I’ve realized I need to think a little more long term to continue progressing.

For full disclosure, while I have no affiliation with this game beyond playing, one of my goals with writing this is to inspire more people to try this game out. I would especially like to get more US based players in the game. The US National Team has finished 5th, 4th, and 5th in the last 3 World Championships in this game - clearly an unacceptable situation. To rectify, we need more people scouting and developing US players and I hope this helps accomplish that goal.

Next up, some more info on the structure of the game as well as some history on our team.

[brett32z]

So, what is this thing?

Basket Pulse is a Lithuanian based (Lithuania is an absolute powerhouse in this game) online basketball management game that takes place in real time. The structure is modeled around European style leagues (promotion/relegation, national and international competitions, etc) rather than the NBA. A season lasts 63 real life days and you generally play one game per day. As I mentioned above, there is a fair amount of depth to this game. You are responsible for building your roster, setting lineups, negotiating trades with other people, managing your budget, setting up training plans, implementing tactics, etc.

One of the things I like about this game is that, despite the amount of things you have to manage, most days I spend about 5 minutes getting set up for the next day and that’s it.

The game is free to play and has minimal pay to win elements. Technically you can spend real dollars to purchase game dollars but it’s stupidly expensive. For example, if you wanted to buy enough game money to allow you to have double the salary budget of anyone else in the game’s highest league, you would have to pay around $10k real life dollars.


How do you get players?

You build your roster 4 different ways:

Bidding against other teams to sign free agents off the marketplace
Trading with other teams
Signing players your scouts find (I’ve cheaped out here so my scouts have found precisely one half decent prospect in my 1.33 seasons)
An end of season draft that is a little confusing at first because it doesn’t work like American sports style drafts.

Sadly, you cannot buy/sell players from/to other teams.

What is the end goal?

This game features promotion/relegation mechanics so your goal is to work your way up the various league hierarchies and ultimately win the championship of the top league. You are in 2 leagues at once - an international league (where you compete with people all over the world) and a national league (you only compete with people from your home country) but the general idea is the same.

[brett32z]

Team History - Season 87

Our first season, season 87 for the game itself, was very successful as we achieved promotion in both the international league and the national league (in fairness, this is pretty easy in the lowest leagues) and ended the year with more money in the bank than we started with.

We were able to win World League 6 outright in season 87 largely due to diminutive guard Marquis Currie, more on him later, absolutely catching fire in the playoffs. He upped his scoring average from just under 20 points per game in the regular season to 31.7 points per game on 59% shooting including 52% from 3 in the playoffs. He had several 40 point games during our playoff run and broke essentially every team scoring and shooting record in the books.

US League 3 was a similar story as Currie again scored over 30 per game in the playoffs to lead us to the finals. However, in contrast to World League 6, we lost the deciding Game 3 to finish 2nd. Fortunately, we later won a 1 game playoff with the 10th place finisher in US League 2 to clinch our promotion to the higher league the following season.

Season 88

Season 88 began with a mad scramble to sign an almost entirely new roster as I tried to upgrade the talent level to compete in WL5. I lucked out and managed to borrow a star center from a Spanish league team while landing a very good SF and PF within a few days of each other. These 3 along with the returning Currie gave us a top 4 that could compete in the higher leagues.

This brings us to the present day. In WL5 we’ve just punched our ticket for advancing to the top 16 round which means we are guaranteed to not demote this year. In US2, we are similarly positioned to advance to the playoffs and have also guaranteed we will not face demotion this year - or likely ever. US2 kind of sucks, sadly. This is why we need more US players!

Next, a quick rundown of the roster and then it’s on to the actual games.

[brett32z]

Starters

PG - Kestas Makstutis - 6’7’’, 29 years old, 198 current rating/201 potential rating
Offseason signing that hasn’t worked out very well. He’s averaging career lows in shooting, career highs in turnovers, etc. He helped stabilize us during the early days of the promotion but is not long for the team.

SG - Marquis Currie - 5’10, 24 years old, 233 current rating/307 potential rating
A high scoring guard who was the hero of our playoff run last season that led to our promotion. He’s also a deeply weird player who is undersized but makes up for it with good shooting along with world class speed and jumping ability (think Nate Robinson) but can be unplayable at times due to being a turnover machine with some of the worst basketball IQ ratings I’ve ever seen (think, well, Nate Robinson). I have no idea if he’s actually good or bad or if he’s a franchise cornerstone that will be with us for 5 years or if I’ll trade him tomorrow.

SF - Tanguy Maire - 6’9, 28 years old, 234 current rating/234 potential rating
An offseason signing that has very much worked out. Tanguy is a good all around player that scores efficiently, plays good defense, rebounds, and almost never turns the ball over. Unfortunately, he’s also expensive and has topped out as a player. I wish he was 25 with more potential for growth but at his age and salary number, he is also likely not long for the team.

PF - Mantautas Janisius - 6’9, 24 years old, 263 current rating/268 potential rating
My preseason draft choice this year and he has been excellent. He is our best shot blocker, 3rd leading scorer, and 2nd leading rebounder. He’s very efficient as well averaging less than 1 turnover per game while currently placing 4th in the league in FG%. He will definitely be with us 1 more season and likely a few years after that.

C - Raffaelli Villalba - 7’0, 25 years old, 222 current rating/268 potential rating
A loaner from a team in WL4. Our leading scorer and rebounder. He’s awesome in this league and I wish I could keep him. I’ll certainly try to borrow him again next season but not sure how likely that is.


