Keep hold of Mitchell Robinson, Yev! I'm a big fan.
Keep hold of Mitchell Robinson, Yev! I'm a big fan.
Well into Free Agency now and it's looking like he's staying.
I've gone balls deep into trading and it's fascinating. Trading for picks is immense fun.
20/21 Season business done:
Draft
R1 P4: Lucius Allen (this chap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Allen, now pensionable age)
Contracts Expired
Harkless, Gibson, Bullock & Ellington. All other expiring players re-signed.
Trades
Knicks Trade: '20 1st Round Pick (Clippers) & '20 2nd Round Pick (Hornets)
Bucks Trade: '21 1st Round Pick (Pacers) & '21 1st Round Pick
Knicks Trade: Dennis Smith Jr. & '21 1st Round Pick (Mavericks)
Cavaliers Trade: Kevin Porter Jr & '23 1st Round Pick (Cavaliers)
Knicks Trade: Elfrid Payton & '22 2nd Round Pick (Knicks)
Hornets Trade: Malik Monk
Free Agency Signings
Tacko Fall (C) - 2yr/$10.00m deal
Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk (SF) - 3yr/$23.40m deal
Jared Harper (PG) - 4yr/$13.33m deal
Quite happy with business there. Strengthened the first team I feel and got a bit of depth on the roster too. $17m cap space, which rises to $91m next year, so a lot to play with before renewals. To really get on board with this crazy sport I need a franchise player at some point though.
Tacko
The mans a cheat code.
2020/21 All-Star Break
Much better this season. With 27 games to go we've already won as many games as we did in the whole of last season. A near even home record is very pleasing too. 4 teams stand between us and the playoffs and if I'm honest I doubt we have enough in the tank to make it, but a serious push next year now has to be the aim.
On the player front the acquistions and draft pick (Allen) have settled in very well, with Malik Monk donning it from 6th man, albeit no one considers us award worthy so far this season.
I still need a heavy hitter to strengthen the brand and it's that time of any save again where Giannis' contract is in its final months. I'll go all out for him in the off season and should I be lucky enough to get him I think the difficulty and season length will still leave enough of a challenge for me to use him for longer than I did in the Bulls save before getting bored.
In other news we have five picks at this year's draft, including 3 first rounders. Most exciting of those is Indiana's, who currently sit 5th in the lottery table. It's the 1978 draft this time, so some kid called Larry Bird is generating the buzz.
Nice read, that.
Cheers John Arne, it's quite fun trying to build a dynasty with a team that's been dogshit for decades.
I mean, look at the state of this. https://www.landofbasketball.com/tea...ork_knicks.htm
Giannis re-signed with the Bucks before the contract extension deadline.
Season 20/21 Summary.
Season over and we finished in pretty good form, breaking the 40% win barrier and ending with a pretty positive home record too. Points per game up by 10% and a healthy increase in rebounds too.
In terms of the squad, this is the approach we'll take into the off-season.
I need that franchise player and getting rid of the players on the bin list + the space I already have will free up $40m+ from the cap to go all out to get one. Shame it won't be Giannis, but hey ho.
The lottery draw has been done and we got the 2nd, 6th and 28th picks. There's not much I'm interested in available so I might go for a cheeky trade instead with the marquee picks there.
In the playoffs the Denver Nuggets implausibly (given their regular season record) won their first ever championship, which was a bit immersion breaking.
Onto the trading.
Season 21/22 Off Season Business Done.
Released
The contacts of Portis and Dotson expired and they went on their merry way.
The Draft
We went into it with 3 first round picks and 2 second round. Not fancying anything from the likely second first round pick down I traded the following:
Knicks Trade: '21 1st Round (Pick 2) & '21 1st Round (Pick 6)
Thunder Trade: '21 1st Round (Pick 1)
That left me with 4 draft picks and I took the following
Round 1 Pick 29: Coty Wilcox (PF)
Round 2 Pick 4: Cody Jameson (SG)
Round 2 Pick 6: J.P. White III (PF|C)
I can't find any of these players in the actual 1978 draft, so I don't think any of them are real. But that leaves one pick not listed above, the number 1 pick in the 1978 NBA Draft first round.
