Who Ruined Sim League
Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2024 9:38 pm
Who Ruined Sim League?
A Garbageman Production
Anyone who hasn’t been living under a (roundball) rock knows that sim league is complete ass this season, and there’s no point in sitting here at regular speed seeing if the league comes out of its coma when we could fast forward through the Pistons dynasty. But this is exactly what the movie Click, starring Adam Sandler, was trying to warn us about. You can’t just fast forward your way out of a shitty situation because a remote control that fast forwards life isn’t real. It’s just something you dreamt up after you fell asleep on a Bed, Bath, and Beyond display mattress.
Sorry if you haven’t seen the movie Click, starring Adam Sandler. I just ruined the ending for you. I feel bad because what’s the point of watching a movie if you already know how it’s going to end? What’s the point of anything if you know that? Well, that’s the point. People think it’s a foregone conclusion that the Pistons will win the championship for a third year in a row, and I agree with those people insomuch as it’s as foregone a conclusion as a conclusion can forego in sim league. It’s something that isn’t guaranteed to happen, but it’s the safest bet since the last Pistons dynasty, which in a roundabout way, got us into this circumstance of sim league being a real chode show this season, and potentially, for a couple more.
But we’ll get to that later. It’s not all Doug’s fault.
Whether it’s actually ruined or not is a matter of how hyperbolic you want to get, but it’s undeniable that a Pistons team that is so strong that it’s scared off competition to this level seems unprecedented. After the first 3 sims, of the 16 teams that will make the playoffs, only 9 have records above .500. And some of those teams are selling. Some of those teams turned aboutface just 60 days after compiling talent to compete.
Maybe it’s haste. Who’s really to say? But the trade market is absolute garbage right now, and whether or not it sucks, it’s a direct effect of having such a powerhouse in the league.
If we’re stuck in the now without the influence of some pseudo-dreamstate Christopher Walken (callback to Click, starring Adam Sandler and also featuring Christopher Walken), and we can’t win the PBSL Championship again this year without also having to be Doug, about the only thing we can do is figure out who’s fault it is that fun has all been sucked out of PBSL.
PRIME SUSPECT: IamQuailman
Alright, Doug gets a lot of guff. So I want to start this off by saying that Doug does deserve as much respect as he gets guff. Without Doug, there would be no sim league. Doug has done more work than most to keep this league going including a stint as commissioner, being the best point of contact to Wig when the simputer goes down. Mad props.
On top of that, he’s one of the most skilled GMs in the league and of all time. A big part of the reason that the Pistons are such a monolith is because of Doug’s mastery of the game. He knows what types of players are going to have high enough ratings (sure, he has player page access, but he’s well versed enough in this game to know without it) to turn purple. Being able to differentiate a high end blue player from a low end blue player is an entirely feasible thing to do and a significant milestone for all new GMs to master that differentiation.
I think Doug did an uncharacteristically patient job of team building and nailed it with this build. And I don’t think a GM that’s winning within the rules of the game is ever responsible for ruining the league because nobody wants to compete with him. These types of dynasties force us to reexamine how we want the rules to work, and try to make the league the most fun for the highest number of GMs. These rule changes present new challenges for GMs to try to figure out how to exploit. There’s no onus on Doug to dissolve his own monopoly.
And Doug wouldn’t have his monopoly if it wasn’t for…
THE TRADERS (OR TRAITORS…LOL)
There were two trades that have happened in the past few seasons that have really shook up the league. In a case of sim league imitating sim league, people kept trading to the Pistons with moves to further solidify and extend their reigns. The Bobcats extended the original Pistons dynasty by sending Douglas Haun for Kai Jones when Jones was expiring and the Pistons would have been unable to resign him due to unpaid tax penalties.
Last season, the Pistons were on the other side of the tax jail team expiring contract. IamQuailman traded Stan Van Gundy to the Spurs for reigning MVP and current purple Peewee Kirkland. No knock on Van Gundy, but Peewee is one of the cream of the crop purple players whereas Stan Van Gundy is a solid purple player that fits a tall, athletic wing build and a slight nudge over the line from blue to purple potential. Reports from around the league show that there were other opportunities for the Spurs to either get rid of Alvarado to get under the tax and be able to retain Peewee or entertain deals more suited towards a ground up rebuild rather than a re-tooling. Surely, there were some shitty Mavs offers in there, too.