Bench

PG - Antoine Waltham - 6’2, 21 years old, 141 current rating/235 potential rating
Not very good currently and only so-so potential. I signed him largely because he’s American and I want to maintain 3-4 American players at all times due to eligibility requirements for the US leagues. He only makes $1,700/wk so cutting him won’t be too painful if that time comes.

SG - Hsu Yu - 5’11, 26 years old, 175 current rating/176 potential rating
My draftee from last year. He’s fine but his contract expires after this season and won’t be re-signed.

SF/PF - Joel Dennis - 6’9, 18 years old, 115 current rating/354 potential rating
The future of the team. In this game, every team is gifted a very young player with very high potential as your franchise player. Dennis is mine and he’s going to be very good some day. I’m trying to mold him as an athletic, excellent shooting big wing (maybe a Jayson Tatum type?) and he’s getting there. He’s probably a year away from no longer being a clear detriment in WL5 and maybe 2 years away being an ok backup. He only costs me $600/wk though so I’m fine letting him develop for now.

PF/C - Hugo Saunterton - 6’11, 22 years old, 176 current rating/268 potential rating
An ok backup that can’t stay out of foul trouble. He’s averaging almost 1 foul every 5 minutes this season. I’m developing his athleticism now and will switch over to defensive skills soon to try to keep him on the court more. He has plenty of room to grow so I’m hopeful he can help out more some day.

[brett32z]

Season 88 Day 21

Today is a US2 league game and we play the Rice Owls. These guys are terrible and we’re going to kill them. I’m not even going to bother with adjusting our tactics.

In the transfer market, there are a couple of guys that I would love to have but we can’t afford them. I’ll submit a few lowball offers and if we get lucky, great. But there’s almost no chance.

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Ha, yes we did kill them. We set a team scoring record in a 147-41 win - and on the road no less! I’m not going to bother with any highlights or stats. Everybody shot well, no one got hurt, etc.

In transfer market news, as expected, both players we bid on signed for well above what we offered.


Major Team Announcement

After the “game” today, I came to a major decision that will impact at least the rest of this season and likely the next several. You know those interesting strategic decisions I mentioned in the intro? Well, I hated to do it but today I decided to release Tanguy Maire, our starting small forward, our highest rated, and highest paid, player on the team.

Why do this now? Because we’ve already secured our place in WL5 for next year but I don’t think we have a real chance to promote up to WL4 this season. I want to save some money while developing our young players for a promotion push next year or the year after. I think the money and extra development will be much more valuable for the team long term than pushing hard to finish, say, 7th rather than 12th.

This isn’t a painless decision. We had to pay a big chunk of money to Maire when we released him and we will receive less in prize money at year end due to a likely worse finish. Plus, we no longer have any real ability to compete with the best teams in the league. Our strength rating fell from 12th to 17th in WL5 and from 2nd to 5th in US2 for example. But, this decision should allow us to enter next season with better developed young players and a much stronger financial position.

[brett32z]

Day 22

We have a real game today as we take on the Northern Knights in our first game in the top 16 portion of World League 5. We reached the top 16 portion by finishing in the top 4 of our pod during the 14 game regular season (had we not finished in the top 4 of our pool, we would have been placed in the bottom 16 portion where we would have faced potential relegation).

The Northern Knights have a better team than us, especially after releasing Maire, but they have under performed a bit this year. They are rated as the 5th best team in the league but have only gone 9-5 so far which comes to something like the 10th best record in the league. We’re 11-3 by comparison so I think we have a decent shot, particularly with this game taking place on our home court.

Looking at their previous games, these guys do a lot of damage from the 3 point line - 44% on the season on a high volume of shots - so I’m going to have our team come out in a man to man defense and have them focus on the Knight’s shooters. On the other side of the ball, the Knights are generally a pretty poor defensive team. They look especially vulnerable down low so I’m going to run our offense through our bigs.

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We led almost the entire way and built our lead to 10 with 4 minutes to go in the 4th quarter. From there, our possessions went as follows:

Bad shot - missed
Bad shot - missed
Good shot - made
Turnover
Bad shot - missed
Turnover
Turnover
Turnover
Couldn’t get a shot off before time expired

The result of this infuriating stretch of play was that the Knights hit a 3 with 22 seconds left to send the game to OT.

In OT, we re-discovered our ability to play competent basketball and outscored them 19-8 to take a 95-84 victory.

An ugly, and much more nerve wracking victory than it should have been. But a W is a W and we got to 1-0 in the top 16 portion of the season.

Our 2 starting bigs, Villalba and Janisius combined for 57 points on 65% from the field proving the Knights were weak defensively down low. I’ll need to remember that for the next time we play them. Currie hit 5 3’s while scoring 17 for the game - to go along with 7 turnovers. A pretty standard Currie type of game this year.

[brett32z]

Day 23

Another WL5 game today as we go on the road to play the Michigan Wolves who, for the purposes of the game, are located in Slovenia. The Wolves are experiencing financial difficulties so their manager has cut them down to only 7 players and 2 of them are not any good at all. I’ll look to exploit their lack of depth by playing a fast paced game (to try to tire them out) and attacking the basket (to try to get them in foul trouble). These guys really aren’t very good but they have been outperforming their talent all season.

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Well that sucked. We were again up 3 late and again let them hit a 3, this time with 17 seconds left, to tie the score. We again were unable to get a shot off before time expired to go to OT.

In OT, go up 2 with 2:30 left and then turn it over 3 times the rest of the way to lose by 2, 90-88.

