A Brief History of the PBSL

[kucoach7]

Nathan Sliver here once again with sevenfortyseven.com. Today I am going to present a brief numerical history of the league. This is pretty much a product of me playing with pivot tables and my team/player database. If any of my readers have some graph or table they would like to see, let me know and I'll whip it up. Let's first start by looking at the all-time league standings.

Historical standings.GIF (29.14 KiB) Viewed 1358 times

The top of this list is exactly what you would expect, full of champions. . . except for the Kings. Maybe this year will be the year for Nola and Sacramento. The bottom of the list is also expected, franchises that have struggled to maintain consistent leadership.

Now let's look at the make-up of the league. Let's start with color ratings.

Current Colors.GIF (13.39 KiB) Viewed 1358 times

Current Colors Graph.GIF (10.9 KiB) Viewed 1358 times

The biggest thing that sticks out in the first table is the number of purple players. The league's stock of superstars is way down and it isn't coming back up any time soon with only a few blue/purples out there. For me, the more interesting figure is the second one. It isn't just purple players that are down, blue and green are down too. That leaves yellow players to pick up the slack, peaking near 200 two seasons ago.

Now let's look at how these colors translate into ratings.

[kucoach7]

This is pretty interesting considering the color ranking information we just considered. Looking at the attribute numbers of players that played in more than 40 games, we notice that they haven't really changed much.

Average of all players.GIF (6.06 KiB) Viewed 1355 times

Average line.GIF (6.25 KiB) Viewed 1355 times

This suggests that the talent hasn't changed so much as the scouting reports. What if the average hasn't moved but the tail has? Let's look at the top PER posted each year.

Max PER.GIF (5.4 KiB) Viewed 1354 times

These numbers vaguely suggest that there has been a change in high-end performance. We just don't see those unreal Kemp numbers anymore and that is probably a good thing. So, maybe the average hasn't changed but the performance of the best players has.

Color ratings have always been a mystery and I don't think I've really done anything to help solve that mystery by presenting more weird results.

[kucoach7]

Let's finish by looking what drives these changes, that fickle friend, training camp. The results of training camp have varied vastly over the year. The following represent the net change of all training camp participants.

TC Change.GIF (5.74 KiB) Viewed 1352 times

TC line.GIF (7.01 KiB) Viewed 1352 times

Wow, there were some really bad years in there. However, it looks like some of this can be explained by the average age of the league.

Age and experience.GIF (7.82 KiB) Viewed 1352 times

I feel like these results combined with the average attribute numbers suggest intelligence on our part. During years where it is better to have old guys that drop 30 points than it is to have young guys that improve by 30 points, we go with the old guys and vice versa, keeping the average pretty steady.

[kucoach7]

Finally, let us remember how good rookies used to be.

Average Rookie.GIF (6.19 KiB) Viewed 1350 times

Rookie chart.GIF (6.71 KiB) Viewed 1350 times

This has been a big adjustment for those of us that were around back in 1992 and 1993. Back then you could turn around a team with one good draft. The Blazers tanked their first season with ku at the helm, drafted Shawn Bradley and Jamal Mashburn, and made the playoffs with them starting the next year. Making the playoffs with two rookies starting? That doesn't happen these days.

So what do all these tables and graphs mean about our league. I think that the league has become more challenging. You can't rely on color rating as much. You have to really look at a player because you might have to start a yellow guy. You can't make a quick turnaround through the draft. Game planning and team cohesion seem to be more important.

What does the future hold? Rookies have been and will continue to get better as we no longer have to draft high schoolers. Role players will continue to be more and more important, as will game planning. The best players will never be as good as they used to be.

[78#]

Really good stuff.

[NOLa.]

As always, A+ stuff ku!

Sent via Morse code

[42PhD]

I've written things that point in the same direction, so I really enjoy this. Relying on top players was what some people were doing, whether they knew it or not. My guess is the League is still mostly a mystery and will remain so until a concerted effort to understand game planning and roster construction is undertaken.

[ballsohard]

This is where I don't love our point system for articles. This stuff takes a lot more brain power than your average 5 point article. Thank you Todd !

[NOLa.]

The top of this list is exactly what you would expect, full of champions. . . except for the Kings.

:[

[IamQuailman]

Finally, let us remember how good rookies used to be.

Average Rookie.GIF

Rookie chart.GIF

So what do all these tables and graphs mean about our league. I think that the league has become more challenging. You can't rely on color rating as much. You have to really look at a player because you might have to start a yellow guy. You can't make a quick turnaround through the draft. Game planning and team cohesion seem to be more important.

Fo real

[IamQuailman]

Also, AWARDED 5 POINTS!