50 TIPS TO SHOW YOU HOW TO WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP BY A GUY WHO'S WON ONE...TWICE!
Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2020 3:04 pm
50 TIPS TO SHOW YOU HOW TO WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP BY A GUY WHO'S WON ONE...TWICE!
Fresh off the heels of my 2nd championship in 22 seasons as the GM of the Bulls, it was bittersweet to dismantle my winning squad this off-season. On one hand, building a championship team is a process that requires patience, savvy, and a lot of luck. Plenty of squads people have built over the years could have been championship squads. They had the talent. Some even had the patience and savvy. They were just missing the luck part. There really isn't anything you can do to change your luck, but to even have luck screw you out of a sim-ring, you have to have the right conditions line up.
Watching my Finals opponents, the Magic, dismantle their team--perhaps the greatest PBSL team of all time--we're spreading a lot of our best players around the league, and most of them are going to new GMs whose teams have never won a championship before. Most of those teams are also going to be teams that are in the conversation for championship contention. But if you're a new GM, it takes a while to learn every part of the system and become adept at using it to your advantage.
ROOKIE DRAFT
1. Come up with a strategy to determine a player's current value and potential value and keep refining that strategy.
2. Remember that a player's potential value will only be met for 3-5 years. He probably won't reach it until you either pay him in salary or pay him in points, and even so, a bad TC means he might never reach it.
3. Second round picks are worthless. Prove me wrong.
RFA
4. If there's a guy you're on the fence about keeping and you want to free up cap to bid on another players' RFA, feel free to decline him and try to retain him in UFA. If he's not a top target, you might be able to get him with a reasonable bid on day 1 if you don't expect him to get a lot of attention otherwise.
5. If someone puts in a huge overvalue on your player, don't be afraid to flat out decline. It'll screw over their salary cap for being an idiot. Of course, always try to sign and trade away a few points first.
6. Always put in a low, but reasonable, qualifying bid on someone whose rights you want to exercise. A lot of teams don't really have the cap space to make offers, and the ones that do generally only want to try to steal away a max guy (they always get matched, but gotta keep the incumbent team from getting a max value player on a discount). If you offer your guy nothing and nobody else does either, you just lost a guy by trying to let the market set a reasonable price. Foolish!
UFA
7. There's rarely ever a reason to offer a g/g big more than a vet min...you'll end up with a g/g big if you wait until Waiver Claims, that's how common they are.
8. Don't offer a y/b player a one year deal. There's no point. Why would you want to pay a high potential player for the one year where they're not really that good when you won't get bird rights on him? I saw this happen a few times and was scratching my head.
9. If you're trying to get a player at good value, don't offer him a multi-year contract. Most players prefer a one year contract for less than their desired total than a 2 year (or more) so they can gamble on themselves again in the next season's free agency.
10. Make sure you pay attention to which players you have bird rights and early bird rights on from last season. I've seen competing teams miss out on retaining competing players out of forgetfulness or simply not knowing.
11. Pay attention to which GMs are inactive and might not retain their bird rights guys.
12. Learn how the MLE works. If you have MLE access, chances are, you're already competing, and it's a great way to add depth.
13. Usually, saving your cap space until round 2 to pick up all the blue potential holdouts who didn't sign in round 1 is not a winning strategy.
14. If you're a rebuilding team with cap space to burn, and you don't want to keep it to take on bad contracts, it probably makes more sense to try and get mid-level guys on good contracts than it does to spend it all in one place. It can be hard to sell a max player to a competing team because not many of them have the expendable salary (or worthwhile future pieces) to trade for a max guy.
15. Contraction and a better training system (and people who know how to use it) means that the market is full of more good players than we've had previously. We're up to 16 or 17 purple potential guys, which is more than twice the number when I started, and three times the number before I joined. No yellow potential player should ever get more than a min.
16. There's no reason you shouldn't fill out your roster with mins. You can always cut them by the trade deadline to avoid the tax, and in between, they're great when you need matching salary on trades.
TRAINING CAMP
17. Even if you do 1,000 test TCs, you'll never get any of the values your tests spit out because you're running a test with different values for the rest of the league. TC doesn't seem to work in team-by-team bubbles, but rather as a function of the entire league's values.
18. I am skeptical as to whether it's worth it not to go recommended. I think good team TCs are more a function of having players with room to grow...and luck.
19. A while back, kucoach7 wrote an article that players tend to die at around 31. Don't oversimplify this. The worst TCs will generally cost a player about 60 attribute points. A player with attributes to spare at 32 or 33 can still be super valuable.
20. Bigs generally can last a bit longer than backcourt players. Since bigs rely more so on size and strength, a C whose QKN takes a dive doesn't really hurt them all that much.
