SSBA

i am planning to make some changes concerning the draft.

I am still planning to make the draft file with the names of former NBA players.
i guess most of the guys already know who will be available in the next 3-4 years.

that makes it pretty easy to plan your future and go for a guy like Jordan for example by trading away your best players and sign backup players in FA.

i will try to explain how i want to change that.
i will make a draft pool of all guys who ever were drafted in the NBA in the next 4 years in our draft schedule.
first i will make all seniors draft eligible.
than the rest will declare for the draft randomized.
i hope i can explain it better with an example:
we all know the real Duncan came out of college as a senior and we all know the year.
but in my system he can be in the draft pool in any of his 4 years in college.
So it could be that he will declare 3 or 2 year prior than you expect and it could happen that LB would declare with Howard for example.
The ratings will be the same no matter when he declares but i hope that this will add some excitement for the postseason.

Also the draft file will be uploaded after season end from now one. Like in real NBA.

Please discuss this idea and let me know if you have additional ideas.

i'm up for anything that would stimulate the league.  How do you plan to randomize which players enter though?

not sure yet.
maybe i make an excelsheet with all the names add their current year in college and run it like a lotto system. i don´t know yet if i add some parameters like it has to be 8 freshman, 10 soph and so on.
so i can get 40-50 names out of 200.

My guess is he will pick a name out of the hat and have the process recorded and have it up on youtube. :lol2:

Would it be a rolling 4 years?

What I mean is this upcoming draft should be the 1984 draft.  So under your proposal the draft pool would include the 1984-1987 drafts/players.  After this draft approximately 1/4 of the pool will be used.  For the next draft would you add the 1988 players to the pool?

exactly that is the plan.

I don't see what the problem is, nor do I see that it really stimulates the league.  My goal was to never make players exact replicas, i.e. just because his name's Michael Jordan doesn't mean he's going to be the best player in the draft.  As long as replicas aren't created, you can't really plan your future around the past.  Nor do I really think randomizing it stimulates the process.

Right now, what this league needs more than anything else, is a commish who's consistent on the timing of the sim's.  I don't think the league needs sweeping changes (additions are always good, i.e. stuff like adding banks, adding additional features).  During the end of my tenure, I couldn't be counted on for when the sim's would be done, and ultimately that's why I stepped down.  Then what happened with Hawks.  As long as the sim's are done on regularly timed schedule's, I think this league will be great.

Furthermore, who plans their future around a draftee 4 years beforehand?  Nobody.  If anything, people won't begin planning for the draft until week 5-6, when they already have a good feel for their team, and the draft preview has already come up.

I don't think this is a solution, IMO.


That's an impossibility.  FBB doesn't generate the draft preview until after Training Camp (after you hit "Begin Season", actually).  That's a limitation of the program, it's not something we did by design.

definitely a nice idea to put some twists regarding the draft. BUT then you would be the only one to know who'll be drafted when. So basically, it wouldn't really be a good idea at the end of the day, since you're the only one who'll know who'll be drafted when, and the draft wouldn't be left transparent to everyone at all.

fwiw I am totally with Bods on this one

Not crazy about the idea. It makes it a lot cooler to have the classes intact, imo.

... says the man who planned his last few seasons on being bad and drafting great.
;-)

I'm not too high on this idea either. Draft classes are well known usually, and players can be monitored in college or overseas. there are a few guys dropping out before the draft or developing from little known to superstar in one season, but you know who's there and about what he can do.

What i could see amsuing is not making the ratings publicly known until after the season. That way you can't tank for a specific player.

(and note to bods: when stating that draft preview won't be up until after the season, it's probably meant it won't be uploaded. Of course he can work on the draft in FFBB over the season, but if you don't export it to HTML or don't put it on the website it won't be available to everyone)

just my 2 cents ...

Since the names are for the Kings only (j/k) what difference does it make if Jordan & Bowie are in the same draft class?   I believe that the other 28 GMs are more interested in what the players produce than what their names are.  We could stay with all fictional names and it wouldn't change the approach most of take in determining who to draft.

The part about waiting until the end of the season to post the draft list IMO isn't realistic.  In the NBA you generally know halfway through the season (Jan/Feb) who is in the draft and who isn't.  Posting the draft list around sim 6 or 7 is more realistic IMO.