Did Carlos take the offer that every GM would take? No. Did Carlos pound the pavement to move Peewee as hard as more aggressive GMs would? No. Did Carlos give Peewee away for an unfair deal? Also, no. Did the deal take some joy away from the other 24 members of PBSL? Yeah.
Can we say the same thing about the Magic trade? A somewhat similar trade happened this offseason where the Pistons sent Trent Dawes, a solid b/b 26 year old center for expiring purple/purple (now blue/blue) Kel’el Ware. Did Nick take the offer that every GM would take? Also no. Did Nick pound the pavement to move Ware? I don’t doubt that Nick tried his best to move Kel’el Ware. Ware had been preposterously hard to move before, but Nick does not slack on throwing out offers. Thus, did Nick give Ware away for an unfair deal? Not initially. Noting that Nick just moved Dawes and in return, basically got 8 points, a 1st that might not pay off unless the Mavs fumble a tax situation and shorten their window on Reese and Dominitrix Johnson’s prime, and a y/b vet min that looked like it might have RFA rights, but actually doesn’t. (Magic also get Candice Parker in the deal but had to give up Cooper Flagg, making this element of the trade practically a wash).
Any case, did the deal take some joy away from the other 24 members of PBSL? Probably what little it had left, because I don’t know if you’ve taken a look at the chat in the last few weeks, but it’s a goddamn dumpster fire.
In any case, Nick and Carlos are accessories to Doug ruining the league. Neither one of them did anything against the rules, but while Doug put team first before league, questions will be forever unanswered whether or not these moves will do much to help the Spurs or the Magic in the long run, and without being able to calculate the true opportunity cost of deals they passed up, it’s inconclusive whether or not they made these trades to the detriment of both sim league and their own teams.
We’ll take them in for questioning and get their statements, but we’ve really got nothing to hold them on, so they’re free to leave. Meanwhile, we’re no closer to finding out who killed sim league. We’ve still got our hunches, but without the evidence, the case isn’t strong enough to indict. From here, we’ve got to keep on digging. We have to go back to where it all started.
THE PRE-DOUG PISTONS
Before there was the Doug Dynasty, there was the ballsohard blaze of glory…a four championship run starting in the 2046 season and ending in a tax bill that will, in all likelihood, prohibitively keep him from ever wanting to return without a complete reset. His 2047 team had 5 purple potentials in its starting lineup (3 current blue, 3 current purple). To this day, his unpaid tax bill sits at 469 points.
After the Pistons last dance season in 2049, ballsohard vacated the Pistons with a 4+ year repeater tax status, a starting salary for 2050 already about 35% over the tax (which would cost a new GM 100 points off the bat) and a bevy of superstar players nearing the ends of their primes, but still with plenty of juice left.
For the next GM, that could be a double-edged sword of a roster to take over. When Inner_GI left the Knicks, he left them in good shape. It was a 2 purple team in an era where purples didn’t grow on trees, and the team had a fantastic b/b PG. The purples eventually became just really good blue players, but the team was filled in short order by Dr. Kavarga, who to this day, has never come close to replicating the success in his first season where he walked onto a championship squad and rode the recommended wave to the promised land.
Unfortunately, he also rode that wave into tax jail.
It’s a tall order to ask a new GM to successfully reset a team. If a new GM were to take over the Pistons, I think we’d be in a very different situation right now. Luckily, we had a GM that wanted to come back…
…wait a minute. Are you f’n kidding me? How?
While the original Pistons dynasty was going on, it was a foregone conclusion that Scott would keep Scotting, and as with today, there were a few teams that tried to best a 5 purple pot team. One of those teams was the Milwaukee Bucks.
The Bucks had been knocking on the door for a few seasons. In the season before the first Pistons dynasty began (2045), they made it to the Finals. As conference mates to the Pistons the next season, the Bucks success regressed and lost to the Pistons in the Conference Finals. They went back to the drawing board to retool and came back with an even stronger team 2 seasons later and lost to the Pistons in round 2.
Then after the 2048 season, the league shuffled. The Bucks were no longer in the same conference as the Pistons. They had 3 purple current players in Kory Manley, Talen Horton-Tucker, and Saddiq Bey. The way back to the big dance was clear.
But the result was the same. Another disappointment in the Finals and another loss to the Pistons. The league wasn’t fun anymore, and that Bucks GM quit. On Wednesday, October 26, 2022, he posted:
PRIME SUSPECT: IamQuailman
Yep, the trail leads right back to Doug. For what it’s worth, one of Mamba’s mostly disinterested cousins took over the Bucks pretty much right away. He had very good teams for most of his tenure, but was never able to put the team over the top.