21. You can only insure 3 guys, so be sure you know who they are. A young player's potentials are more likely to get hit than boosted, so if you have too many young players, you might want to start pushing your chips. Anyone can get hit at any time, but for players between 27-30, they generally tend to stay pretty solid.
22. If you've got a player over 27 or 28 who isn't at his potential, chances are, they're not going to ever reach their potential. In some cases, this could mean a player has a potential of over 100 (potentials can go up to 150 for some reason, but the HTML output won't display over 100, so we cap all currents to 100). This will prolong the skill from declining when a player is old, but some players only have that purple potential because of certain ratings over 100. They'll never be able to get to purple current otherwise.
TRAINING
23. With few exceptions, don't waste points training a player you're not going to have on your team for a while.
24. INS, JPS, and 3PS seem to have the biggest affect on wings and guards--bigger than PAS/HND. INS/PSD/BLK seem to have bigger affects on bigs than increasing rebounding. That doesn't mean it's always the right move, though.
25. Be sure to train PFL on starters who can't stay on the court more than 30 minutes.
26. Remember that training is also open for the all-star break. This is a better time to train potentials since you have a better outlook on what your team needs heading towards the end of the season.
TRADING
27. Keep your trade block up to date with who is available and what you're looking for.
28. Know your long term plans and if you're seriously competing, you have to be willing to trade your future players. There aren't a lot of championship teams with room on their squads for rookie contract guys who aren't close to their potentials.
29. Don't trade your future 1sts until you are able to accurately predict how good your team will be in 3 years.
30. Pay attention to all the trades that are happening and try to use those to see what the value is.
31. If a deal's good, a few points here or there shouldn't be a dealbreaker.
32. Try to know whether teams are selling and buying, and if you're really looking to move a player, try to have some idea of what the best you can get from every team is. If you don't know...ask.
33. Always respond to PMs, even if the deal isn't what you're looking for. Nothing's more frustrating than a read PM with no response, especially when you want to move on and continue talks with someone else.
34. If you've got space to take on bad contracts, adhere to supply and demand and charge accordingly. Especially in a post-contraction league where a lot of teams are spending more and more.
DEPTH CHARTS
35. In general, a depth chart can only take you so far. A team that doesn't have all the pieces isn't going to gameplan their way to a PBSL championship.
36. You can mess around with it, but play your best player at every position as a starter. You can put a starter quality guy on the bench to try to win 6th man of the year, but it's generally better for your record to not do that.
TAXES
37. If you're looking to compete, make sure you have enough in your point bank to pay taxes for multiple years in a row. So, don't use all your points in training. I personally like to have at least 50 points in my bank.
38. When planning a run, also try to build in a reset year before the run. Line up your contracts so you reset right before you have to pay a bunch of RFAs. If you can free up space for 2 seasons, try to sign some FAs to long term contracts the season before you have to pay your developing guys in RFA.
39. Be sure to use the offseason before you resign those RFAs and any early bird UFAs to buy depth contracts for points, future picks, or anything you have that won't be necessary for your playoff run.
40. Writing articles is a great way to offset the tax (but remember, there's a 25 point media cap maximum, which includes memes)
GENERAL
41. The color system is pretty straightforward, but in each color band, there's a world of difference between the players (except Green). A green player isn't far from being a fake blue or a better yellow. A weak blue player is closer to a weak yellow player than he is to a strong blue player. (Most blue players are not worth maxes)
42. Don't be afraid to ask advice from the person who referred you...or any other person...when making moves. Talking about sim league to people who are newer to sim league keeps me more excited for sim league.
43. Don't take anything too seriously. If you can't have a sense of humor about things, you're not going to win many friends. In sim league, a lot of things don't go your way, and it can be frustrating. But if you take it too seriously, prepare to be roasted on the meme thread.
44. Recruit. You get a lot of points for referring someone, and the more active teams there are, the more fun sim league is.
45. In terms of general strategizing, look at what a team with a good record looks like and look at what a team with a mediocre record looks like. If you don't think you can put together a roster that can look like one of the top 5 teams, it's probably not worth going all in.
46. http://pbsl.ijbl.net/lists.php is a pretty useful resource that maybe not everyone knows about
47. Preseason doesn't mean anything. The depth charts are janked up from roster movement, and most people don't submit depth charts via TV for this (or can't because their node is down and Wig is very hard to contact). I'm open to allowing manual DCs for preseason because I have to go through every single team's roster anyway and deactivate their 14th and 15th players anyway.
48. When long-term planning, try to keep an eye on what other teams are doing and what their long term goals are. If there are a lot of teams going all-in, you might want to plan your push in a few seasons once tax has forced a lot of those teams to sell off. If you're in a weak conference or a weak division, now might be the time to start stockpiling arms before it's already too late!