Waltham, our young PG, was terrible this game as he finished 1-6 from the field, turned it over 6 times, and allowed his man to score 34 points. We were outscored by 29 points while he was on the floor tonight and lost by 2. That means we outscored them by 27 points in 7 minutes he was off the floor.

My tactical choices were a mixed bag. I did manage to foul out one of their bigs and my bigs were again great, combining for 55 points on 65% shootings. However, my attempt to tire them out failed because their manager was smart enough to have his team play slow and sit back in a zone to conserve energy.

I guess games like this is the price you pay for going all in on development but man, what a frustrating ending.

Transfer Market News

In transfer market news, I see a good young American shooting guard is available and only asking for $4,200/wk. I really like him and put in a legitimate offer to try to get him - $6,500/wk. He ends up drawing 10 bids and going to a Tawaineese team for $9,100/wk. This is a pretty clear overpay but it’s still disappointing to lose him. He could have stayed with us until WL3, at least, and definitely could have helped in US1.

[brett32z]

Day 24

We remain on the WL5 schedule with a home game against Lukoilas. They are a weird team as they dominated their pod in the regular season going 13-1 and looking like a favorite to win the league. However, once the top 16 games began, they released all but 4 of their good players. They don’t appear to be experiencing financial trouble and none of their remaining players are young so they aren’t focusing on development. The only thing I can think of is that they want to cut payroll and bank profits the rest of the season. The only problem with this idea is that they would be in a much better position getting promoted and then trying this plan in WL4 next year. I don’t understand it but they are in their 77th (!) season as a team so presumably they know what they are doing.

I would expect an easy win but Villalba apparently got hurt in our previous game against Michigan (Slovenia) and is out today. We’ll start Saunterton in his place. Hopefully he can make it past halftime without fouling out.

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It wasn’t easy but we did come away with a 96-83 victory. We were up 1 with 8:30 before Janisius and Currie scored 20 of our final 22 point to help us pull away.

Janisius was great putting up a 36 point, 9 rebound, and 5 blocked shot statline. On top of that, he drew 11 fouls this game and was the driving force behind 2 of their players fouling out. Getting into their weak bench was no doubt huge for our 4th quarter run to win the game.

Currie had one of his, “no really, I am good” games today scoring 26 points on 17 shots and only coughing the ball up 3 times. If this was what I got from him every game I would extend him tomorrow.

Transfer Market News

The only player that interests me on the transfer market today is a 16 year old Chinese SG with 308 potential. I would happily pay him $1k or so per week to develop for the next several years but he’ll go for way above that.

I don’t even put in a bid for him and watch as 12 teams fight a bidding war for him. Ultimately, a Chinese team named McGrady signs him for $5k/wk. Good for them but it will be at least 5 seasons before he is even a decent backup in WL5. By then I hope to be closing in on WL3.

[brett32z]

Day 25

Oh man, there are 4 players that really interest me in the transfer market today. That’s actually bad because the game forces me to remain within my budget since I’m still so new. That means I can’t bid what I want to on all of these guys. I’ll try to lowball 3 of them while going aggressively after Massamba Sana, a 6’6” Senalgalese SG. He’s currently rated 249, has the potential to get to 295, is a very good athlete and a fantastic shooter. He was scoring an efficient 21 PPG this year for a WL5 team (in a different division than us) before they ran into financial troubles and had to release them.

If we can get this guy, I think we would be strong candidates to promote next year. He’s asking for $10,500/wk and I’m going to offer $12,000.

As for the actual games, we’re back to US2 as we take on The Tricksters at home. The Tricksters are one of the better US2 teams but I like our chances against them at home. This is another team with only 7 players so I’ll try my “tire them out then foul them out” tactics again.

These guys are pretty strong interior defenders but are weak on the outside. If I still had Maire (or if I get Sena), I would attack them heavily from the perimeter but I’m down to Currie as my only good shooter right now. I’ll try to do a little more balanced attack but we’ll still need to go through our bigs quite a bit. Fortunately, Villalba is back today.

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Yup, a pretty easy 83-68 win. We had pushed the lead to 20 at one point before, ironically, tiring ourselves out and letting them make it a little closer. The game log notes 20 times that a player’s tiredness impacted their play and we were the victims 15 of those times. It might be time to retire the “tire them out” strategy until we get a 9-10 man rotation.

Fortunately, the “foul them out” strategy was more successful as we managed to put 2 of their starters on the bench and hold them to under 20 minutes of playing time. Unlike some other teams we’ve played lately, these guys didn’t really have major weak links on the bench. Still though, it allowed us to play against players rated in the 180’s rather than 220’s which surely helped.

We were once again led by our big 3 from a scoring standpoint - Villalba had 24, Currie had 20, and Janisius had 17. All were efficient and Currie again only had 3 turnovers. Yu came off the bench to record 5 steals in only 20 minutes of play.

Transfer Market News

Gut punch. We missed out on the 3 lowball players as expected. Worse, we missed out on Sana too. He signed with a WL4 team for $13k/wk (I offered $12k).

Being such a small team, I have to be very careful with my budget. But missing out on this guy over $1k/wk is rough. In reality, I probably would have needed to top the other team's bid by a fair amount since I'm in a lower league. But still. With only 4 competing bids on Sana, I felt like we had a real chance.

[brett32z]

Day 26

After yesterday’s transfer market... excitement (tragedy? debacle?) I don’t see anyone today that interests me.

