The sliders are wonderful, no question. I played a few more games last night, put it on Pro from All-Star, and I'm still really blowing teams out. Granted I played a couple of middling to low end teams, I still can't really fathom I'd blow them out as hard as I did. When I get back from work today I'll probably load the sliders up under the all-star difficulty. The one game I did play on all-star was really challenging, and while it's not necessarily "fun" to have to grind it out point by point, it's more along the lines of realism I'm looking for.
I really think all-star was right on the money, the CPU was just a tad over the top on making buckets at will. I'll have to run a few more games at all-star and see how to adjust it.