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Trades
Knicks Trade: Ignas Brazdeikis (SF) & Coty Wilcox (PF) & '25 2nd Round Pick
Jazz Trade: Juwan Morgan (PF) & '25 1st Round Pick
Knicks Trade: Juwan Morgan (PF) & '24 2nd Round Pick
Wizards Trade: '25 1st Round Pick & '23 2nd Round Pick (Bulls) & $3.43m trade exception
Nothing remarkable in there, but I do pick up 2 1st Round Picks for 2025. Word on the street is that there's a talented kid about to go to college in North Carolina and I'd like to give myself a good chance to get him.
Free Agency Signings
A bit disappointing here as nothing came off. Tried to sign a couple of marquee Point Guards as we had the cap space (De'Aaron Fox & another I forget the name of), but it wasn't happening. Shame as I might not get the chance next summer with a few key contracts expiring that are going to eat into the cap to renew.
21/22 Squad
I was just pulling the squad together and realised that I need a back up Power Forward, quite badly. I thought the one we drafted could do a job, but he's actually shit.
Emergency, eve of season opener, trade time.
No worthwhile Power Forwards that I can get as back up, so we go with what we have:
Despite not getting a marquee point guard I'm quite happy with that starting five. Average age of under 23 as well.
Robinson has improved ludicrously, going up by 8 rating overall in three seasons. He's going to cost a fortune to keep and will probably leave me in the position of not being able to sign anyone from free agency for a while.
Can't wait to use Bird too. Time for the tip off.
I'll just leave this here...Originally Posted by phonics
Tacko
The mans a cheat code.
Regular Season 3 Summary (2021/22)
Well we made the playoffs and will take the 4th seed.
Cracking season all in all, albeit we did have a horror spell, starting around game 60, where we lost about 10 in a row, but rallied well and ended the season on a 7 game winning streak.
Larry Bird is pretty good (as you'd imagine), but I can't get to grips with his 3 point shooting. I score far more with RJ Barrett. Mitchell Robinson continues to increase his already obscene rating, and is now up to 92. Lucius Allen is playing well too, but is probably never going to be top tier.
Playoff draw:
Boston should be fun and we may have a chance, but that'll be it if we then come up against the 76ers. Oh and I don't want to sim my way to a Championship, so I'll be playing with the self imposed rule of playing at least 12 minutes/one full quarter per game.
NBA Playoffs 2022 (Season 3)
Eastern Conference Round 1 - New York Knicks vs Boston Celtics
After a 47 game winning season, the best Knicks season for 10 years, we face the Celtics in Round 1 of the Eastern Conference. As 4th seed we have home advantage and open with 2 games at the garden to kick things off in the best of 7.
Walker, Brown and Tatum are all a bit good but Williams is a dodgy centre at best, so hoping we can capitalise there as we did in the regular season with a 3-1 series win.
Game 1
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Game 2
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Game 3
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Game 4
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Game 5
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Game 6
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Come on you Knickersniffers!
I can't get my head around trades and whatnot to give the GM mode a proper go so I'm living vicariously through you now
Unbelievable scenes Yev. Great updates.
Game 7
So after 6 hard fought games and coming back from 2-0 down, it's all down to this. Win or go home.
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Larry Bird clearly a double agent, don't trust that man.
I may well trade him at some point should the right opportunity arise. He's great in theory at shooting, but I find that fucking hard with anyone on All-Star difficulty unless I have an open look so would prefer someone more mobile.
2021/22 (Season 3) Off-Season preamble
So this is the roster as it stands at the moment. Some challenges ahead, namely:
We have nearly $20m of cap space at the moment, but Randle and Robinson's contracts are up and they'll cost a fair whack to renew. Both have (or will have) 3 bird years so I can go over the wage cap to sign them (I assume Larry Bird was like the trailblazing reverse Bosman of Basketball), but if I do that I'm restricting myself to no free agent activity for some time unless I offload someone. With a young first team this problem will only get worse once the scandalously low amounts I'm paying Allen, Barrett and Bird during their rookie contracts come to an end.