We're going on the road for a WL5 game against Jurbarko Kariai. I hate these guys. They were in my pod during the regular season and handed us 2 of our 3 losses. Everything I tried against them backfired and did so in frustrating ways. I went at them from the outside the 1st game and we lost by 3 after leading the whole game until the final minute and being up 13 at one point.

The 2nd game I tried attacking them from the interior and we won 3 out of 4 quarters but lost the game by 5 because they beat us by 15 in the 2nd quarter. Janisius and Villalba both had their worst game of the season.

I look forward to seeing whatever BS causes us to lose this game.

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There it is. A 72-66 loss for our 3rd single digit loss for the season against this team. At least we had the decency to trail the entire time this game. A 28-12 free throw disadvantage was too much for us to overcome.

Villalba put up a 19 and 11 but was only 6-17 from the field. Janisius and Currie were pretty good with both scoring efficiently and contributing 22 and 12 respectively.

Waltham turned the ball over 8 times and Saunterton hilariously managed to foul out in 10 minutes of playing time.

I’m so glad I only have to deal with this team one more time this season.

[Izulde]

Following and will check out the game

[brett32z]

Day 27

I have my eye on a point guard that’s available in the marketplace today. He’s not amazing but he’s exactly what I’m looking for in a PG: able to contribute immediately but still has a lot of room to improve, good assist/turnover ratio, and gets a decent number of steals without fouling.

He’s asking for about $4,300/wk and currently only has 1 bid. I’m going to wait until closer to the deadline before placing a $5k bid for him. Snagging a starter who could develop into one of the better point guards in the league at this salary would be huge.

Our game today is a WL5 road match up with Baoji. Baoji is rated as the 4th best team in the league and their play this year is reflective of their talent level - 14-0 in their pod during the regular season and 4-0 in the top 16 pod to date. Looking at their roster, I don’t see any particular weaknesses. If they have one, it’s perimeter defense but I no longer have the outside shooting to exploit it. We’ll go balanced and hope for the best but this one could be ugly.
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We lose 88-75. The outcome was expected but we played them pretty well. In fact, the score was tied with 7:40 to go. Even more encouraging, we were able to accomplish this while the normally reliable Villalba shot 5-34 from the field! He also had 10 offensive rebounds so some of it was him rebounding his own misses (and evidently missing again) but it’s still a lot of wasted possessions.

It was a tough day almost across the board for us offensively. Currie was the only bright spot with 28 points on 19 shots.

Saunterton fouled out again but managed to play almost 18 minutes first. Progress I guess.

I just noticed they had a guy shoot 7-31 today. I’ve never seen stat lines this extreme before. I wonder if there was a glitch in the match engine today.

This loss drops us to 2-3 in the top 16 round and one game out for moving on to the top 8 playoffs.

Transfer Market News

We received some excellent news before the game today - we signed our PG! He ended up attracting 3 competing bids but our offer of 5 years at $5k/wk topped them all.

He’s not a superstar but he looks to be steady and reliable with strong ratings in all of the areas I want for my PG. He’s extremely quick, a good ball handler, an excellent passer, and he reads the floor well. He’s not bad defensively either. With luck, I’ve found my PG for the next 3-5 years.

[brett32z]

Day 28

There’s a really appealing C in the marketplace today that I could never afford. However, I bring him up because I love the name of the team that released him. They are a Chinese team named “Basketball Emperor Chamberlain”. And their logo is a picture of Wilt. That’s the best team name so far!

We’re back in US2 for our game today taking on the Chicago Predators at home. Chicago is by far the highest rated team in WL2 and are undefeated on the season so far. They have 8 players averaging double figures and their 9th man averages 9 PPG. So they’re pretty deep.

They don’t shoot a ton of 3’s so I’m going to try to pack it in with a 2-3 zone to try to slow down their bigs. They also rarely try to score in transition so I’m going to have my team crash the offensive glass hard.

Despite being at home, this one could be rough too.

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We lose 80-67 but I’m actually really encouraged by the result. For one thing, we were relatively competitive and didn’t need any kind of crazy outlier performance to do it. But more importantly, we were finally able to generate good shots against a good team. 25 of our shots in this game were rated as either “excellent” or “good” and we went 19-25 on them (as opposed to 10-38 on all others). By comparison, we had 10 “good” or “excellent” shots in the game against Jubarko and only 4 in the frustrating loss to Michigan. I hope this is due to our new PG and is potentially a very encouraging sign for us.

The loss drops us to 6-2 in our US2 pod with 2 games left in the regular season. We’ve already secured a playoff birth in this league and just need to win 1 of our final 2 games to gain a 2 seed for the playoffs. We’re favored in both of the next 2 games so this shouldn’t be an issue.

Other News

A very productive day in training today as backup PG Antoine Waltham improved his passing skill from 6-7 while SF Joel Dennis increased his inside scoring from 5-6. I’m going to keep Dennis on inside scoring but am switching Waltham over to focus on his ball handling.

In international play, the 12th ranked US under 18 team lost to the 5th ranked Ivory Coast in their first game in the winners division of the under 18 world championship, 98-78. The US is the lowest rated team in their pod and is unlikely to make it out to the medal rounds.

[brett32z]

Originally Posted by Izulde

Following and will check out the game

Welcome! I hope you enjoy it and let me know if I can help out!

[brett32z]

Day 29

The last game of our brutal 4 game stretch is a WL5 home game against 2nd ranked Pibi. Pibi went 12-2 in the regular season and are a perfect 5-0 in the round of 16. This team was once all the way up in WL3 for several seasons but have fallen on hard times recently. However, this means they have significantly more resources than I do and possess a team payroll more than 3x mine.