But the headline here is that the first Pistons dynasty was so deflating to the fun of the league, Doug quit. He’s the last person that should be surprised that an overpowered team is going to draw ire and hurt the vibe of the league…at least for a number of GMs. I said earlier in the article that you gotta give Doug respect, and I still stand by it, but simultaneously, Doug’s a slippery little weiner, and while he deserves respect, he also deserves to be called out when he’s acting like a soggy turd. I just think that Doug’s reaction to the league’s disappointment at his superteam’s dominance qualifies given that a superteam contributed to Doug’s decision to leave the league.
It was a decision that lasted not even 2 weeks:
Like I said earlier, it’s Doug’s responsibility as a GM to put his team in the best possible spot, and he has done that. It’s NOT his responsibility to weaken his team for the parity of the league. However, we can already see shockwaves of the Pistons superteam affecting the league in negative ways, so just because it is not Doug’s responsibility does not mean he is faultless. As a central figure, Doug’s GM actions have probably the heaviest influence on the state of sim league today, however grim you think it is.
And I was going to mostly exonerate this joker until I remembered he actually retired when the league was in a similar state. Lock him up, and throw away the damn key. Doug ruined sim league.
Yeah, ok. We already knew that. So what now?
Well, the Pistons are in all likelihood going to win it again this year, but I honestly believe that Doug will sell off next season. Maybe not completely, but his tax bill will be a tall order to pay this season, so he’ll at least have to sell off enough to lose his hegemonic status. A Quailman reset will undoubtedly net Doug a huge haul with the roster he has. If he plays his trades right, he’ll be able to swing back into the title picture soon, but things should return to a relative equilibrium before then.
There are a few teams to look out for that could become the next Pistons.
The Grizzlies have taken an ultra-patient approach and have secured a big three of the future that they plan on sticking with in Bane, Rainwater, and Giddey. They’ll have to time it right so they get help around those guys at the right time when they still have cap space (or at least bird rights guys they can use for salary at a moment’s notice), but they’ve proven adept at this and willing to pull out all the stops to win a championship. Even recidivism to tax jail.
The Mavericks already have Angel Reese and Dominitrix Johnson as a combo that’s got them poised to win now if not soon. With A’ja Wilson waiting in the wings and Funkhouser and Sanchez on the roster, they’ve got a PG and a C that fall into the same contendership window, and they’ve got something that no other team has: a brother who doesn’t seem to care much about sim league that he can use as a feeder team.Slimy Davis, Jr. LazyTitanSmash has proven that he has no shame about trading with the Hawks and essentially using them as part of his strategy. The only thing in PBSL I was more certain about than the Pistons winning it all this season was after the Hawks signed Dino Sanchez to a max contract and the Mavs retained green/green (now yellow/yellow) Uncle Phil for 50 mil (50 Mil Phil?). I called it before UFA round 2 that on day 60, Sanchez would be shopping for places in the general DFW area. Keep an eye on the 100 million in cap space that the Hawks have next season. Some of it will probably go to trying to retain Zepeda, but that’s plenty of cap space for the Mavs to use by proxy…even if it’s to dump some bad contracts to extend their window and ensure that the Mavs 2063 pick they sent out for Dawes doesn’t come back to bite them.
Then you have the usual suspects. The Lakers have a young frontcourt that could be dominant for seasons. The Warriors have two purple pots in Cross and Stewart (and Claxton can’t be too far behind). The Spurs should be getting out of the tax soon, and they’ve got Stan Van Gundy and the ability to keep Percy Miller. The Pistons might come down to earth a little bit, but whether they blow it up or shuffle the deck, they’ll be in a position to jump back into the mix whenever it suits them.
In any case, the trade market should stabilize a little bit, but that’s another thing that the Pistons control. The market won’t change unless they decide to sell, and since they have the top players, they’ll be setting the standard for the price of win now players and should have first crack at any package for buying teams. They’ll probably try to retain Ware on a deal that isn’t too bad, so hopefully the Mavs realize that Pistons retaining Ware would be an obstacle to their competitive window and instruct cashcab to try and fit Kel’el in an AT’el jersey.
The bottom line is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It might be a dim light sandwiched between this dynasty and the next one, but it’s enough to see that there is hope that next season, we’ll all be yelling at and about each other for some other reason.