I also want to focus on developing the mid-70's squad fodder I have a bit more, which is difficult due to the sheer weight of them, so I need to trim in that department and bring in some lower rated youth to replace. However of those I've earmarked to bin (Monk should be in the wank bucket, but I can't be arsed to upload the screenshot again) Monk and Trier are all in the last year of their contract and at this point I can't trade them without renewing first. Some future first round picks would be ideal if I can renew and then trade.
On that note I don't think I have any decent picks in this year's draft (I can't check as that screen isn't available at this time of the season), but I'm not missing out on that much if I don't as it's the 1982 draft which didn't have anyone that amazing in it according to the other tab of my spreadsheet.
Onto the off-season.
Scrap that about the 1982 draft, it's actually the 1979 one with Magic Johnson. The Thunder got the first pick, us with 23rd.
2021/22 (Season 3) Off-Season
What a summer! I am now so acquainted with the rules of NBA contracts and trading I think I almost understand it.
The Draft
With the 23rd pick in the NBA draft, the Knicks decided to....trade it. Taking the Rockets 2026 1st Round pick along with the Warriors 2024 second round pick, which the Rockets also owned, but now I do.
Trades
Not content with one slightly confusing trade for picks, we decided to do three more:
Knicks Trade: Mykhailiuk (SF)
Spurs Trade: 2024 1st Round Pick (Spurs - Top 5 Protected) & 2026 1st Round Pick (Spurs)
Knicks Trade: 2023 1st Round (Mavericks - Top 10 Protected) & 2023 2nd Round Pick (Knicks) & 2023 2nd Round Pick (Bulls)
Kings Trade: 2026 1st Round Pick (Hornets) & 2024 2nd Round Pick (Kings)
Knicks Trade: 2024 1st Round (Spurs - Top 5 Protected) & 2023 1st Round (Knicks - Top 3 Protected)
Cavaliers Trade: 2025 & 2026 1st Round Picks (Cavaliers)
A lot of shit to get through there, but essentially I now have five first round picks from both the 2025 and 2026 drafts, which is nice.
Players Released
A list of shithousery to follow:
First our starting Power Forward, Julius Randle decided that a $28m (rising by 5% each year) 4 year deal wasn't good enough for an 83 rated player and buggered off for Miami.
Then Malik Monk wanted $20m a season, so goodye to him too.
Allonzo Trier also wanted silly money, albeit not as much as Monk, but after losing Randle I had to move to replace (more on that below) so didn't have the funds and/or the desire to bother giving into this arse's demands.
Frank Ntilikina was more reasonable, but I'd already decided to get rid of him in favour of trying to hold onto Monk (had to ditch one to balance the books to bring in Randle's replacement) so another one bites the dust.
As you can imagine, this left the squad quite threadbare.
Players Re-Signed
First bit of good news in this post (bar the immense work on the pick trading floor) comes in the form of re-signing Mitchell Robinson on a 5yr/$167.21m deal. Tip to the shitehawks who didn't get the money they were after with this one, be better.
Tacko Fall also re-signed on a 1yr/$6.25m deal and was joined by Kevin Knox II.
Kevin deserves a special mention for being the first sub-80 rated player I've managed on this who wanted north of $30m a year. Thankfully the wonderful NBA system stepped in and his restricted free agency status meant I got him on for another year on a mere $7.31m deal. This won't be forgotten Kevin and you'll be traded as soon as the same system that screwed you allows me to. December 15th 2022 to be precise. Kevin.
New Signings
With Randle opting for the beaches of Miami we needed a replacement. Bagley was on free agency and while he's primarily a centre he can also play PF. He opted to stay at the Kings, so I then turned my sights on Jaren Jackson, who also decided to stay where he was.
In the end someone that served me well during my time at the Bulls (in a different life) came good, with Michael Porter Jr. signing a 4yr/$110m deal. I didn't want to go with the same players, but due to the lack of quality options I'll make an exception on this one.
All this meant that we now only had 10 players and needed 14 to start the season. Only snag is that we have $14m left on the wage bill, so a measly $3.5m a head. Scouring the free agency list I bagged the following rejects. Money-balling the fuck out of the NBA.
Boban Marjanovic (74 rated Centre) - Previously of many NBA teams, but only over the last five years. Which is odd, as he's 33. No matter, best thing about Boban is that he happily accepted $1.79m to not play basketball. What a gent.