From a roster standpoint, they play 9 players 20 minutes or more and have a very high powered offense. They are No. 1 in the league in both fewest turnovers, which is fine because we don’t rely on creating turnovers, and highest FG%. They aren’t great at shooting 3’s so I’m going to pack it in again with a 2-3 zone.

They’re decent but unimpressive defensively so I think we can score on them. I’m just not sure we can stop them.

They’re also the 2nd most popular team in the league so I can at least look forward to a sold out arena today.

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We lose our 4th in a row 93-82. We shot the ball pretty well but a -6 turnover margin and a -2 offensive rebound margin gave them more extra possession than we could overcome.

Our big 3 played well today. Villalba had 30, Currie had 29 while shooting 8-14 from 3, and Janisius had 18. All were efficient as well (Currie had 7 turnovers but shot very well). Pibi just had too much of a talent advantage. The loss drops us to 2-4 in the round of 16 pod. Fortunately the Michigan Wolves lost today as well so we remain one game out of 4th which would advance us to the top playoff round.

In our last 3 games playing against the best teams in the WL5 and US2 we’ve lost by 13,13, and 11 so we know pretty much exactly how much better we need to get to contend for both leagues next year. We’ll need good development from our young players as well as a big time transfer signing (or loaner) at SF and C but I think we can get there. Certainly within the next 2 years.

Other News

Another great training day today as our new PG, Tarbunas, improved his dribbling skill from 7-8 while Currie gained a point in experience (essentially a “clutch” rating in this game). Tarbunas is already only another point or two in dribbling from being a top tier WL5 playmaker. He still needs to improve his shooting and defense but playmaking is already very strong.

The US under 18 team was blown out by Taiwan today 85-58. They haven’t guaranteed their elimination but they’re getting close.

Tomorrow’s Game

Tomorrow we begin a 6 game stretch of winnable games starting with WL5 opponent Good Game Play All Day. They were in our pod during the regular season and we beat them twice. They are currently 8-12 on the season and 0-6 in the top 16 pod.

Looking at their roster we appear to match up with them well. Their interior defense isn’t very good and we do most of our damage under the basket currently. Their best defender is a shooting guard so Currie could be in for a tough day…. Unless I play some 4-D chess and start him at PG and move Tarbunas to SG. I’m not sure how the match engine will handle me setting my PG as a “shooter” and my SG as a “playmaker”. It might make them both ineffective.

Screw it, I’m curious to see what happens.

On offense they are among the league leaders in taking care of the ball and 3-point shooting. I’m going to come out in a man to man to try to take away their shooters.

[brett32z]

Day 30

We jumped out to a 14-3 lead 4 and a half minutes into the game and cruised to an 83-69 win that wasn’t even that close. At one point in the 3rd quarter we were up 31 before letting our foot off the gas a little bit.

We were once again led by our big 3 as Villalba, Janisius, and Currie combined for 71 of our 83 points. Villalba and Janisius were also dominant on the boards with both recording double figures in rebounds. Backup PG Antoine Waltham had a nice game off the bench chipping in 6 assists and 4 rebounds in 29 minutes.

Starting PG Tarbunas did very little - possibly my attempt to get a favorable matchup by playing him at SG but setting his focus as “playmaker” backfired. Or maybe he just got shut down by the strong defender I was trying to keep away from Currie (who did have a good game). I’ll try to remember to swap the matchups next time we play these guys to try to test it out.

In a surprise to no one, Saunterton again fouled out but gave us 32 pretty good minutes before doing so.

The win moves us to 3-4 in the round of 16 pod, one game behind the Michigan Wolves and bitter rival (from our perspective) Jubarko Kariai.

Other News

Our focus on youth and development continues to pay dividends as backup PG Antoine Waltham followed up his strong game with good progress in practice today increasing his dribble skill from a 4 to a 5. Still not a strength, even at this low level, but no longer a major weakness either.

The under 18 US Team lost to Slovenia 92-78 today. Slovenia and Spain are the 2 teams they have to beat to advance to the medal round so this is a big blow. The World Championships for the non age restricted national teams begin in a couple of weeks. Hopefully the US will fair better in that tournament.

Tomorrow’s Game

We have a US2 game tomorrow against Boston University. Their owner has left the game and they’re now managed by a bot so they’re terrible. We’ll win by 50+.

[brett32z]

Day 31

As expected, we won 136-44. The bot teams don’t typically put up much resistance. Not much to analyze from this game. We had 42 at the end of the 1st quarter and nearly could have stopped shooting for the rest of the game.

Other News

Our under 18 team was blown out by Spain, 99-72. We aren’t yet mathematically eliminated but it’s safe to assume they aren’t getting out of their group. I’m doing my best to scout under 18 US players to help but have come up mostly empty so far.

I’ve made what I think is an aggressive offer on a coach in the marketplace today. He’s a young training specialist with good potential to improve - exactly what we’re looking for. If we get him I’ll have to decide whether I fire our current coach or split the duties and make one a director of player development and the other a head coach. I’ll cross that bridge if we get to it.

We only have 3 days left before rosters are locked in for the rest of the season. I think it’s unlikely we will make any major moves in this time but you never know what trade offers might come in.

Tomorrow’s Game

We are playing the Northern Knights in a WL5 away game tomorrow. The Knights are rated as the 5th strongest team in the league but have underperformed all season and are currently behind us in the standings. We’ll have to beat them to have any realistic hope of making it to the top 8 play off rounds. We played and beat the Knights earlier in the season 94-85 in OT so we have a chance. However:

1. They were missing their best defensive player, and possibly the best interior defender in the league, in that game due to an injury and we killed them inside.

