#SLOE: People's Basketball Sim League

When was a time that an injury impacted your season.
If you're new and you can't identify a time personally, identify an injury that you saw another team suffer that you think derailed their momentum.

Rules: 1 point if you give thoughtful answers, which I will award after the timer ends for responses. The timer ends for responses at the moment the corresponding week's Sim is run.

Note: Use approximately 5 sentences as your bare minimum for 1 point. If you write 3 long, complex sentences, you'll still get a point. If you write 5, 3 word sentences, you will not get a point. Don't @ me.

Due: Due by the deadline for sim 6

Mike Lowry wrote: Fri Feb 28, 2025 3:00 am When was a time that an injury impacted your season.
If you're new and you can't identify a time personally, identify an injury that you saw another team suffer that you think derailed their momentum.

Last season losing Hanzlik for the playoffs hurt us a lot vs the Nets. I'm not sure if we would've won, but he was a solid starter that when we lost him it really hurt our depth.

Another is an oldie, but a goodie. I was in the original PBSL's NBA Finals vs the Lakers as the Bucks in the 1999-2000 championships. I had an elite team with Jalen Rose & Shaquille O'Neal leading the way, the rest of the team was a good balance of offense and defensive studs that made life difficult for everyone. The whole playoffs we were dominant, just running through people left and right. Then we meet the dirty Lakers. Game 1, 18 minutes in.. Shaq gets concussed and out for 40 days. Series ended as a gentleman's sweep. That one was brutal.

Archives/PBSL/1999/playoffs.htm

Mike Lowry wrote: Fri Feb 28, 2025 3:00 am When was a time that an injury impacted your season.

I think the obvious answer would be "last season" - I had a one-month injury to James Donaldson that made me go trade him for Bill Cartwright, and then Bernard King was out for basically the entire playoffs, and when our team ran to the Finals without him, it made me comfortable enough to trade him in the offseason. To say nothing of the three-month injury to Jim Spanarkel that ruined my bench rotation, but I digress.

Anyway, injuries happen. It's one of the reasons I've always tried to build a team that runs about 8 players deep and limit my players' minutes; while my bench players are obviously not as good as my starters, I think they fit the build of the team and it helps me survive injuries when they do happen.. and hopefully playing my starters less minutes means they are at less risk of getting injured. Right now, Bill Cartwright is leading my squad at 32.0 minutes per game; that wouldn't surprise me if it was the lowest leading average in the league. Yes, that hurts their individual per-game stats a bit, but I like to think it means I have more of a chance of getting to the playoffs healthy.

Do I regret the trades now? Well, after seeing both James Donaldson and Bernard King make huge jumps in training camp while Bill Cartwright was hammered on his currents (thank goodness for TC insurance on his potentials) and Kareem take expected drops due to age, I'm feeling a little less than happy that I traded away players that increased in value post-trade. But I had no way of knowing they were going to go turbo boost, and I'm not in the habit of beating myself up over not having information it would have been impossible to know at the time.

Mike Lowry wrote: Fri Feb 28, 2025 3:00 am When was a time that an injury impacted your season.
If you're new and you can't identify a time personally, identify an injury that you saw another team suffer that you think derailed their momentum.

Rules: 1 point if you give thoughtful answers, which I will award after the timer ends for responses. The timer ends for responses at the moment the corresponding week's Sim is run.

Note: Use approximately 5 sentences as your bare minimum for 1 point. If you write 3 long, complex sentences, you'll still get a point. If you write 5, 3 word sentences, you will not get a point. Don't @ me.

Due: Due by the deadline for sim 6

Last season, I had injuries early. I lost Kyle Macy for multiple Sims. I was under .500 and was not looking like playoff team. When he came back, I was able to go on a run and grab a playoff spot.

If he had not been injured, I think I would have been pushing to host a playoff game. It would have given me some advantage for playing at home. I also could have worked through some lineups to see what exactly would be my best that playoff series.

When was a time that an injury impacted your season.
Last season for me. Drafted Robert Parrish with my 1st round pick and I was holding steady in a division of only being about 2 games out of the lead. Was starting to think about what moves I could make in order to get my team over the hump and start winning more. And then he got hurt for 45 days and my team really suffered for 3 sims and I wasn't able to get back on track. Ended up trading him and it led me to this season where I'm just trying to build up points and picks and develop young players

We are going to travel back into the future and my first season as GM of the Nuggets, I had a hard fought season and made the playoffs as a 7seed, and then 4 games before the playoffs started my star purple player, Justin Amos, got hurt and was out the whole series. I went down 4-1, and that was crushing, but I did come back stronger and made B2B finals appearances after that! So makes me think I could've done some work if Amos was available the first season.

Mike Lowry wrote: Fri Feb 28, 2025 3:00 am When was a time that an injury impacted your season.
If you're new and you can't identify a time personally, identify an injury that you saw another team suffer that you think derailed their momentum.

I've been riddled with injuries this season and greatly impacted! I could probably still be in first if 3 of my best players didn't get injured. But that's not as interesting to me as my 2051 Warriors.

Archives/PBSL/2051/rosters/roster17.htm

2050 was a solid season for us, but with an aged-out Lu Dort on my roster, and Douglas Haun not getting any younger, changes were afoot. I scored Markus Ridenhour in 2051 UFA, a monstrous pickup, and with Haun still looking good and my husband Fabian Hub continuing to take his steroid vitamins, I figured we'd be contenders. But Markus went out in the first game of the 2nd sim and didn't come back until the end of the season. And Haun went out for 3 sims in the first game of the season. When he came back in Sim 4, at PG (lol), he only lasted 5 games before going down to injury again. So my only decent player to play every game in 2051, Fabian Hub, was still only g/b, and we won 23 games all year, landing a high lotto pick in a year we went in thinking we might win it all. Hmph.

So, when 2052 rolled around, I stopped playing games. I nabbed Alphonse Morelock from the champion Grizzlies, sending my pick and Grandpa Haun's too big contract to Memphis. Markus stayed healthy and Hub was even more of a monster. My 2051 hopes of a title - my first - finally came to fruition in 2052.

Archives/PBSL/2052/rosters/roster17.htm

I don't remember how else I slapped that team together, but I pat myself on the back for it. What a team! So good we ran it back in 2053. My best days as GM... ahh, the memories...

So I had a good ending to my devastating injury woes. I just had to keep faith that what I had started was a great thing and it was far from finished.

When was a time that an injury impacted your season.: I am a fairly new GM so thankfully haven't had to many devastating injuries to date, even though Im losing ole Rick Green for a sim. That could hurt. I will say I do briefly remember the 2061 - the year of the broken leg. This is all lore as we have all jumped in a time machine now, but if my memory serves me correct there were 3-5 broken legs in one season and I had the luxury of buckets of cap space and a non competitive team. End up taking a funny guy by the name of Dennis Funkhouser, his broken leg, and contract that was bigger than most countries GDP off some poor GMs hands. I really hope that type of season never shows itself in the NPBSL.