Clark Anthony (71 rated SF/SG) - What does a bit of potential cost these days? $7m a year, for two years. No evidence of him ever actually playing basketball mind.
Allen Frazier (69 rated PF/SF) - Another one yet to ever play professionally. Signed for two years $3.7m a year. I can feel a trade for a distant, distant first round pick happening at the end of the season.
Curtis Landry (60 rated PG) - Has an excellent beard and will accept employment for the minimum NBA wage at this point of $1.11m. What more can I say? Absolutely nothing, he's 60 rated.
Training Camps
After all of the business was done I sent Michael Porter Jr and Lucius Allen to uncapped potential training camp and Mitchell Robinson to Weight camp, which also improves his strength.
And that, as they say is a wrap for the off-season. Objectives for next season are for one of my players to win the player of the week award, win a playoff series and see someone, anyone, prevent Giannis from winning his 5th MVP on the trot.
And here's the squad for season 4.
Highest average rating for the first team, but less depth than last season.
@Yevrah how often do you actually play games versus sim'ing?
In the regular season I play the first quarter of key games and then dip back in for the last 6 minutes. Some other games I'll dip into as well.
For the playoffs I went with 12 minutes minimum for each game, but that ended up as 18, so I'll probably stick to that as a minimum, maybe raise it to 24. Ultimately if I win a championship I want to feel like I've played enough minutes to earn it.
The shorter seasons and playing all the games were slightly better in that respect, but you end up with unrealistic scores and it doesn't feel like you're part of an actual NBA season, which this way does.
Season 4 2022/23 All-Star Break
Absolutely nailing it.
Still haven't won a player of the week award mind.
1st seed for the playoffs is now the target and while it'll be tough once we get there, we have loads of contracts expiring in the summer so this might have to be the year.
'2-way 3-level facilitator' has a real Nathan Barley sound to it.
You should see what some of the plays are called...
"Self-facilitating basketball node".
Season 4 2022/23 Regular Season Summary
So regular season over and we take the 1st seed for the playoffs.
The team is played some great basketball and the enforced addition of Michael Porter Jr combined with the growing maturity of the young team may have put us in the position of having a championship winning side. Still no player of the week, but Larry Bird did win player of the month for April, which was nice. Giannis breaking all sorts of records with his 5th MVP in a row. Talking of records, a 38 year old Lebron James sailed past Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's career record points haul last season and is now over 2,000 clear, with 2 years left to run on his current deal.
First up in the playoffs is Brooklyn, who I hate playing as Kevin Durant seems to score everything. Always. Still, we have the team and I'd be disappointed if I didn't advance.
Season 4 2022/23 Eastern Conference Playoffs Round 1
New York Knicks (62-20) vs. Brooklyn Nets (43-39)
For the playoffs I've decided to play both the first and fourth quarters of every game. Should keep the time to around half an hour a game.
Game 1
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Game 2
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Do they still have Durant and Irving in your game?
I just watched the video.
I've been running that 'around the outside of the defender before they adjust' play since 2k14. Always so satisfying
Irving missing that free throw should have him fired.
They do indeed. Absolute arse to play against.
They both score threes for fun and Durant is also doing very well at closing down Bird. He's on him every minute of every game.
Game 3
With a 2-0 series lead we headed to Brooklyn for game 3.
After a tight fought three quarters we had a 6 point lead in the 4th with 45 seconds to go, and managed to spunk it. The Nets pulled it back to 4 and crowded round my players, without thinking we passed it straight to Durant who knocked in the easy put back. With a 2 point lead we held the ball for 20 seconds and then missed the shot to seal the win. Durant bounded down the other end of the court and smashed in the dunk to take it to over-time.
Reeling from that we found ourselves 10 points behind in overtime, before somehow rallying to level with seconds left again. Then Brooklyn scored and were fouled to make it a three point play:
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Elsewhere in the East our potential opponents in the next round Boston or Wasington are tied at 2-2 after 4 games.
I'm loving all this but someone please teach Yev how to clip these videos with audio.
For some reason the Xbox won't record them with it. If the game does it of its own accord (like when you get a walkout in FIFA) it does, but manually no dice.
Googled it and nothing I can find will help so far. It's bloody annoying as the audio of the game is great.