2. We were at home and still had to go to OT to beat them.

So I’m not feeling overly confident.

Looking at their roster, I’m going to try to force favorable matchups again by playing Villalba out of position at PF and the low scoring Saunterton out of position at C. The idea being that their PF can’t handle Villalba while their awesome defensive center can’t further shut down a guy that never scores anyway. This kind of worked when I tried it with Currie and Tarbunas (or at least it didn’t NOT work). Maybe the C/PF swap is a better fit.

Defensively we’re going to come out in a 3-2 zone. They have been scoring pretty equally from inside, mid-range, and from 3 the last several games and a 3-2 offers the most balanced coverage of the defensive options.

I just looked and they’ve been in WL5 for 33 of the last 35 seasons. That is some impressive consistency.

[Izulde]

Congratulations on sniping Ha from us!

[brett32z]

Originally Posted by Izulde

Congratulations on sniping Ha from us!

LOL, whoops! If it's any consolation, I'm pretty sure I overpaid by a few hundred per week. I just really needed better training!

[brett32z]

Can anyone help me with how to post a screenshot? I was going to post updated standings.

When I go to insert image it just posts the url.

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by brett32z

Can anyone help me with how to post a screenshot? I was going to post updated standings.

When I go to insert image it just posts the url.

Assuming you're uploading to Imgur, click the three dots on the screenshot in Imgur, click Get Share Links, and copy the link next to BBCode (Forums). Paste that link into here

[brett32z]

Mid-Year Check In

With each season lasting 63 days I thought I would do a quick mid season overview of the standings and where we currently fit in the game world.

First up are the current standings in US League 2.2:





These are the regular season standings for the league with the top 4 teams advancing to the playoffs (there is also a Subgroup A pod doing the same thing). Each team plays a home game and away game with each team so the regular season is 10 games long. There’s just one game left before the playoffs so we’ve locked up a 2 seed already.

The next table is the already completed regular season for World League 5.1. You can see us in pod C where we finished 3rd due to a tiebreaker.




In this case, the top 4 teams in each pod moved on to the top 16 round which is composed of 2 pods of 8 teams each.

The standings for our WL5.1 top 16 pod are next.




As you can see, we are just barely on the outside looking in for moving on to the championship playoff round. Our next 2 games are against the Northern Knights and Michigan Wolves. If we win both, we have a decent shot at moving on. If we lose them, we probably won’t.

Below is a comparison of our team strength rating to the other teams in the 2 leagues we’re competing in along with the game world as a whole.





Before committing to the youth movement a few weeks ago, our strength rating had climbed to 196 which was good for 756th in the game world, along with 2nd in US2 and 12th in WL5. That may prove to be a bit of a high water mark for the next year or two because we just don’t have the money to sign a bunch of 275 rated players to truly bring us up to the top tier of teams in WL5.

My current strategy is to develop the young guys to get us to the 190-200 range without adding expense and then make a big signing in the transfer market to move us into title contention.

Lastly, here is a picture of my current roster along with their season stats.





I’m going to really miss Villalba if his owner won’t let me borrow him again next year.

[brett32z]

Originally Posted by Izulde

Assuming you're uploading to Imgur, click the three dots on the screenshot in Imgur, click Get Share Links, and copy the link next to BBCode (Forums). Paste that link into here

Thank you!

[brett32z]

Day 32

A 22-8 2nd quarter is the difference in the game as we lose to the Northern Knights 88-70. Villalba only played 15 minutes due to foul trouble and we just don’t have the talent to compete with these guys without him on the floor.

Janisius and Currie were fantastic, scoring 25 and 26 respectively. Currie continues to be hot from downtown shooting 8-18 from 3.

Our biggest issue right now is that we have 3 good players and then a bunch of young guys who aren’t yet ready. Today was an extreme example but we only got 4 total points from the team aside from Villalba, Janisius, and Currie. The rest of the team did chip in with 13 turnovers and 12 missed shots, however. They just need some time to grow and we’ll take our lumps while they do.

Saunterton again fouled out, this time after 27 minutes.

Other News

We signed (and accidentally sniped from Izulde) a new Director of Player Development today! I would like to introduce you to Yu-Hung Ha, a 43 year old development specialist from Taiwan. In addition to already being quite good from a training standpoint, he also has solid potential to improve as well. I’ve signed him to a 5 year deal and I’m hoping he can help accelerate the development of our young team. I’ll be watching the results of our training sessions closely to see if I can notice a difference.

In even more exciting news, after being nothing but a giant expense for 1.5 years, our scouts managed to find an actual, genuinely promising prospect! Rey Kent is a 6’0’’ 14 year old American who is expected to grow to a height somewhere between 6’5’’ and 7’1’’.

In game terms, he has 7 potential and a top end overall rating of 296. He will never be much of a shooter but has shown advanced passing skills, a good feel for the game, and should develop into a pretty good athlete.

I like to think he takes after his Uncle Roy and has displayed a preternatural ability to use swear words as well (that’s a Ted Lasso reference, btw).

Tomorrow’s Game

The loss today really hurt our chances to make it into the championship playoffs this year but there is a semi realistic path remaining. It will require us to win tomorrow’s home game against the Michigan Wolves, though. Michigan beat us by 2 in overtime at their place earlier in the season so we have to like our chances on our home floor.