A Garbageman Production
Anyone who hasn’t been living under a (roundball) rock knows that sim league is complete ass this season, and there’s no point in sitting here at regular speed seeing if the league comes out of its coma when we could fast forward through the Pistons dynasty. But this is exactly what the movie Click, starring Adam Sandler, was trying to warn us about. You can’t just fast forward your way out of a shitty situation because a remote control that fast forwards life isn’t real. It’s just something you dreamt up after you fell asleep on a Bed, Bath, and Beyond display mattress.
Sorry if you haven’t seen the movie Click, starring Adam Sandler. I just ruined the ending for you. I feel bad because what’s the point of watching a movie if you already know how it’s going to end? What’s the point of anything if you know that? Well, that’s the point. People think it’s a foregone conclusion that the Pistons will win the championship for a third year in a row, and I agree with those people insomuch as it’s as foregone a conclusion as a conclusion can forego in sim league. It’s something that isn’t guaranteed to happen, but it’s the safest bet since the last Pistons dynasty, which in a roundabout way, got us into this circumstance of sim league being a real chode show this season, and potentially, for a couple more.
But we’ll get to that later. It’s not all Doug’s fault.
Whether it’s actually ruined or not is a matter of how hyperbolic you want to get, but it’s undeniable that a Pistons team that is so strong that it’s scared off competition to this level seems unprecedented. After the first 3 sims, of the 16 teams that will make the playoffs, only 9 have records above .500. And some of those teams are selling. Some of those teams turned aboutface just 60 days after compiling talent to compete.
Maybe it’s haste. Who’s really to say? But the trade market is absolute garbage right now, and whether or not it sucks, it’s a direct effect of having such a powerhouse in the league.
If we’re stuck in the now without the influence of some pseudo-dreamstate Christopher Walken (callback to Click, starring Adam Sandler and also featuring Christopher Walken), and we can’t win the PBSL Championship again this year without also having to be Doug, about the only thing we can do is figure out who’s fault it is that fun has all been sucked out of PBSL.
PRIME SUSPECT: IamQuailman
Alright, Doug gets a lot of guff. So I want to start this off by saying that Doug does deserve as much respect as he gets guff. Without Doug, there would be no sim league. Doug has done more work than most to keep this league going including a stint as commissioner, being the best point of contact to Wig when the simputer goes down. Mad props.
On top of that, he’s one of the most skilled GMs in the league and of all time. A big part of the reason that the Pistons are such a monolith is because of Doug’s mastery of the game. He knows what types of players are going to have high enough ratings (sure, he has player page access, but he’s well versed enough in this game to know without it) to turn purple. Being able to differentiate a high end blue player from a low end blue player is an entirely feasible thing to do and a significant milestone for all new GMs to master that differentiation.
I think Doug did an uncharacteristically patient job of team building and nailed it with this build. And I don’t think a GM that’s winning within the rules of the game is ever responsible for ruining the league because nobody wants to compete with him. These types of dynasties force us to reexamine how we want the rules to work, and try to make the league the most fun for the highest number of GMs. These rule changes present new challenges for GMs to try to figure out how to exploit. There’s no onus on Doug to dissolve his own monopoly.
And Doug wouldn’t have his monopoly if it wasn’t for…
THE TRADERS (OR TRAITORS…LOL)
There were two trades that have happened in the past few seasons that have really shook up the league. In a case of sim league imitating sim league, people kept trading to the Pistons with moves to further solidify and extend their reigns. The Bobcats extended the original Pistons dynasty by sending Douglas Haun for Kai Jones when Jones was expiring and the Pistons would have been unable to resign him due to unpaid tax penalties.
Last season, the Pistons were on the other side of the tax jail team expiring contract. IamQuailman traded Stan Van Gundy to the Spurs for reigning MVP and current purple Peewee Kirkland. No knock on Van Gundy, but Peewee is one of the cream of the crop purple players whereas Stan Van Gundy is a solid purple player that fits a tall, athletic wing build and a slight nudge over the line from blue to purple potential. Reports from around the league show that there were other opportunities for the Spurs to either get rid of Alvarado to get under the tax and be able to retain Peewee or entertain deals more suited towards a ground up rebuild rather than a re-tooling. Surely, there were some shitty Mavs offers in there, too.
Did Carlos take the offer that every GM would take? No. Did Carlos pound the pavement to move Peewee as hard as more aggressive GMs would? No. Did Carlos give Peewee away for an unfair deal? Also, no. Did the deal take some joy away from the other 24 members of PBSL? Yeah.