Just looked it up. It's banned in NBA2k because there's always a song playing in the background and they don't want to deal with copyright. You'd have to play it through your PC and then record off there.
Ah, cheers for checking and confirming. That's annoying, but at least I know why now.
2022/23 (Season 4) Eastern Conference Playoffs Round 1 Game 4
After the disappointment in the first game in Brooklyn, would we bound back to take a 3-1 series lead back to the garden or would Brooklyn tie it up at 2-2?
Slightly unrealistic score alert.
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2022/23 (Season 4) Eastern Conference Playoffs Round 1 Game 5
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I don't think anyone other than me plays MyTeam but if you do:
https://2kmtcentral.com/20/players/9230/danny-manning
He's going for around 6k (PS4) and he's brilliant. One of the best value cards in the game mode.
I had a look at it the other night as it happens. I can't be arsed to get into another game like that after FIFA, but it did look much easier to get good players than Ultimate Team. I used my VC I'd earned just by playing the game and was able to open enough packs to get loads of 90 rated players.
In other news, I might have to put the Knicks game into storage as it's a bit too easy and if I don't win the Championship this year I will do next. I've no idea how I'm so good at a basketball game so quickly, but I need a save where I can't turn shite into title contenders within 3/4 seasons.
I've been looking at the difficulty settings, but any suggestions welcome.
You'd love it tbh.
These are 2 of the cards you can grind for, completely free:
https://2kmtcentral.com/20/players/9060/kobe-bryant
https://2kmtcentral.com/20/players/9241/larry-bird
Kobe is the bigger grind as you have to complete 300 games and there are squad restrictions. For Larry it's 50 games I believe and 0 squad restrictions.
It's easy to get very good cards but the mental cards (Giannis 99, Jordan GOAT 99 etc) are crazy prices.
I'm sure I would, but that's partly why I don't want to get into it. These live service things are like crack. No doubt immense fun but life is just better if you say no to that shit in the first place.
Right, I think I've cracked it.
Using a pre-built expanson team will allow me to start with a mostly awful squad, particularly if I increase the number of players that are protected in the expansion draft. I'll need to add another one of the expansion teams to level out the NBA to 32 teams. Just need to decide which one to choose.
Gameplay difficulty will be upped to Superstar and the following sliders will be moved to 100 (their hardest settings): Simulator Difficulty, Trade Negotiation Difficulty & Contract Negotiation Difficulty. Some testings shows that all that should make simmed results worse, harder to pull off trades and less likely to be able to hoover up free agency, at least while I'm shit.
One thing I will allow myself to do is change player positions. e.g. if I have someone who is a SG but better suited to being a PG I can change it.
Game on.
Game not on. The expansion teams somehow lead to all the game build up being omitted and putting those sliders all the way up to 100 causes problems. Basically none of my players would re-sign and I could only pick up shite.
But and on the plus side I have found this youtube video that seems to make things both harder and more realistic without going too crazy.
Right, all that sorted and difficulty set to Superstar, with Sim difficulty set to 100 and my new franchise will be:
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Utilising the 'start today' feature, I'll be picking up the league from this point, presumably as it's just about to resume in real life, in some form or other.
While the team may not be doing too bad when the season broke, the game has them down as the worst team in the NBA by some distance, with only one player rated 80 and the rest below that.
I expect I'll slip down the table with the difficulty selected anyway, but given the gap probably not enough to make the top draft pick that likely, which as is custom for the first season is from the 1969 class.
2019/20 Season 1 - Charlotte Hornets
So after taking charge we inherited this squad:
Few things beyond the general very poor standard jump out. Batum, Rozier and Zeller are all paid far too much and will need to be moved on. I had Malik Monk in the other save and he's not bad, so that's a plus point. Bridges and Washington look pretty promising too.
Given we couldn't qualify for the playoffs or finish much worse than 4th bottom, I simmed a lot more games than I normally would and we ended with a 24-58 record.
Onto the playoffs and the 76ers took the championship with Joel Embiid Playoff MVP. I need to use him at some point, he looks utterly beastly.
Looking back at the history books, not only have the Hornets never won a Championship, they've never got past the conference semi-finals.
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