Offensively they are led by a 6’5’’ PG who is leading the league in scoring at over 34 per game. They also get 23 per game from their 6’11 C. Teams that are balanced with inside/outside threats are always a little tougher to figure out how to defend so we’ll go with our base 3-2 zone.

Defensively they are very meh, across the board. I see no reason to switch up our attack.

I remember being very frustrated when we lost to these guys the first time around and looking at their roster, it’s easy to see why. I’ll be disappointed if we don’t win by 10+.

[brett32z]

Day 33

Michigan jumps on us 7-2 right out of the gate and eventually take a 14-10 lead midway through the first quarter as I begin having flashbacks to our inexplicable loss to them earlier in the season. However, we then go on a 19-2 run to take a lead that we would not relinquish for the rest of the game. We end with a pretty easy 100-81 victory.

Villalba and Janisius dominate with a combined 71 points and 22 rebounds. Currie finished with a quiet 14 points. Saunterton lasted 20 minutes before fouling out but managed to collect 9 rebounds first.

The win keeps our hopes of getting out of our pod alive as we are now tied with Jubarko and remain one game behind both Michigan and the Northern Knights.

Villalba and Janisius were both recognized for their outstanding play with a spot in the day’s “Top 5” performances with Villalba winning the day’s MVP award!



Tomorrow’s Game

We face the KC Hawks on the road tomorrow in a US2 matchup. We played them at our place earlier in the season and won 81-41. They are currently 4-5 in the league and have already clinched a playoff spot for the next round, as have we, so there are not a lot of stakes for the game tomorrow.

I’m not going to bother with customizing tactics for them - I think our talent advantage alone should be enough.

[brett32z]

Day 34

As expected we easily beat KC 86-60. Villalba continues to dominate with a 44 point 13 rebound performance. Our PG duo of Tarbunas and Waltham combined for 16 points 6 assists and 8 steals in their best combined game of the season.

The win finishes out our regular season in US2 with an 8-2 record and a 2 seed for the playoff round. I *think* we will play the Andromeda Rocketdogs in a best of 3 first round series as a result but will wait for confirmation from the game before providing a breakdown.

Villalba was once again named MVP of the day for his performance.

Other News

Transfers will be coming to an end for the season tomorrow and, presumably as a result, the market has gone crazy recently. For example, recent contracts I’ve seen are:

* $20k/wk for an 18 year old PG who would typically go for $8k-$10k
* $35k for a 20 year old C who would typically get closer to $20k
* $51k for a 27 SG (playing 20 minutes/game) that you would expect to sign for something like $30k

On the flip side, I’m also seeing some of the biggest bargains of the year too. I assume it’s because most teams are trying to save money (like us) allowing bargains to slip through while a small number of high end teams are loading up for a playoff run. Whatever the cause, it’s the most inefficient I’ve seen the marketplace so far this year and something to try to exploit in future years.

Tomorrow’s Game

Tomorrow we’re going on the road to take on Lukoilas in a WL5 home game. This is another must win for us if we want to have any chance of advancing to the championship rounds. Lukoilas is a very confusing team who so far this season:

* Was undefeated through the regular season, the highest rated team in the league through the first 14 games, and my pick for favorite to win the league
* Released almost all of their players in what I assumed was a cost cutting move thus causing them to lose almost all of their pod 16 games and removing them from a likely promotion to WL4 for next season
* Signed several players to 1 year deals in the last few days to again become one of the higher, but not top tier, rated clubs in the league

I have no idea what they’re doing but the upshot of all this activity is that they are again pretty good and we’re going into their place as the underdog.

They get most of their offense from their guards so we’ll need to come out in a man to man to try to limit their 3’s. They never try to score in transition so we’ll crash the offensive glass as hard as we can to try to generate more 2nd chances.

Defensively they are pretty good inside and on the perimeter. No reason to deviate from our standard set here.

Man, their guards are good. We might be in trouble. Let’s find out!

[brett32z]

Day 35

We were indeed in trouble. A 19-3 run to start the game for Lukoilas became a 32-13 1st quarter advantage that we were never able to recover from as we lose 85-71. PG Tautvydas Inokaitis led them with 32 points. We just could not keep him from getting into the lane.

For our side, Villalba had 21, Janisius 19, and Currie had 15 going 5-9 from 3. Villalba wasted a lot of possessions to get his points today as he shot 7-18 from the field.

On a positive note, Saunterton had 8 points 4 rebounds and 2 assists in 32 minutes of play and ONLY COMMITTED 3 FOULS! This was probably his best “real” game of the season (ignoring games against bot teams where we win by 80+).

Although we’re not mathematically eliminated, this loss essentially confirms that we will not be moving on to the championship rounds. We will instead move to the consolation round playoffs where we will compete for 9th place.

Other News

Yesterday, I mentioned the transfer market was not making sense lately. Well, today I watched as 7’3’’ C Olavas Ližūnas sat in the marketplace receiving 0 bids all evening. Players like Lizunas typically go for $10k-$11k in the market (Lizunas himself had gone for $10k earlier in the season before being recently released) and he was only asking for $6950. It didn’t make any sense to me.

I didn’t want to add payroll as my whole goal for the year was to build up my financial reserves while developing young players for a promotion push at some point in the next 2 seasons. On the other hand, Lizunas was youngish at 25, still has room for improvement, and good C’s are wildly expensive in this game. So, I decided the bargain was too strong to pass up and put a bid in for the minimum. As it happened, that was the only bid Lizunas received and we got him.