Can we say the same thing about the Magic trade? A somewhat similar trade happened this offseason where the Pistons sent Trent Dawes, a solid b/b 26 year old center for expiring purple/purple (now blue/blue) Kel’el Ware. Did Nick take the offer that every GM would take? Also no. Did Nick pound the pavement to move Ware? I don’t doubt that Nick tried his best to move Kel’el Ware. Ware had been preposterously hard to move before, but Nick does not slack on throwing out offers. Thus, did Nick give Ware away for an unfair deal? Not initially. Noting that Nick just moved Dawes and in return, basically got 8 points, a 1st that might not pay off unless the Mavs fumble a tax situation and shorten their window on Reese and Dominitrix Johnson’s prime, and a y/b vet min that looked like it might have RFA rights, but actually doesn’t. (Magic also get Candice Parker in the deal but had to give up Cooper Flagg, making this element of the trade practically a wash).
Any case, did the deal take some joy away from the other 24 members of PBSL? Probably what little it had left, because I don’t know if you’ve taken a look at the chat in the last few weeks, but it’s a goddamn dumpster fire.
In any case, Nick and Carlos are accessories to Doug ruining the league. Neither one of them did anything against the rules, but while Doug put team first before league, questions will be forever unanswered whether or not these moves will do much to help the Spurs or the Magic in the long run, and without being able to calculate the true opportunity cost of deals they passed up, it’s inconclusive whether or not they made these trades to the detriment of both sim league and their own teams.
We’ll take them in for questioning and get their statements, but we’ve really got nothing to hold them on, so they’re free to leave. Meanwhile, we’re no closer to finding out who killed sim league. We’ve still got our hunches, but without the evidence, the case isn’t strong enough to indict. From here, we’ve got to keep on digging. We have to go back to where it all started.
THE PRE-DOUG PISTONS
Before there was the Doug Dynasty, there was the ballsohard blaze of glory…a four championship run starting in the 2046 season and ending in a tax bill that will, in all likelihood, prohibitively keep him from ever wanting to return without a complete reset. His 2047 team had 5 purple potentials in its starting lineup (3 current blue, 3 current purple). To this day, his unpaid tax bill sits at 469 points.
After the Pistons last dance season in 2049, ballsohard vacated the Pistons with a 4+ year repeater tax status, a starting salary for 2050 already about 35% over the tax (which would cost a new GM 100 points off the bat) and a bevy of superstar players nearing the ends of their primes, but still with plenty of juice left.
For the next GM, that could be a double-edged sword of a roster to take over. When Inner_GI left the Knicks, he left them in good shape. It was a 2 purple team in an era where purples didn’t grow on trees, and the team had a fantastic b/b PG. The purples eventually became just really good blue players, but the team was filled in short order by Dr. Kavarga, who to this day, has never come close to replicating the success in his first season where he walked onto a championship squad and rode the recommended wave to the promised land.
Unfortunately, he also rode that wave into tax jail.
It’s a tall order to ask a new GM to successfully reset a team. If a new GM were to take over the Pistons, I think we’d be in a very different situation right now. Luckily, we had a GM that wanted to come back…
…wait a minute. Are you f’n kidding me? How?
While the original Pistons dynasty was going on, it was a foregone conclusion that Scott would keep Scotting, and as with today, there were a few teams that tried to best a 5 purple pot team. One of those teams was the Milwaukee Bucks.
The Bucks had been knocking on the door for a few seasons. In the season before the first Pistons dynasty began (2045), they made it to the Finals. As conference mates to the Pistons the next season, the Bucks success regressed and lost to the Pistons in the Conference Finals. They went back to the drawing board to retool and came back with an even stronger team 2 seasons later and lost to the Pistons in round 2.
Then after the 2048 season, the league shuffled. The Bucks were no longer in the same conference as the Pistons. They had 3 purple current players in Kory Manley, Talen Horton-Tucker, and Saddiq Bey. The way back to the big dance was clear.
But the result was the same. Another disappointment in the Finals and another loss to the Pistons. The league wasn’t fun anymore, and that Bucks GM quit. On Wednesday, October 26, 2022, he posted:
That GM was IamQuailmanBucks are open as well. This was my swan song and turned out to be duck season instead. Been a fun ride. Whichever noob takes over has a stacked team and a generational talent in Wembanyama.