49. Never reveal all of your strategy secrets.
Fresh off the heels of my 2nd championship in 22 seasons as the GM of the Bulls, it was bittersweet to dismantle my winning squad this off-season. On one hand, building a championship team is a process that requires patience, savvy, and a lot of luck. Plenty of squads people have built over the years could have been championship squads. They had the talent. Some even had the patience and savvy. They were just missing the luck part. There really isn't anything you can do to change your luck, but to even have luck screw you out of a sim-ring, you have to have the right conditions line up.
Watching my Finals opponents, the Magic, dismantle their team--perhaps the greatest PBSL team of all time--we're spreading a lot of our best players around the league, and most of them are going to new GMs whose teams have never won a championship before. Most of those teams are also going to be teams that are in the conversation for championship contention. But if you're a new GM, it takes a while to learn every part of the system and become adept at using it to your advantage.
ROOKIE DRAFT
1. Come up with a strategy to determine a player's current value and potential value and keep refining that strategy.
2. Remember that a player's potential value will only be met for 3-5 years. He probably won't reach it until you either pay him in salary or pay him in points, and even so, a bad TC means he might never reach it.
3. Second round picks are worthless. Prove me wrong.
RFA
4. If there's a guy you're on the fence about keeping and you want to free up cap to bid on another players' RFA, feel free to decline him and try to retain him in UFA. If he's not a top target, you might be able to get him with a reasonable bid on day 1 if you don't expect him to get a lot of attention otherwise.
5. If someone puts in a huge overvalue on your player, don't be afraid to flat out decline. It'll screw over their salary cap for being an idiot. Of course, always try to sign and trade away a few points first.
6. Always put in a low, but reasonable, qualifying bid on someone whose rights you want to exercise. A lot of teams don't really have the cap space to make offers, and the ones that do generally only want to try to steal away a max guy (they always get matched, but gotta keep the incumbent team from getting a max value player on a discount). If you offer your guy nothing and nobody else does either, you just lost a guy by trying to let the market set a reasonable price. Foolish!
UFA
7. There's rarely ever a reason to offer a g/g big more than a vet min...you'll end up with a g/g big if you wait until Waiver Claims, that's how common they are.
8. Don't offer a y/b player a one year deal. There's no point. Why would you want to pay a high potential player for the one year where they're not really that good when you won't get bird rights on him? I saw this happen a few times and was scratching my head.
9. If you're trying to get a player at good value, don't offer him a multi-year contract. Most players prefer a one year contract for less than their desired total than a 2 year (or more) so they can gamble on themselves again in the next season's free agency.
10. Make sure you pay attention to which players you have bird rights and early bird rights on from last season. I've seen competing teams miss out on retaining competing players out of forgetfulness or simply not knowing.
11. Pay attention to which GMs are inactive and might not retain their bird rights guys.
12. Learn how the MLE works. If you have MLE access, chances are, you're already competing, and it's a great way to add depth.
13. Usually, saving your cap space until round 2 to pick up all the blue potential holdouts who didn't sign in round 1 is not a winning strategy.
14. If you're a rebuilding team with cap space to burn, and you don't want to keep it to take on bad contracts, it probably makes more sense to try and get mid-level guys on good contracts than it does to spend it all in one place. It can be hard to sell a max player to a competing team because not many of them have the expendable salary (or worthwhile future pieces) to trade for a max guy.
15. Contraction and a better training system (and people who know how to use it) means that the market is full of more good players than we've had previously. We're up to 16 or 17 purple potential guys, which is more than twice the number when I started, and three times the number before I joined. No yellow potential player should ever get more than a min.
16. There's no reason you shouldn't fill out your roster with mins. You can always cut them by the trade deadline to avoid the tax, and in between, they're great when you need matching salary on trades.
TRAINING CAMP
17. Even if you do 1,000 test TCs, you'll never get any of the values your tests spit out because you're running a test with different values for the rest of the league. TC doesn't seem to work in team-by-team bubbles, but rather as a function of the entire league's values.
18. I am skeptical as to whether it's worth it not to go recommended. I think good team TCs are more a function of having players with room to grow...and luck.
19. A while back, kucoach7 wrote an article that players tend to die at around 31. Don't oversimplify this. The worst TCs will generally cost a player about 60 attribute points. A player with attributes to spare at 32 or 33 can still be super valuable.
20. Bigs generally can last a bit longer than backcourt players. Since bigs rely more so on size and strength, a C whose QKN takes a dive doesn't really hurt them all that much.