Lizunas is one of the most athletic C’s in the game with 12 jump/12 speed/10 strength, a good passer, post scorer, and can step out and hit 3’s when needed. His only real downside is that he is an abysmal rebounder - he has a rating of 2 in this category. Given his size, he still collects a decent number but it isn’t the strength it should be given his size and athleticism. We’ll have him solely focus on rebounding in training.

Tomorrow’s Game

Tomorrow we welcome our team’s kryptonite, Jubarko Karlai, onto our home court for a WL5 match up. I’ve tried every tactical variation I can think of against these guys in the past and we just keep losing to them by about 5 points. A loss tomorrow would be the 4th of the season against them.

I’ll make a few adjustments - 3-2 zone, max crash offensive boards, etc but I’ve tried all of these moves before and nothing has really worked against them. Maybe they’ll be thrown off by the sight of a 7’3’’ guy.

[brett32z]

Day 36

Jubarko comes out with a 19-14 lead after the 1st quarter while we cannot hit a shot. Joel Dennis sets a new record by fouling out 6 minutes into the 1st quarter with Saunterton not far behind with 5 fouls in 14 minutes of play. Jubarko enjoys a 25-15 FT advantage and we turn the ball over 20 times as…. we somehow win 68-62!

That somehow is actually very clear - Jubarko went 1-15 from 3 and we clamped down on them inside. Villalba had 24 points and 12 rebounds, Janisius 17 points, and Currie hit 5 3’s to finish with 15 points.

The surprise of the game is PG Eigintas Tarbūnas who contributed a kinda sorta near triple-double with 8 pts, 11 assists, and 7 steals.

Newcomer Olavas Ližūnas came off the bench with 4 pts, 4 rebounds, and a block in 20 minutes. Decent product but I’m hopeful we’ll see more from him as he gets settled in.

The win creates quite the logjam for the 4th and final championship round playoff spot.



We currently own the tiebreakers for the 4 spot and would advance if the season ended today. However, our chances are not as good as they may seem. Our final 3 games are home against Baoji (best in the pod), on the road against Pibi (2nd best in the pod), and on the road against Good Game (last in the pod). The other teams we’re tied with all play each other over the final 3 games. So we’re going to have to pull off at least one major upset to advance. And I’m not feeling confident.

Tomorrow’s Game

We begin the first round of the US2 playoffs tomorrow with a best of 3 series against the Andromeda Rocketdogs. I’ll post a quick series preview later.

[brett32z]

Series Preview

The Rockedogs finished 3rd in their US2 pod going 7-3 in the regular season. They are led by a 6’6’’ point guard named Lefteris Komodinos who is averaging 22 pts and 5 steals in only 21 minutes per game and can do everything on the court except shoot (7% from 3 on the season). Their 2nd best player is a 6’8’’ small forward named Leyti Ndour who averages 15 pts and 6 rebounds in only 24 minutes per game and makes me extremely jealous that I don’t have him on my team. Good athlete, good shooter, good defender, very strong potential for growth and a team friendly long term contract? So jealous.

I’m tempted to go box and 1 on them to try to slow Komodinos but Ndour is just good enough to concern me. I wish I could run a triangle and 2 in this game. They tend to do most of their half court scoring via pick and rolls and drives to the basket so we’ll come out in a 1-3-1 for game 1. They also are very effective in transition so we’ll back off on crashing the offensive glass.

Defensively, they are really good at all 5 positions - they might be the best defensive team we’ve seen all season. We’ll stick with our usual strategy of pounding it inside until they prove they can stop it.

We have a bit of a history against the Rocketdogs as they were in both our World League and National league pods last season. On top of that, we played them in the semi finals of the US3 playoffs. We were able to go 6-0 against them last year but they always played us somewhat close. However, they have improved a great deal since then (Komodinos was not on the team last year) and are considered pretty even with us now and have an overall team rating of 167 compared to our 173.

Series Prediction

For some reason, they play 10 guys about 20 minutes per game rather than weighting towards their best 5. If they continue doing that, I think we'll sweep them 2-0.

If they go to a more optimal substitution pattern, which I assume they will, I think it will be close. Fortunately, we have homecourt advantage this series and I think that will make the difference. I have us winning 2-1.

[brett32z]

Day 37

The first 13 minutes of the game with the Rocketdogs was a total rock fight with neither team able to hit anything. With just under 7 minutes to go in the 2nd quarter the score was tied at 19 and I was getting a little concerned. From that point on, our offense got going a bit and we absolutely turned our defense up to 11 as we went on a 57-23 run to close out the game winning 76-42.

I’ve never seen our defense do that - we held them to 15 points in the entire second half! No one fouled out for them until 2 minutes left in the 4th so the change wasn’t due to foul trouble. We just wouldn’t let them do anything all of a sudden.

It was a balanced attack for us this game with Currie leading the way with 17 points and Villalba coming in 2nd with 16. Everyone on the team had at least 5 though. Tarbunas had another nice game with 6 pts, 8 assists, and 5 steals and 4 rebounds.

So, I have no idea if that was real or if we just got a ton of lucky dice rolls in this game but this was very unexpected. Game 2 is Friday on the road at their place. We’ll find out then.

Tomorrow’s Game

We play Baoji at home in a WL5 game tomorrow. This is a critical game for us if we want to advance to the championship playoffs. Baoji beat us 88-75 at their place earlier in the season. We’ve improved since than and we get them at home this time so I think we have a chance. However, they are still the 5th ranked team in the league so we are definite underdogs.