PRIME SUSPECT: IamQuailman
Yep, the trail leads right back to Doug. For what it’s worth, one of Mamba’s mostly disinterested cousins took over the Bucks pretty much right away. He had very good teams for most of his tenure, but was never able to put the team over the top.
But the headline here is that the first Pistons dynasty was so deflating to the fun of the league, Doug quit. He’s the last person that should be surprised that an overpowered team is going to draw ire and hurt the vibe of the league…at least for a number of GMs. I said earlier in the article that you gotta give Doug respect, and I still stand by it, but simultaneously, Doug’s a slippery little weiner, and while he deserves respect, he also deserves to be called out when he’s acting like a soggy turd. I just think that Doug’s reaction to the league’s disappointment at his superteam’s dominance qualifies given that a superteam contributed to Doug’s decision to leave the league.
It was a decision that lasted not even 2 weeks:
Just a mere two hours after a stacked and loaded Pistons team was opened up, Doug oozed his way into a GM spot for a team with all the spoils of a 469 point tax team without any of the responsibility to pay that tax. By the end of the 2050 season, the inaugural Quailman-era Pistons team was completely overhauled. They were able to net prominent rookie contract talents Remy Martin and Jeff Van Gundy along with 5 additional 1st round picks over the next several seasons. It’s not an oversized haul or anything like that for the talent they sent out, but it’s a solid return that got the ball rolling for the current state of the league.IamQuailman wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 10:52 amI’ll take the pistonsMexicanMamba wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 8:53 amUpdated Open Teams:
Atlanta Hawks
Minnesota Timberwolves
Detroit Pistons
Like I said earlier, it’s Doug’s responsibility as a GM to put his team in the best possible spot, and he has done that. It’s NOT his responsibility to weaken his team for the parity of the league. However, we can already see shockwaves of the Pistons superteam affecting the league in negative ways, so just because it is not Doug’s responsibility does not mean he is faultless. As a central figure, Doug’s GM actions have probably the heaviest influence on the state of sim league today, however grim you think it is.
And I was going to mostly exonerate this joker until I remembered he actually retired when the league was in a similar state. Lock him up, and throw away the damn key. Doug ruined sim league.
Yeah, ok. We already knew that. So what now?
Well, the Pistons are in all likelihood going to win it again this year, but I honestly believe that Doug will sell off next season. Maybe not completely, but his tax bill will be a tall order to pay this season, so he’ll at least have to sell off enough to lose his hegemonic status. A Quailman reset will undoubtedly net Doug a huge haul with the roster he has. If he plays his trades right, he’ll be able to swing back into the title picture soon, but things should return to a relative equilibrium before then.
There are a few teams to look out for that could become the next Pistons.
The Grizzlies have taken an ultra-patient approach and have secured a big three of the future that they plan on sticking with in Bane, Rainwater, and Giddey. They’ll have to time it right so they get help around those guys at the right time when they still have cap space (or at least bird rights guys they can use for salary at a moment’s notice), but they’ve proven adept at this and willing to pull out all the stops to win a championship. Even recidivism to tax jail.
The Mavericks already have Angel Reese and Dominitrix Johnson as a combo that’s got them poised to win now if not soon. With A’ja Wilson waiting in the wings and Funkhouser and Sanchez on the roster, they’ve got a PG and a C that fall into the same contendership window, and they’ve got something that no other team has: a brother who doesn’t seem to care much about sim league that he can use as a feeder team.
Then you have the usual suspects. The Lakers have a young frontcourt that could be dominant for seasons. The Warriors have two purple pots in Cross and Stewart (and Claxton can’t be too far behind). The Spurs should be getting out of the tax soon, and they’ve got Stan Van Gundy and the ability to keep Percy Miller. The Pistons might come down to earth a little bit, but whether they blow it up or shuffle the deck, they’ll be in a position to jump back into the mix whenever it suits them.
In any case, the trade market should stabilize a little bit, but that’s another thing that the Pistons control. The market won’t change unless they decide to sell, and since they have the top players, they’ll be setting the standard for the price of win now players and should have first crack at any package for buying teams. They’ll probably try to retain Ware on a deal that isn’t too bad, so hopefully the Mavs realize that Pistons retaining Ware would be an obstacle to their competitive window and instruct cashcab to try and fit Kel’el in an AT’el jersey.
The bottom line is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It might be a dim light sandwiched between this dynasty and the next one, but it’s enough to see that there is hope that next season, we’ll all be yelling at and about each other for some other reason.