21. You can only insure 3 guys, so be sure you know who they are. A young player's potentials are more likely to get hit than boosted, so if you have too many young players, you might want to start pushing your chips. Anyone can get hit at any time, but for players between 27-30, they generally tend to stay pretty solid.
22. If you've got a player over 27 or 28 who isn't at his potential, chances are, they're not going to ever reach their potential. In some cases, this could mean a player has a potential of over 100 (potentials can go up to 150 for some reason, but the HTML output won't display over 100, so we cap all currents to 100). This will prolong the skill from declining when a player is old, but some players only have that purple potential because of certain ratings over 100. They'll never be able to get to purple current otherwise.
TRAINING
23. With few exceptions, don't waste points training a player you're not going to have on your team for a while.
24. INS, JPS, and 3PS seem to have the biggest affect on wings and guards--bigger than PAS/HND. INS/PSD/BLK seem to have bigger affects on bigs than increasing rebounding. That doesn't mean it's always the right move, though.
25. Be sure to train PFL on starters who can't stay on the court more than 30 minutes.
26. Remember that training is also open for the all-star break. This is a better time to train potentials since you have a better outlook on what your team needs heading towards the end of the season.
TRADING
27. Keep your trade block up to date with who is available and what you're looking for.
28. Know your long term plans and if you're seriously competing, you have to be willing to trade your future players. There aren't a lot of championship teams with room on their squads for rookie contract guys who aren't close to their potentials.
29. Don't trade your future 1sts until you are able to accurately predict how good your team will be in 3 years.
30. Pay attention to all the trades that are happening and try to use those to see what the value is.
31. If a deal's good, a few points here or there shouldn't be a dealbreaker.
32. Try to know whether teams are selling and buying, and if you're really looking to move a player, try to have some idea of what the best you can get from every team is. If you don't know...ask.
33. Always respond to PMs, even if the deal isn't what you're looking for. Nothing's more frustrating than a read PM with no response, especially when you want to move on and continue talks with someone else.
34. If you've got space to take on bad contracts, adhere to supply and demand and charge accordingly. Especially in a post-contraction league where a lot of teams are spending more and more.
DEPTH CHARTS
35. In general, a depth chart can only take you so far. A team that doesn't have all the pieces isn't going to gameplan their way to a PBSL championship.
36. You can mess around with it, but play your best player at every position as a starter. You can put a starter quality guy on the bench to try to win 6th man of the year, but it's generally better for your record to not do that.
TAXES
37. If you're looking to compete, make sure you have enough in your point bank to pay taxes for multiple years in a row. So, don't use all your points in training. I personally like to have at least 50 points in my bank.
38. When planning a run, also try to build in a reset year before the run. Line up your contracts so you reset right before you have to pay a bunch of RFAs. If you can free up space for 2 seasons, try to sign some FAs to long term contracts the season before you have to pay your developing guys in RFA.
39. Be sure to use the offseason before you resign those RFAs and any early bird UFAs to buy depth contracts for points, future picks, or anything you have that won't be necessary for your playoff run.
40. Writing articles is a great way to offset the tax (but remember, there's a 25 point media cap maximum, which includes memes)
GENERAL
41. The color system is pretty straightforward, but in each color band, there's a world of difference between the players (except Green). A green player isn't far from being a fake blue or a better yellow. A weak blue player is closer to a weak yellow player than he is to a strong blue player. (Most blue players are not worth maxes)
42. Don't be afraid to ask advice from the person who referred you...or any other person...when making moves. Talking about sim league to people who are newer to sim league keeps me more excited for sim league.
43. Don't take anything too seriously. If you can't have a sense of humor about things, you're not going to win many friends. In sim league, a lot of things don't go your way, and it can be frustrating. But if you take it too seriously, prepare to be roasted on the meme thread.
44. Recruit. You get a lot of points for referring someone, and the more active teams there are, the more fun sim league is.
45. In terms of general strategizing, look at what a team with a good record looks like and look at what a team with a mediocre record looks like. If you don't think you can put together a roster that can look like one of the top 5 teams, it's probably not worth going all in.
46. http://pbsl.ijbl.net/lists.php is a pretty useful resource that maybe not everyone knows about
47. Preseason doesn't mean anything. The depth charts are janked up from roster movement, and most people don't submit depth charts via TV for this (or can't because their node is down and Wig is very hard to contact). I'm open to allowing manual DCs for preseason because I have to go through every single team's roster anyway and deactivate their 14th and 15th players anyway.
48. When long-term planning, try to keep an eye on what other teams are doing and what their long term goals are. If there are a lot of teams going all-in, you might want to plan your push in a few seasons once tax has forced a lot of those teams to sell off. If you're in a weak conference or a weak division, now might be the time to start stockpiling arms before it's already too late!
49. Never reveal all of your strategy secrets.
